(bottle) Dark ruby, almost black. Good head and good lacing. Aroma of dark fruits and malt. Flavor mostly of dark fruits. Pretty good. I wish I'd had a second bottle on-hand.
Ounces Consumed: 24(bottle) Dark ruby, almost black. Good head and good lacing. Aroma of dark fruits and malt. Flavor mostly of dark fruits. Pretty good. I wish I'd had a second bottle on-hand.
Ounces Consumed: 24(bottle) Very cloudy dark brown. Huge heaping head that lasted forever. Aroma of dark fruits and malts. Flavor a little tamer than I was expecting, mostly dominated by the alcohol burn at the finish. Too much alcohol for the flavor provided. I won't bother with this one again, I don't think. Maybe if I can get it on tap.
Ounces Consumed: 25(bottle) Black with a decent head that faded quickly. Aroma of roasted malts, burnt coffee, chocolate, and hops. The mouthfeel was a little thin, and the flavor was much more tame than the aroma had led me to believe. A very bright-tasting stout, but still pretty good.
Ounces Consumed: 25(bottle) Hazy orange. Decent head that faded quickly. Aroma of malts and oak. Flavor was very strong with oak and bourbon - much more of each than I was expecting from the aroma. A substantial alcohol burn at the finish belied the 11% ABV of this beer. A good beer, but a little gimicky for my tastes. I'd like to try this on tap someday - maybe it would go down a little more smoothly.
Ounces Consumed: 25(bottle) Hazy brown. Minimal head. Aroma is complex and very strong, with malts and hops and nothing else. Flavor is mostly weird malts. Most quads feature dark fruit flavors, this is all malts. The two inches of sediment in the bottom of the bottle grossed me out. Overall, not bad, not great.
Ounces Consumed: 22(bottle) Beautiful dark amber color. Fantastic malty and spicy aroma. Fizzy mouthfeel. Flavor of wheat and yeast and apple peels. Fucking yummy.
Ounces Consumed: 89(bottle) Clear golden in color. Decent head, good lacing. Intoxicating aroma of orange peels and apple peels, with some unidentifiable spices thrown in for kicks. Flavor is fairly mild, a little drying because of the 9% ABV. After swallowing a sip, I immediately wanted another sip. This cycle repeated until the bottle was gone. Yummy in an undescribable way.
Ounces Consumed: 24(draft) Clear brownish-amber. No head worth noting. A nice clean aroma of apple peels and, of all things, bananas. Flavor was mild and smooth. Finish had a mild but lingering alcohol bite. Pretty good.
Ounces Consumed: 12(draft) Black in color, with a thin tan lacy head that faded quickly. Aroma of malts and light chocolate and dark fruits. Medium mouthfeel - not quite syrupy. The flavor is fairly tame, mostly malts and chocolate. I like this. Dangerous though, because the high ABV is hidden very well.
Ounces Consumed: 12(draft) Clear copperish amber. Average head that dissipated quickly. Aroma almost undetectable, but of apple peels and spices. Flavor started out very weak, but as my tongue became accustomed to it, I ended up like this beer a lot. A 5.2% Belgian session beer. Pretty damn cool.
Ounces Consumed: 50(bottle) Dark bronze. Nice firm head. I got a lot of dark fruity sweetness. I mean a lot. The very high (14.9%) ABV wasn't apparent except that I just knew that all that sweetness was covering up something dangerous. This is pretty much the opposite of a session beer. I liked it though.
Ounces Consumed: 22Recommended to me because of my recent infatuation with Belgian ales, this definitely did not disappoint. A nice reddish color and a decent head with a fair amount of lacing. For me, as with all belgians, the overwhelming flavor is that of apples. I can drink this in complete comfort. It's just yummy. Not quite as complex as a tripel I had a few weeks ago, but with a better overall flavor.
Ounces Consumed: 581(bottle) Looked like grapefruit juice except for a huge white head. Citrusy aroma. Slight citrus flavor, but not so much that it became disgusting. Fizzy and other than that, a fairly mild flavor. Too many ingrediants in this beer, none stand out. It's a mish-mash.
Ounces Consumed: 25(draft) Dark ruby-colored. Decent head. No aroma at all. The first sip was really digusting. It tasted like cherry cough syrup. The next several sips got gradually better, as other flavors became detectable. The end of the glass was halfway decent.
