Cuvée De L'alchimiste #14
Brasserie Dieu du Ciel!

Hazy golden colour with a dense, white head that reduced quickly yet left some lacing on the glass. Sweet, spicy aroma that's full of banana and other ripe fruits. There's a bit of lemony citrus and cloves as well. The flavour is balanced towards malty sweetness with a light fruit and spice character. The finish is barely off-dry with considerable malt sweetness. Smooth texture with carbonation on the low side. The body is assisted somewhat by the residual sweetness. This is a pretty good beer that's quite drinkable, but my preference is for a somewhat stronger yeast character that contributes to the flavour.

Cuvée de l'alchimiste is usually a Beer that J-F, the head brewer, feels needs tweaking or is just a test batch to try something new, interesting but not necessarily worthy of making the starting rotation. The waiter told me that this one was a German-style Hefeweizen but, a regular ale yeast was used.

Appearance: Troubled yellow/peach, only a thin crown around the edges.

Smell: Light, wheaty smell, with a palpable yeast spicyness that gave it almost a saison-ish aroma altogether.

Taste: Cinnamon and spice flavored oatmeal with hints of apples, freshly crushed coriander and zested oranges. It was refreshing and I enjoyed it, maybe I should lobby to have this underachieving Weizen a chance to prove itself over time, but then again, DDC masters the style so well that I'll just stick with the usuals.