Southern Tier Old Man:
Hello one and all and welcome back that website that tries to makes sense of the beer world and will keep on trying for the foreseeable future.  Today let’s take a look at Southern Tier out of New York (how does that name come out of this location??) and their winter ale: Old Man.  Old man, wait, ah hahaha!! I get it, yeah, cleaver and I’m a bit slow right now on the uptake of wit.  So what do we have here in front of us?   Well it’s umm, a winter warmer and it pours the standard dark brown color with a light tan color and a nose of subtle hops and malts.  The beer’s initial taste is a clean sharp malt flavor that is more bready then roasted and this sharp flavor moves into a hop filled mid tongue that gives the bready malts a pine resin flavor.  The back end is a rather raw hop flavor that really seems like it belongs in a domestic lager than this beer and a sour note as the after taste.  Not that great of a beer really, there is nothing that special about it.  It’s not that it’s a bad winter beer, the hops make it a bit more distinctive then others but really, it’s just kind of a let down because it’s right on the cusp of being a great beer but it seems like the brewmasters held back something, not sure what but it is missing something.