Ounces Consumed: 10(draft) Black, with a decent brown head. A sugary sweet aroma. Flavor was fairly intense, with spices and a slight hint of coffee. Pretty damn good.
Ounces Consumed: 20(draft) Smells like old socks. Looks like a lager. Tastes fantastic. Reminds me of the winter ales from the established Belgian breweries. Apples and other, unidentifiable, fruits predominate. A very surprising beer from one of my favorite breweries. Yummy.
Ounces Consumed: 56A commonly-available beer that I put off drinking simply because of its availability - reasoning that something so widely accepted must be bland and boring. I was quite wrong (see Newcastle for another example of my flawed logic). This is a very nice beer that went down very easily. I think I could drink it all night, and that's not something I could say about most Belgians.
Ounces Consumed: 717(draft) Dark amber in color. Good head and lacing. Smells like malts and dark fruits. Tastes like malts and overripe charries. Good though.
Ounces Consumed: 10
(draft) Clear dark bronze. Decent head. No detectable aroma. Flavor of dried cherries. The finish was quite drying as well. A good beer, but weird.
(bottle) No foam at all. I mean none. I've seen tap water with a bigger head. Other than that, poured a slightly hazy orange. Taste was, as expected, fairly flat and generic. Yeasty and bland in flavor, this beer did grow on me as time went by. I'd love to try this in draft form someday. Maybe there'll be some fizz then.
(draft) Hazy yellow, with tons of foam. This beer is advertised as a spiced Belgian wheat. I didn't get any spices though. I got yeast and bananas and wheat, all more apparent in the aroma than in the flavor. It's a good and neutral example of the style to me. I liked it.
(draft) Looks like a hazy pale lager. An odd aroma of what I guess is Belgian yeast. Flavor a bit like a saison, but weaker. It looked so much like a lager that I think I imagined lagerish components to the flavor and the finish that weren't really there. Decent, but that's it.
Ounces Consumed: 20(draft) Hazy golden in color, with a large head that shrank quickly. Fairly standard aroma and flavor for a Belgian of this style - so pretty good. There was a tiny bit of unexpected creaminess as it swirled in my mouth. The finish was a little drying, but not so much as to be obnoxious. A pretty good beer.
Ounces Consumed: 11(bottle) Don't know what vintage this was. Incredibly sour taste. Like sucking on lemon rinds. Not musty or funky at all. Drinkable, but not noteworthy.
Ounces Consumed: 10(bottle, 2002 vintage) Like a regular, somewhat mild, Belgian strained through dirty sweat socks. This is what I was expecting from a lambic festival! A little sour, a little drying, a lot tasty.
Ounces Consumed: 20(bottle) Funky and Musty. Very dry finish. Hard to pin down exactly what this tasted like. I liked it.
Ounces Consumed: 10(draft) A nice beer. Not nearly as sweet as other tripels I've have. I got a subtle undertone that reminded me of smoke. There was very little head, though this may have been caused by the filthy glass. I liked it a lot, but there are a zillion better Belgians out there.
Ounces Consumed: 16(bottle) Dark amber. Decent head with lots of fizz. The cork nearly took my eye out when it popped. A nice sharp and fruity aroma. Maybe some floral scent in there too. Flavor more of the same, with maybe an added touch of cola. The sediment at the bottom of the bottle grossed me out.
Ounces Consumed: 21(bottle) Cloudy dark amber. Smallish head. Faint aroma of dark fruits and malt. Flavor fairly mild, consisting mostly of apples and plums. A little drying. Pretty good.
Ounces Consumed: 24(draft 2002 vintage) A nice reddish-brown. Had a fruit component that wasn't the apples I'm used to from Belgians. I'm going to call the flavor a mix of cherries and beets. Not too bad, but not worth a second glass.
Ounces Consumed: 10(draft) Dark clear copper. Good head. Smelled like a barleywine, and pretty much tasted like one too. That weird flavor of beets or prunes or whatever it is - I don't like it. This beer did grow on me a little as the glass got more empty, but I still can't really say that I liked it.
Ounces Consumed: 10(draft) Smelled better than it tasted, but it smelled fantastic. Nice and malty with some spice aroma that I couldn't identify. Taste was very similar to the Great Lakes Christmas Ale - if you like that, you'll like this.
UPDAYE 111805: Not similar at all to the Great Lakes brew. Still delicious though. Sweet and complex, I got a little bit of cola flavor that I hadn't noticed before. Too strong for more than one in a night, and that sucks.
