I'm a big fan of Unibroue. I don't care who owns them. The beer is great. For me, La Fin du Monde, Maudite, and Trois Pistoles are truly outstanding beers. However, I'm curious what you folks do with the yeast. I know on the bottle label (at least on the 22.5 bottles) it says not to pour it all in because of the yeast in the bottle. But as I write this I'm drinking the dregs of a La Fin du Monde that I purposely poured every last drop from the bottle into my glass. It tastes great. So, what do you do?
Well La Fin du Monde is still good. Now I pour the beer clean and decide when how I am going to enjoy the lees filled dregs but they don't get wasted. Sometimes a glass pour, or a bottle chug but never a cloudy pour for the whole beer.
I pour out most of the liquid, then swirl up the dregs when I'm ready to top off my glass. Same as I would with a hefe. I don't care if it fills the beer with floaties, or makes it look muddy, or even if the brewery discourages it. Unibroue dregs taste great. Besides, I paid for a full bottle, so I'm going to drink a full bottle.
I didn't drink a lot of Unibroue back when they were independent, most of my experience with them comes from after they were bought. I've been quite impressed by the quality of everything I've had, it doesn't feel like the products are being watered down to be more mass-market friendly. As for the dregs, I can go either way. I'm pretty sure I just toss everything in the glass when I drink La Fin du Monde, but with other beers (like homebrew) I'll leave the yeast in the bottle and decide whether to add it once my glass is empty.
@thehyperduck I used to swirl the bottle and add in the dregs until about a year ago. I find that the dregs muddle the flavour and hide subtle flavours. There are two kinds of sediment in aged beers: malt protein and yeast cells. The malt protein is easier to disturb, and in most cases it finds its way into the glass even if you are careful. The malt protein forms huge globules looking sort of like coffee grinds. The dead yeast cells are usually more sandy/muddy in texture and form the sludge that sits under the malt sediment. The dead yeast cells should not be consumed. With a hefe the yeast is alive and tasty, and the sediment is not so grainy. The dead yeast cells in aged beer have concentrated autolysis flavours. The malt protein precipitate doesn't affect flavour, but its presence means that the beer has thinned out. If you pour slowly, the globules will enter your glass, but if you look at the bottom of the bottle after you pour, you will see the sandy crap.
I have to agree with most of the others. Plenty of times I will drink most of a Unibroue beer without adding the dregs until the last bit and I tend to pour it in. It does change the flavor but I usually like the change, especially if I hadn't had it in the full beer. I know I have had beers that even suggest swirling up the sediment and pouring it in the glass, but I don't believe Unibroue is one of those breweries. I have wondered why some do suggest adding it and some don't. Either way, seems like plenty of folks do add it in and it don't matter much, just personal preference.
I don't doubt anything you've written here, but I still think it tastes better with the dregs mixed in. This is really and truly just a personal preference. The biochemistry of beer sediment is interesting, but I still likes what I likes. For the record, I try not to do this with beers that I am reviewing, because I understand that dregs will make it more difficult to detect subtle nuances. But with beers like Maudite and LFdM, which I have already tried many times and am not interested in analysing any further, I will swirl it up and dump them in. Because ruptured yeast cells and autolytic byproducts are delicious, and I'm not letting those B vitamins go to waste.
