Leffe Brune / Brown
Abbaye de Leffe S.A.

330ml. bottle in Vientiane, Laos. Pours a clear red-brown colour with a light brown head. Aroma of toasted caramel, malt. Taste of malt, caramel, hops, slightly sweet. A pleasant brown abbey dubbel.

A bit of a single dimension, malty caramel. Very little bitterness from hops. So not a lot of depth to it but it's well executed and pleasant to drink. Sort of like a dessert. Has the matching dark brown color, not opaque though. Decent foam at pour.

Brown color with a good beige head. The aroma of roasted malt, fruits, and yeast. The taste is caramel sweet on the start with pleasant bitterness at the finish. Bittersweet aftertaste. Good ale

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fantastic beer. The only beer I call delicious.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dark brown to dull and opaque black with a tall tan foam head.

I was expecting this to be more along the line of more painful oud bruins, but this is a clean, non-acidic, really pleasantly malty brown ale while still drinkably fluid & lightly carbonated. It's got mildly leafy, nutty qualities with hints of crabapple and even semisweet maple.

This was probably my favourite beer when I used to sit downstairs in E55 when I was 18 years old, in Melbourne. I hardly drank it since then, until now. Just drank the Leffe blonde, now let's try this.

Looks amazing. Bubbles are fairly small, lots of head, but not a ridiculous head like a Duvel or Orvale ; ) Almost black. Few beers are as beautiful as this.

Similar aromas as the blonde, just a little more caramelly and more bready. I actually prefer the blonde aroma.

Wow. No brune beer from other countries ever seems to get close to a Belgian brune. Even the worst ones. The taste is less complex than the blonde, but is much smoother, and the alcohol is more covertly hidden. It really is a totally different beer and doesn't seem to have much resemblance to the blonde at all, in terms of flavour. I guess clove and chocolate dominate. And there is a courageous bitter kick, that tastes a little skunky and off. But compared with a Marendous brune or most other Belgian ones, it's not even close in terms of smoothness and flavour. Feel has great smoothness but it's also quite a simple mouth feel. Rather a sugary aftertaste, that I wouldn't usually associate with such a dark beer. I actually prefer Guinness to this.

Leffe is great when compared to commercial beer manufacturers. But compared with most Belgian brewers with the excepton of Stella, it's not as good...but it is cheaper. So it deserves some overall marks for this.

Overall I prefer the blonde. It's a little more unique and interesting. This tries to do something that other Belgian beers do better. And because it's pasteurized, it's flavours that mature over time in the bottle, become destroyed. Because Inbev want it to last longer to make more profit. It would be much better unpasteurized ; )