Beer Review: Harpoon Celtic Ale

Harpoon's Celtic Ale

I had this on tap at J.B. Quimby's last night.

This beer pours a deep copper color with a two finger thick head. The bubbles in the head are large and coarse and pure white. After settling, the head remained thick enough to keep the beer covered.

The first impression you get from this beer is that it smells like lightly toasted bread. If there was any hop aroma, I wasn't able to detect it. Some British malt comes through in the nose, slightly offsetting the bread aromas. A minimal amount of yeast esters manage to poke through as well, lending a touch of a sweet floral aroma.

As with the aroma, the flavor of this beer is dominated by bread. There is a solid malt base that uses the bread and toasted notes to balance itself rather than hops. There do not seem be more than a token amount of hops as the hop bite was barely noticeable on the back of the tongue.

While not a light beer, this is an easily drinkable one. It's thick enough in the mouth so you know it's a solid beer, but it's thin enough to go down pretty quick.

Overall
Harpoon's Celtic Ale is not the most exciting beer, but you could do a ton worse. It's definitely a solid beer that should be really good on those cool rainy spring evenings. I would have enjoyed it more had I not been in a hoppy mood when I tried it. Don't expect an award winner, but this is a decent beer that's worth trying if you're not in the mood for hops.