Three Floyds Robert the Bruce

After a long day of working through editing a song I'm mixing at work, my ears are tired, my head is in a fog, and I've probably gone at least slightly insane from listening to the same musical phrases over and over again. I don't do editing this in-depth normally, but this project really calls for it. Needless to say, my reward for a particularly long and annoying day is treating myself to a rather special beer. This is one of the beers I received from a guy in Indiana as part of a Beer It Forward on Beer Advocate.

Not being much of a history buff, I know Robert the Bruce mostly as that slightly wimpy future king of Scotland from Braveheart. This offering from Three Floyds is expectedly a Scottish Ale, and promises to be malt-forward, sweet, and fairly easy to drink.

As one could imagine, the aroma is decidedly malty, with very present caramel and fruit scents. At first I believe I detected caramel, apple, raisin, bread, possibly fig, and a mix of other less distinguishable additions blending together to make a complex and fairly forward blend. It has a deep brown color with hints of ruby around the glass, and a thin off-white head of about one finger that dissipated to a dusting within minutes.

The flavors of the beer match the nose. A round sweetness is present up front, developing into a smooth caramel explosion. In the back of the mouth the fruit flavors become more pronounced, with a slightly apple-like finish. There's a decent amount of substance to the beer as well, with the flavors coming through strongly. The hops are mostly muted, with just a touch of bitterness in the back of the mouth that you almost have to concentrate on to detect. The malt flavors linger for minutes after swallowing as well, allowing you to continue enjoying the brew between sips.

The beer is well carbonated, with just a slightly forward prickling sensation, and a body that's on the heavier side of medium. It coats the mouth thoroughly, and leaves just a touch of warmth as it goes down.

This beer really hit the spot for me today, and allowed me to unwind as I drank it. Something about the blend of malty flavors and smoothness just made it easy to relax. As I continued through the glass, I felt like I was noticing a bit of an alcohol flavor right when swallowing that could have been hidden a bit better, but overall it was very easy to drink. I don't know that this is something I would want most days, but it was certainly worth having once.

- Adam

Double Posting

Today it's time for an unusual event - a double posting. Since these are both beers that it's not terribly likely that I'll get again, I wanted to make sure I got these up. To keep this short I'll just jump into it, but today we have Half Acre Daisy Cutter and Three Floyds Dreadnaught.

Daisy Cutter is a pale ale, a style I normally don't care for all that much as most examples I've seen tend to have very little hop quality. However this one was pretty highly rated, so I wanted to see what it was all about.

The aroma was very similar to pellet hops that I've encountered in home brewing. There was a bunch of citrus, grass, flowers, and spice. I didn't actually get any noticeable malt quality.

It appeared a somewhat cloudy golden color with a thin, white head. As I progressed through the glass, I noticed a ton of lacing.

At first I tasted a bit of caramel and bread. It's a pretty delicate sweetish flavor that is pleasantly drinkable. This is followed up by substantial citrus hop flavor with some pepper. The bitterness lingers a while as well.

It's got a light body in the mouth, combined with a moderate-high carbonation level. It's clean and moderately dry as well.

Overall, this was a very good pale ale. Considering that I normally don't like the style much, I really enjoyed this beer. I'd say this is probably one of the best pale ales I've had yet.

Dreadnaught on the other hand is a Double/Imperial IPA. The aroma is a dense mix of hops,

with citrus and resin. I also thought it was a little woody.

Its appearance is a bit darker than Daisy Cutter, but still within the realm of golden, and again has some haze to it. There is less head though, only a dusting of bubbles that seem to be mor

e off-white.

There's a little sweetness right up front, evoking a memory of honey. I thought I also got a little pine. In the back of the mouth there's a strong bitterness that seems pleasant and fitting for the style. There was some citrus in the middle, but for me at least it seemed obscured by the mix of sweet and bitter. There's just a ton of hops packed into this beer. It's kind of like a mix between an East Coast and West Coast IPA.

The beer has a moderate body, combined with a fairly high level of carbonation. I noticed some stickiness from the resins in my mouth as well. There was also just a little warmth in the throat as it went down.

I enjoyed this DIPA quite a bit. There's just so much hop flavor going on in this beer. In fact, there's a level of bitterness that doesn't really make it into that many beers, even when loaded down with hops. I wouldn't say I prefer it to Hopslam which is fortunate for me since Hopslam is a lot easier to get around here. Still I wouldn't ever turn this beer down.

- Adam