Frozen Beard Winter Ale

I have yet to post my impressions about this beer because it has taken several months to mature. This beer was inspired by Rogue's Santa's Reserve and Alaskan Brewing Company's Winter Ale. I brewed this beer based off a recipe in Charlie Papazian's Microbrewed Adventures for Alaskan Brewing Company's Winter Ale. I think that this beer could eventually be really good, but so far its had an odd flavor to it. I added spruce extract to get the spruce element that was in the previously mentioned beers. I had never used this before, it called for 1 tsp per gallon, but I only added 2 for a 3 gallon batch. Well thus far it's been too much.
My wife said it smells enticing, but has an odd medicinal flavor to it. Once you get past the inital flavor, I think it's nice, and there's a sweetness to it because of the crystal malt. It pours a light brown- ruby red with a thin white head. There's a nice creaminess, and there's some spiciness because of the saaz hops. But it's taken time for the spruce to mellow out. Someone posted in a previous post that he has had success using real spruce needles.. I might have to try that. I'm intrigued by the potential of this beer. It has some good elements, and maybe the spruce will mellow out over time (I still have 10-15 22oz bottles left). We shall see, I guess this is why I do experimental batches!

In other happenings, I tried my Irie Stout again last night and I think I might have to bottle it this weekend. I planned on leaving it in the secondary another week, but the alcohol presence that I wanted to mellow out, really has, and there are some nice flavors going on. I think bottle conditioning will be fine for this beer anyway. We'll see how busy I am this weekend, because if I can hold out it might be good, but I'm just too intrigued by this beer to have much more patience with it! Plus I bought a 2.5 gallon keg a couple months ago that I have yet to use and I've been eagerly anticipating moving into that arena, so there's a lot of reasons to be impatient.
Salud!
The Bearded Brewer