Winters Bourbon Cask Ale

Is nothing like the description. Pours like a Budweiser. Smells like a Budweiser. Tastes like a Budweiser. Leaves that ugly feeling on your pallet. Must be a Budweiser in a fancy bottle. Is a Budweiser in a fancy bottle. Slightly better than a Budweiser. This is actually drinkable. An easy pounder without getting sick.

Pours a clear honey orange with a disappearing off-white head. Smells mainly of alcohol and bourbon I suppose, though I have never tasted it. Strong roasted malt presence as well. Light and thin on the tongue and well carbonated. Tastes of wood and creamy malts with a small amount of alcohol. Finishes sweet and sticky. A little one sided but not too bad.

Meh. a sample from tap. A nice amber hue with a thin tan head which had nice lacing. Aroma was mainly of corn and some bourbon, flavor was similar. Nothing too exciting, but not terrible either. Very lacking though.

12oz bottle courtesy of Degarth. Figured this thing wasn’t getting any better. It’s already been in my fridge for some time, and I’m tired of seeing it, so here we go. Pours out an amber color with a very small off white head. Disappears immediately, no foam, no bubbles, no lacing. Nose is oxidized to hell, wet cardboard, sour and just pretty damn bad smelling. Heavy artificial vanilla, cheap booze, cardboard and musty oak is pretty much the flavor profile of this thing. Tastes better than it smells though, so there’s something. Heavily astringent, otherwise flat and unexciting on the palate. Finish is mercifully brief, cream soda, vanilla, $5 bourbon and some sourness. Terrible, complete drainpour, as pretty much expected.

bottle thanks to ford9719. poured a dark amber color. taste of sweet lemons and oranges. finished with lemon spice. good beer

This was sort of like a spicy Red. Hint of vanilla and spice, but watery and weak.

Draft at a local restaurant. (Unnamed to protect the guilty.)

I’d never heard of this crap; the server said was a new beer from Bridgeport so I figured what the heck and ordered one. Here are my tasting notes, written while still under the delusion that this was a Bridgeport offering.

"Tap. Pours clear light orange with close to no head. Very mild doughy malt aroma, basically nothing there. The flavor...ach! Imagine a flat vanilla cream soda spiked with that green sore-throat spray that clings all sticky to the back of your throat when you’ve got a cold and tastes so cloyingly nasty that you forget that your throat is burning and simply worry about how to get the taste out. The finish is soggy airport pretzel dough; nasty, but at least a respite from what came before.

"I suppose I may have had one or two worse beers in my day, but over the last decade, such have been blessedly few and far between"

I really tried to drink it, honest, but I ended up leaving about 14 ounces of the 16 ounce glass sitting on the table. I guess the one good thing that comes of it was the interesting experiment of a truly blind rating for an A-B stealth micro. It’s even better than blind, I think; I believed it actually came from one particular and usually quite decent brewery --- and I still was willing to put it within a tenth of a point of my record low after 750+ beers.

Nothing too impressive. A slight hint of bourbon was nice. Has a redish orange color. Im drinking one right now actually, neighbors did not like it so I got 4 free beers! Has a nice malty note for a busch beer. Off white head dissapeared in about 10-15 sec. When I had a chance to view the head, it was thin and white, big suprise, lol. Might have turned out better with a different hop variety. Slight holiday spice, I taste bourbon more then anything....which isn’t bad...I had managed to drink the entire beer while writing this, so obviously, not something to savour. UPDATE: Just poured another with the intention of getting a good head...lasted 25 sec.