Tall Tale Honey Brown Ale aka 07-03-2009

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by MrC on April 11, 2009 at 11:45am

I kicked off last nights drinking with this one.

Poured med/dark brown with little to no head (off-white). Carbonation was very low. Beer was very clear.
Aroma of light chocolate with a hint of coffee. Started out with a light purfumy aroma that seemed to get stronger as it warmed and eventually dominated the entire drinking experience. No noticable hop falvour or aroma.
Mouthfeel was very light, slightly watery with very low carbonation. Finished very dry.

I found this beer to be a little thin, bland & lifeless. This beer would be a lot easier to drink and a lot more enjoyable if it was better balanced and had more body.
I suspect that the 500g of honey has made this beer very dry. If you really want to stick with the honey, I would increase the crystal malts to increase the body and sweetness to balance the dryness. Otherwise I'd drop the honey all together and increase the base malt to 4.2kg.
The carbonation was too low for my liking. Again I would drop the honey to get more control over the carbonation.
Did you add additional water to this after the boil? I did that once and the result was similar to this one ;-) the trade off between quality & volume.
I'm not sure what was causing the perfumy aroma. Honey maybe? I don't thing you can blame the fermentation temp for that aroma.

Cheers

Permalink Reply by studio1 on April 11, 2009 at 1:36pm

yeah - I tried this last night and noticed some 'medicinal' notes as my palette adjusted from the ale I had just finished. Seemed to disappear after half a glass.

Permalink Reply by Will J on April 11, 2009 at 1:52pm

yeah i think the perfumy aroma may come from the honey or more to the point the manuka honey. unless you mean something else by "Perfumy". i agree with your comments about the carbonation as well.

We didn't add extra water after the boil but looking at the recipe now i agree it needs more malt including more crystal to boost the body and sweetness.

in future, if we were to do this brew or similar again, we would go for more malt including crystal and give the hops a boost with maybe Riwaka or something with strong aroma to balance the honey aroma. Add 250g honey to end of boil and then maybe 250g (first by boiling for long time to eliminate risk of infection) into the ferment after the initial raid ferment.

we've definitely learned to be more careful with the honey, thanks for the comments

cheers

Permalink Reply by Mike Neilson on April 11, 2009 at 4:46pm

I drunk this the other night. I have one tip and I think you have picked this out in your prior coment, add more malt to your beer or less water. Dont add honey to darker beer also, honey lends soft flavour to a beer and is very hard to pick up over darker malts. Think honey blondes!!

Permalink Reply by denimglen on April 14, 2009 at 6:55pm

Definitely a nice sweet floral honey aroma coming through, some dark fruit and light chocolate and some fruity SO4-ness too. Smells great in the jug but a pint glass doesn't do it any favours, I reckon this would be great in a stemmed 'closed-top' glass so that's how I'll drink the rest.

Pours thin head that disappears, clear dark brown with a nice red sparkle.

Full of malt flavour but a touch thin on the palate. Not infected at all this bottle. A little honey spice in the flavour.

A nice beer overall, just work on the body a bit and I reckon it would be spot on.

Permalink Reply by Will J on April 15, 2009 at 10:38am

Cool, thanks for those comments glen.

If we do this one again i think we will definitely work on body and to bring some aroma hoppiness into it also.

Permalink Reply by Stu McKinlay on May 3, 2009 at 9:49pm

Tasted late last week but I've been cruisin' too much to get the pen and paper notes into the computer...

Dark brown, creamy looking. Caramel and fruit 'n' nut on the nose. Toasty crusts. Then something weirds me out a little, in a good way, I get a strong aroma of lemonade... As it warms, and once I've drunk a bit, I get some green fruit. Underripe. A common S04 ester for me. I get the slightest grassy hop very late in the piece too.

In the mouth I find it rather bland through the first half, lacking the body and sweetness that the nose suggested it would have. It ends with a nice dry and toasty finish, with lingering roast, but I'm really missing the malt character that the aroma teased me with. It didn't deliver on the the complex (and quite delightful) aroma.

I'd like to get more malt character in the mouth and a bit more weight. The beer would most definitely benefit from dropping the honey, which has most likely thinned out the beer such that it lost most of its malt character. Fermentation is very good from my point of view - and that means the Drunken Popes are on a very good track.

Fritha tried to hijack my notes by writing "scalpy" at the end (in a very good copy of my handwriting). I'm not sure what that means... if anything... but I picked it immediately seeing that it is not a word I've ever used as a beer descriptor before.

Good one guys. It is definitely a drinkable beer, and by no means anything to be apologetic about. Definitely looking forward to my next Drunken Pope sermon...