Ounces Consumed: 80I thought this beer smelled and looked fantastic. I'm not really sure what I was expecting tastewise - I suppose a combination of a Belgian and a Brown. What I got was a strange-tasting beer that I can't really say I liked all that much. It just tasted like something was wrong with it, but I couldn't point to any one thing.
Ounces Consumed: 12(draft) Absolutely nothing special about this beer except that it's an Abbey Tripel, so it's special by default. Very good, but not great.
Ounces Consumed: 10(mixture) I mixed 1/2 NABC Tunnel Vision with 1/2 Rogue Smoke Ale. For whatever reason, I figured that the honey sweetness of the Tunnel Vision and the smoky bitterness of the Rogue Smoke would play off each other quite well. I was right. I would drink the stuff if it was available commercially.
Ounces Consumed: 20(mixture) I mixed Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier and Delirium Tremens in the 16.9:11.2 ratio dictated to me by the bottle sizes. Mixing what are perhaps the ultimate representations of German wheat and Belgian strong ales, I'm not quite sure what I was expecting to accomplish. One thing that I definitely wasn't expecting was to create a beer that would make me believe in God. Well, so much for expectations. Way beyond yummy.
Ounces Consumed: 28(bottle) Pouring this into a glass resulted in about a 5/1 head/beer ratio. I actually lost patience waiting for the head to dissipate and ended up disrupting it with my finger. Once I got to the actual beer I really enjoyed it. A little lighter in both flavor and ABV than other Belgians I've enjoyed, so more suitable as a session beer. Black flecks that settled to the bottom of my glass turned me off a little.
Ounces Consumed: 11(bottle) Fizzy, hazy orange. Citrus undertones that I didn't care for at all. MIght be okay on a hot Summer day. My least favorite from this otherwise wonderful brewery.
Ounces Consumed: 12Cloudy yellow with a head that lasted throughout the glass. A great belgian beer. Well carbonated and fairly thick-tasting. This was as close to drinking hard cider as I think I could stand. I liked this beer a lot, but at a whopping 10% alcohol I know that one will always be my limit. One of my all-time favorites.
Ounces Consumed: 318(bottle) Highly recommended by several people, but I'm not really sure why. I've never had cherry wine, but I'm convinced that I now know what it would taste like. Very sweet, very winey. No bitterness to balance the sweetness at all. Not very good.
Ounces Consumed: 10(draft) Fizzy, which was quite a strange sensation coming from a stout. More coffee than chocolate flavored, so not my favorite even once the fizz had faded.
Ounces Consumed: 10(bottle/draft) Poured an orange/red color, with the massive head I usually find in De Dolle beers. Aroma much more massive and much more complex than their other offerings. Along with the standard Belgian apple tones, I also got what I'll call cherries and apricots. Did not taste like it had 12% alcohol in it. A little sour in the finish.
Ounces Consumed: 120(draft) A nice cloudy copper color that was quite intriguing. Nothing particularly special about the taste - actually this beer seemed a little too well-balanced. All of the flavors seemed to cancel each other out.
Ounces Consumed: 10(draft) The hop aroma was very evident and I was surprised to find such a tame flavor behind it. This is a beer I could drink all night, but I wouldn't want to because it's pretty boring.
Ounces Consumed: 40(bottle) Very dark, very fruity aroma. Taste reminded me of dark cherry wine. The second half of my glass - once the head had dissipated - was much better than the first half.
Ounces Consumed: 123Dark brownish red with a very dense head that lasted forever. A very nice completion to the Delirium triad. Not as much spice as I was perhaps expecting, but very drinkable. More similar to Delirium Nocturnum than to Tremens. Yummy.
Ounces Consumed: 267(draft) My desert island beer. I only wish I could drink more than three or four without going into a coma. The ultimate Belgian as far as I'm concerned. If you don't like this beer, then I don't like you.
Ounces Consumed: 1258(bottle, 1999 vintage) Less sour than other lambics, but much more of a dry finish. A subtle hint of funkiness in both the aroma and flavor. Pretty damn good.
Ounces Consumed: 10(bottle) Cloudy brown with minimal head. Very strong flavor, bordering on the ridiculous. Almost sour, almost overpowering cherry flavor. I didn't finish the bottle. Probably not worth having again unless I can try it on tap.
