Traquair Jacobite Ale

Brewed by Traquair
Style: Traditional Ale
Innerleithen, Borders, Scotland

Deep rich mahogany brown with a tall tan head. Huge aromas of blueberries, bergamot, and chocolate. Smooth creamy palate with raisins, berries, cocoa, and buttery malt. The alcohol remains well hidden. This is absolutely fantastic-- the best Scottish beer I’ve tried by a long shot, and one I would strongly recommend for its uniqueness. Fantastic!

Bottle. Best before June 2014. Pours nice enough. Very dark mahaogany with a fluffy head atop. Aroma is rather bland. Some chocolate, some dark fruit and some spices. At first, it seems rather bland in the mouth, as well, but there’s a subtlety to it that takes a bit to notice. Fruity and subtle spices as well as a dark chocolate that provides a great foundation. It has a strange astringency, almost like a dry gin. Around mid bottle, the fruit start to organize themselves ... dark fruit mostly, and blueberry was the most noticeable, but I also got a sense of cherry. It finished somewhat spicy.

Dark brown color with mahogany edges, moderate white head and light lacing. Aroma is sweet nutty malt with very noticeable chocolaty and spicy tones. Flavor is sweet and malty with increasinly powerfull chocolate tones. As it warms dark raspberry fruitiness, licorice, and fig come through. Finshes very lightly bitter, quite sweet with a noticeable alcohol presence and leaves a coriander spicieness on the palate.

Bottle. Virtually no head....none. Very murky brown body. Strong alcohol nose with licorice, raisin, chocolate, spices...pretty complex. Not much hops though. Taste: first thing I notice is low carbonation, tastes flat. I asked my wife what coriander is supposed to taste like, and she said she thought licorice which makes sense. I think this would be very good if it didn’t taste flat. I guess I prefer to have carbonation in a beer. It would have balanced the extreme sweetness in this one. I felt by the end of this that the flavor became cloying. This is definitely a unique beer and with some slight changes could have been much better IMO.

Bottle from Texas Wine Cellars in Fredericksburg, Texas

Pours a rich, deep brown with a small, short-lived head. Aroma is thick with sweet malt, candy, and a touch of bourbon and wine. Flavor is a sweet, peachy malt that exudes a bit of tang in the finish. The ingredients and the flavors flow along the tongue quite nicely. This beer could be obscene as far as too much flavor, but it levels off before anything too weird happens. This is a good thing. Palate is silky and slippery. A very nice brew, one to enjoy again.

Deep dark pour with almost no head. Looked like a glass of Coke. Strong scent right off the pour. Malty blueberry? spices. Malty thick taste. Spicey with caramel and lots of smokey malts. Slight bitter aftertaste. The strong Alcohol wasfound in the taste and suprised me when I learned the 8%. Reminded me a bit of a Barley Wine and of many Belgians. Kind of like a 1/2 Barly Wine 1/2 Belgian Strong Mix. Really enjoyed this.

Bottle at MacNiven’s. Served in snifter. No head formation even when poured correctly. Black body. Aroma was godly. Berries, liquorice, pear, soy sauce, to name a few. Taste was very complex and very available. I was not sure what coriander tasted like, but since this was brewed with coriander, I will assume the unique flavor I got was that. In addition was raisin, liquorice, and clove. Really sweetened as it warmed. Not very often I’ve had an intense and complex beer be so easy to enjoy. Palate was thick, but had a light quality which did not allow a sticky feel. Very interesting.

Aroma: malt, sweet, vanilla, coffee, dried fruit, oak cask, bit musty, alcohol, apple, bread-sourish, caraway and fennel Appearance: deep red brown, clear, white beige head Flavor: bittersweet, a bit burnt, well-balanced, rich, very bitter Palate: odd, smooth, the sweetness is an illusion???, creamy, slightly viscous