A Wine Drinker's Beerfest

I got a call from Dr. Tom requesting help drinking his first shipment from a beer of the month gift he got for Christmas. Obviously I cannot turn my back on a friend who needs help, so I picked up some beer and we had a mini beerfest. The other participant in the tasting, Abby (Mrs. Dr. Tom) is a big wine fan and not so much into beer. I wrote down some of her reactions so we could get the wine drinkers perspective on the beer.

On to the beer...

Saranac black and tan: The smell of this beer immediately reminded me of Guinness. With the beer of the month package, Tom got tasting notes on each of the beers. Normally I don't pick up on a lot of the flavors described, but Tom and I both immediately agreed on a strange one: apple peel.
Abby: " I am having trouble taking this seriously"

Choc Beer Miner Mishap: This is a black lager, a style that I rarely drink. Also I had never heard of the brewery before and I was quite impressed. It had a coffee and chocolate in the nose. The taste had the type of bitterness you expect from a pilsner and a smoke quality in the after taste.
Abby:"It smells burnt." "I just burped up the other beer, it tasted good." She preferred the black lager to the black and tan.

Choc Beer Basement Batch: This is choc beer's pale ale. Each of us had a different take on the nose.
Me: orange citrus, Tom: pine and citrus, Abby: lemon cleaner
The flavor is less intense than the aroma, but was pleasant and not very harsh or bitter. Tasted a little like grapefruit. Abby disagreed about the bitterness and kept sticking out her tongue trying to rid it of the bitterness or something.

Harpoon UFO Pale Ale: This is an unfiltered beer and it is crazy cloudy. It smelled kind of like honey and according to Tom, a little bit of cinnamon.
Abby:" It smells sweet." (I of course told her that sweet is not a smell, and we may have gotten into an argument...)

At this point we were playing a card game and didn't really review the next two beers, Saranac IPA and Sly Fox 113 IPA. Abby did describe the Sly Fox as smelling exactly like a Cannu Chenin Blanc (a wine). Crazy.