Bruin
Extraomnes

This one pours a slightly murky golden dark brown, with a small head, and lots of lacing.

This smells like sweet caramel, red wine dark fruit, a touch of spine, and oak.

This feels maybe a touch too sweet for the style, with a muddled fruity and caramelly sweetness. The red wine and oak character is tasty, but I wish that was stronger and balanced out the sweetness a little bit more.

This is medium bodied, slightly creamy, with a decent enough drinkability.

This isn’t perfect, but I still enjoyed it overall.

Building upon the traditions of Belgian brewing, Extraomnes adds to the time honored legacy with a Belgain Dubbel-styled ale.

Their simply called Bruin kicks off with a voluminous rust brown pour that crowns with a slightly tarnish froth. As its foam settles quickly, the ale swoons the nose with a host of caramelized sugars, toasted grain, dark fruit, vinous spice and a hint of holiday spice. An early malt balanced taste reveals the character of brown sugar, caramel and candied pecans.

As the sweetness washes the middle palate with steely caramel flavors and a slow drying character that highlights aspects of mild coffee, light chocolate and toasted nuttiness. Dark fruits rise with the flavors of dates, apples, raisins, figs, plum and raspberry. Spices counter with a general roundness of allspice, peppercorn, tangy red wine and a general holiday spice blend. A light hopping rate gives a mild bitterness to contend with the lingering sweetness as the ale finishes.

Medium bodied but seemingly fuller from the linger of sweetness too far into its taste along with the lack of carbonation that gives the style its characteristic malty-dry mouthfeel and its higher sense of palatability.