Tuesday, December 16, 2014

2014 Advent Beer 15: Quills Karoo Red

From Porcupine Quills Brewing Co. of South Africa comes a bottle conditioned ale, with an advisory on the label to poor slowly, so as not to pour out the sediment at the bottom of the bottle. I also love the African porcupine on the bottle, as we have some quills from one on our sideboard most of the year, but they are in storage until the Christmas storm passes.

It pours a cloudy orangey-amber colour, with a generous amount of head. You can smell the yeast fairly quickly, but there is some hop sharpness in the nose as well as some other floral characteristics.

Karoo Red brings a bit more bitterness to the table than some of the recent calendar offerings, but is a very decent drink. For a red ale it has a lot of lagerish aspects to it, but is well balanced and eminently drinkable. You would almost expect a beer from so far away to taste a bit more exotic, but the people at Quills have gone to great lengths to replicate an authentic, Old World beer drinking experience, and I think they have succeeded.

 

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