Dogstalker April Bock - Grand River Brewing (Canada - Ontario - Cambridge)

Dogstalker April Bock - Grand River Brewing (Canada - Ontario - Cambridge) 6.0%

Pours a orange, reddish amber in a glass without much of a head; some sediment at the bottom of the bottle. The aroma has caramel sweetness, actually more like toffee, brown or even molasses bread and some, nay lots, of apple-ey red fruit as well as some dark fruit (prune) notes.

The aroma is a bit like malt syrup used in homebrew but isn't nearly that sweet. The occasional roasty smell drifts in and out but it never shows up in the flavour, instead it is well on the sweet, caramelized, red ale side of the Maillard process. Lots of brown bread and toffee. There is some underlying tartness and syrupy sweetness reminds me of sherry and unfortunately it is the cooking kind that springs to mind not the drinking kind. When combined with overly forward red fruit flavours it kind of ruins this beer for me. 

The difficulty for me with invented (or at the least styles I haven't heard of and don't show up in my beer encyclopedia) styles like an April Bock is that I'm not sure what the brewer was going for. It could be that they nailed this and it is just not to my taste because I have liked other Grand River Brewing products but I am not really a fan of this one. If I am on the right track with what the concept, an April Bock would be pretty good if the fruit flavours had been a bit more subdued and if the sweetness was less syrupy and more malty.