What beer are you drinking now? #686

When in Rome, I mean the Adirondacks.

 

It's early, but it is Saturday. Cheers.

 

Rozis?!

 

Digging bottles out I've been saving for today , I hit the big 4-0 today , so going to have some special stuff later , here are the first two bottles

 

Every Saturday morning!

 

I decided to class up Trillium's Heavy Mettle... "Blue Solo cup, I fill you up..."

 

Time to get up and go!

 

What are you waiting for?

 

I know this is heresy around this site, but this years is tasting better than I remember last years.

GO BADGERS!

 

And the weekend starts now- Bell's Best Brown Ale

 

I'm having another Odell Fifty Niner.

 

Rooting for them not to kill each other...lol
Half-time now ...UMD 12 - Morris 5.

 

Happy Birthday, so do you feel over the hill or under it?

 

You know what goes well with Cable Car...

 

Such a wonderful beer!

 

Time to crack open a beer I'd been saving for some time now, decided to make it a blind taste to see if the hype wagon met reality. And to make sure there was sufficient room for unbiased judgement, I had not had a belgian dark ale in a long, long while, and of the 4 beers, I'd only ever had 2 of them. So here we go:

The glassware:


The suspects:



Got it poured out and ready to go:



Tasting notes:

1. Rusty brown in appearance, and intensely fruity on the nose. The taste was more of the same - very powerful notes of dark fruit and great depth of flavor almost like fine wine. I did get some heat as the beer got warmer. Really good stuff this!

2. Dark brown with a reddish hue in appearance. If I could ever describe smell as beautiful then this beer qualifies for it - subdued and refined notes of chocolate, toasted bread, some ash and rummy dark fruits almost as if it were barrel-aged. The taste is more of the same - semi-sweet, but intense and immensely complex. Mind blown.

3. Dark murky brown in appearance, with a in-your-face punch of dark fruits on the nose. It had a stale, musty smell almost like a British strong ale, but one sip of this beaut brought a smile to my face. A beautiful, beautiful taste, deep, dark, immensely complex, light like a pinot noir, but a cognac-like presence in the nose. By this point, I had given up the guessing game - for the life of me I cannot tell which is which!

4. Garnet read in appearance with streaming bubbles. Very fragrant on the nose with notes of green apple, some flowers even. In taste, it was almost refreshing compared to the other ones sort of like semi-sweet chardonnay or some lighter red wine. There was some heat on the nose as well.


A second round of tasting after letting the beers warm up:

1. Powerful, thick, luscious with the most viscous mouthfeel of them all. This was a harmonious symphony of dark fruits. Beautiful.

2. Musty, earthy, soft, subtle, very, very, complex - this beer had it all. The chocolate, the toast, the barrel-like notes of oak, and for the sheer complexity of flavors this takes the cake.

3. A great beer no doubt, but something wasn't going right for this. This almost matched 2 in aroma and taste a while back, but as it warmed up, the heat totally obliterated all the other finer nuances of this beer.

4. Almost watery compared to the other 3. Am sure this was a good beer, but it was fighting in a weight class beyond its own.


Alrgiht in the order of my ranking:
Winner - 2 - Westvleteren XII (oh yes, the hype met the expectations)
Second - 1 - St. Bernardus 12 (ahead by default, since 3 lost ground as it warmed up)
Third - 3 - Rochefort 10 (my beloved belgian dark ale - almost matched the WVXII while cold)
Fourth - The Sixth glass ....
All beers had about 3 years of age on them.

 

8.1% alcohol. 95 IBU. Reformatted for 2014. Brewed in California.

 

V013 time... the Lost Abbey bottles continue.



Gang's all here! Cheers!