Winter Harvest
Olds College Teaching Brewery

650ml bottle - the students (I presume) at the Olds College brewery have chosen a Belgian-style dubbel as their winter 2016/2017 offering.

This beer pours a clear, dark bronzed brown colour, with three fingers of puffy, loosely foamy, and fizzy beige head, which leaves but a low berm of ebbing lace around the glass as it quickly blows off.

It smells of grainy and crackery caramel malt, a bit of biscuity toffee, a soft oily nuttiness, some plain Low Countries yeasty character, muddled dark orchard fruitiness, and some rather tame earthy, weedy, and floral noble hop bitters. The taste is bready and cereal-forward caramel malt, fading toffee/treacle esters, wan bar-top nuts, some edgy Belgian yeastiness, laid-back plum, prune, and fig/date dark fruit, and a further leafy, weedy, and wet grassy green hoppiness.

The carbonation is fairly tame in its mostly punch-clock frothiness, the body a decent medium weight, and generally smooth, with a nice airy creaminess evolving as the ambient temperatures warm somewhat. It finishes off-dry, but trending towards the latter - a nice biscuity character trading jibes with the lingering hops.

Overall, this is certainly an enjoyable and well-made version of the style, balanced, and easy to drink, in spite of (or perhaps due to) the expertly obfuscated 14-proof wowee sauce quotient. Good stuff, once again, future Albertan craft brewers!