Jimmy's Trip Home Belgian Dubbel
Raised Grain Brewing Company

 

Jimmy's Trip Home pours a brown color, with not much head. Sweet and sugary aroma. Flavor is very sweet, bold sugary flavors, with notes of apples. Good body and flavors. Overall, a very sweet Dubbel, nice apple flavors.

 

 

 

I had very high expectations for this after getting to know some of the other excellent beers in Raised Grain's lineup, and brought home a growler of it with the intent of feverishly guzzling it as quickly as I had the Ah Ha and Roggenaut IPAs. In the glass, it looks spectaular. Deep orange red, great clarity, swirling with lively carbonation. Smelled of sweet malt and that characteristic Belgian yeast waft. It seemed as if the beer would surpass even my high expectations at this point, but at first sip I found myself confronted with my first major disappointment in Raised Grain's line of beers. The initial taste is a hectic cocktail of chemical off-flavours ranging from rubber-glove to gasoline, a myriad of elements that had me reeling. This orgy of odd and decidedly unpleasant flavours eventually settles into a pleasant, fruity, yeasty aftertaste that I'd expect from a dubbel, leading me to continue a few sips further in an effort to reconcile the strange initial burst of disgust and the fine aftertaste. However, the more I pressed onward, the more overpowering the rubber-glove/gasoline taste came to the fore, and at the end of the evening 60 oz of this liquid made its way down my kitchen sink's drain. A shame. Bad batch? Maybe, but I'll definitely get a sampler to find out before I waste another $20 on a growler of the stuff.

 

On tap at the brewpub. The beer definitely has the flavor profile of a dubbel but was a bit thin and cloying for my taste. Some yeasty qualities. A bit higher in alcohol for style.