Gong Show
Parallel 49 Brewing Company

341ml bottle. Some of the private stores (Brewery Creek, Broadway...) have been breaking up their leftover calendars and selling them as singles.

A: Brown-amber with just a little head.
S: It's sort of got the Belgian candy smell you'd expect, but there's something a little off about it.
T: Super boozy. It's 9%, but it tastes like it's at least twice that.

 

Gong show is a good name... but don't call it a quad, it's probably closer to a triple, call it a strong pale.

Clear, Copper-bronze with an off-white head that quickly dissipates.

Nice tropical fruit (mango and papaya?) nose, with light caramel and spice.

Tropical fruit in the flavour as well, even a bit of banana, giving it a sweet banana bread flavour. Light citrus rind, with a hint of heat from the spice. Alcohol is warming like a cheap sherry.

Moderate body has a drying alcohol finish.

Parallel 49 Brewing 'Gong Show' @ 9.0% , served from a 341 ml bottle Day 23 Seasons Greetings
A-pour is amber from the bottle to a clear golden amber in the glass with a small beige head leaving a spotty lace along the goblet
S-Belgian spice's
T-strong ale with a smooth finish
MF-decent carbonation , big full body , warms the inners as more is consumed
Ov-kinda liked it ,
prost LampertLand

 

 

341ml bottle, day 23 of the 2016 Seasons Greetings holiday mixer from Parallel 49 and Central City - this is a placeholder review, because my son's mother is a real piece of work. Be back later to update. Speaking of gong shows, Imma just gonna leave this here now, for posterity in hell's sake.

This beer pours a clear, medium copper amber colour, with one skinny-ass finger of puffy, loosely foamy, and fizzy tan head, which leaves pretty much nothing in the way of lace around the glass as it quickly blows off.

It smells of bready and doughy caramel malt, bittersweet mole sauce, further unhinged smoked spices, muddled dark orchard fruity notes, ephemeral orange citrus rind, a subtle earthy yeastiness, and some weak leafy, weedy, and gently perfumed floral hop bitters. The taste is semi-sweet, bready and crackery caramel malt, some biscuity toffee sweetness, still hard to pin down generic citrus, some fading spiced-up cocoa powder, an equally receding yeasty character, wan brown sugar, and more plain leafy, earthy, and herbal verdant hoppiness.

The carbonation is fairly testy in its fizzy and frothy emanations, the body a decent middleweight, and mostly smooth, but for a bit of spicy/boozy undertone astringency. It finishes trending dry, the biscuity nature of the malt, alongside the spicy, um, spices, going the long yard in making it just so.

Overall, this is a decently rendered, strong Belgian ale, with a spice contingent that keeps it on the level, and yet out of range for what any sane beer connoisseur would consider a Quadrupel. Yeah, I said it - now maybe New World brewers should stop messing around with something that they probably created in the first place. Irony, thy name is beer.