I'm a pretty big fan of beers that use local ingredients. Maybe they don't always work, but I think there's something to be said for adding an ingredient to a beer that really puts your location's fingerprint on it. This week I picked up a dopplebock from Alaskan Brewing Company that uses a very local ingredient: birch syrup. If the cool local ingredient wasn't enough to make me buy this one, the moose on the bottle definitely was. Nice touch, Alaskan.
Alaskan Birch Bock pours a deep brownish red color with almost no head at all. The smell was big and malty with big notes of rye bread and maple syrup. My guess is that the "maple" I was smelling was really birch, but I've never smelled birch syrup, so I'm still going with "maple."
The taste is similar to the smell: Big and malty with notes of rye, roasted malt, wood and a big and syrupy maple sweetness. To me, the syrupy mouthfeel coupled with the sweetness was a bit much and wore on me the more I drank. Still, this was a pretty tasty dopplebock.
Final Grade: B
Top 100 Beers Tasted: 37
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