Trying a new beer tonight. Avery “Old Jubilation” touted as a winter seasonal and classified as a English Strong Ale it came to me in a very full pint glass. Clear and a deep mahogany with a small light tan head I was glad to see that I had at least 14 or so to enjoy after a couple of 8oz snifters earlier of some other brews.
Malty and a little sweet. Kind of like a light Barley Wine or a hoppy/bitter Scottish Ale it is a “Winter Warmer” if you will. It has a little of a papery chalky trailer at the end, but it is pleasant and a nice end-cap to my evening of beer tasting and blogging. At 8% it is pretty hefty even though the ABV doesn’t come through very strongly. The rather robust malty profile offsets this enough to balance the beer.
Avery, at least in my impression has a rep for being daring and adventurous. Consider the several high gravity beers that it regularly produces. Samael’s, Mephistopheles, The Beast, all are good for impressing your beer nerd poser friends that spout off “beers can’t be made over X percent alcohol. As a homebrewer, I can attest taht depending on the variety of yeast that is used and the mount of sugars in the pre-fermented sugars an ABV of 10-12 is not a problem and with some special techniques somewhere around 16-18 can be achieved. The second beer I ever made was about 13.5% and a few bottles that are still around after 3 and a half years, got some pretty positive reviews from some fellow home-brewers recently.
This Avery beer is pretty good, malty, a little sweet, fairly strong and satisfying. A good, “sit by the fire” brew and I bet that is pretty close to what the brewer had intended. As it warms up a bit, I am picking up the acohol a bit but am not put off by it.
Decent.