Ounces Consumed: 20(bottle) Slightly hazy orange. Quite fizzy in both aroma and flavor. Hints of apples, expected for the style, but the fizz was the predominate characteristic. Reminiscent of champagne. Good, but not great.
Ounces Consumed: 12I was expecting something different, and perhaps even better, from this beer. What I got was, to me anyway, a bland, somewhat dirty tasting belgian. I certainly don't understand the hype.
Ounces Consumed: 10(draft) Clear orange/yellow. Big white head. No detectable aroma, and not much of a flavor either. A pretty weak Saison. Barely decent.
Ounces Consumed: 5(draft) Yellow with a slight haze. Very good head and lacing. At first, it seemed a little watery, but then subtle flavors of apple peels and sour apples became evident. Pretty good.
Ounces Consumed: 24(draft) Dark yellow. No head. Minimal lacing. No aroma. Flavor of dark fruits and malts. Pretty damn good.
Ounces Consumed: 4(bottle) Cloudy dark brown. Aroma of musty fruit. Flavor fairly typical for the style. Extremely good, in other words.
Ounces Consumed: 20(bottle) I had a little of this. I remember liking it, but I was quite frankly too drunk to remember much more than that. I will provide a read review next change I get.
Ounces Consumed: 4(draft) Highly recommended by all who'd had it at Rich O's. Definitely a Christmas Ale - all sorts of complex flavors. I thought the fruitiness was a little bit too much but I suppose it was needed to mask all of that alcohol.
Ounces Consumed: 50(bottle) Fizzy clear orange. Huge heaping head. Very faint citrus aroma. Flavor also quite faint, consisting of apples and oranges. Medium mouthfeel. No bitterness. Good but not great.
Ounces Consumed: 25(bottle) Looks like a lager, and smells like a lager. Flavor is decent. A little stale, and a little musty. I'm thinking that the bottle may have gone bad. I only drank a little, and threw the rest away.
Ounces Consumed: 5They may call it an "Abbey Tripel" but to me this is a Belgian Ale, and it had all of the appleness that I've come to expect from Belgians, but this beer had a lot of other characteristics that I cannot even begin to describe. It was one of the most complex beers I've ever had. Yummy.
Update 080605: Yes, I am now aware that an Abbey Tripel is a type of Belgian Ale.
Ounces Consumed: 70(draft) Smells and tastes more like a German than a Belgian wheat. As a German, it's quite good. As a Belgian, it's a little musty.
Ounces Consumed: 16(draft) Not at all what I was expecting. This seems more like a Christmas ale than anythng else. I got a lot of fruit that I'll call raspberry. A yummy beer. The high ABV is very well hidden - a little too well perhaps.
Ounces Consumed: 388(bottle) I kind of expected that this mead/lambic blend would be disgusting. I was right. Probably the nastiest thing that's touched my tongue in years.
Ounces Consumed: 7(bottle) Recommended to me because I asked for something with a lighter taste. A cloudy yellow color that looked to me like a cross between a wheat and a lager - neither of which I care for. The taste was actually pretty decent though. The bartender was telling me about all of these different flavor components but I didn't really get any of them. Just a fairly plain, safe beer.
Ounces Consumed: 44(bottle) Smelled fantastic. The first sip was actually a little bit disgusting. I wasn't expecting fizzy citrus. Having said that, however, I did finish the glass, and then another one, and then the rest of the bottle, so I couldn't have hated it that much. Probably not worth having again though.
Ounces Consumed: 25(draft) Hazy dark amber. Decent head that faded quickly. Slightly sour aroma. Slightly sour finish. Not much else to it. A decent beer, but not really worth my time. I tried to give half the glass away, but nobody wanted it.
Ounces Consumed: 12(draft) Hazy dark ruby-colored. Minimal head. Mild fruity aroma. A smooth and creamy mouthfel and flavor, with a hint of an alcohol bite at the end. Damn good.
Ounces Consumed: 10(draft) Very dark red, with a light pink head that shrank but lasted. There was some discussion as to what the aroma was, and it was decided that this smells like Luden's cough drops. Flavor is cherries and cranberries. No alcohol burn at all. Quite good, but also quite strange.
Ounces Consumed: 12(bottle) Hazy dark brown. Minimal head. Fantastic fruity aroma. Flavor is sharp, with dark fruits domating. Quite good, but not as refined or as well balanced as the quad.
Ounces Consumed: 25Cloudy dark red. An intense fruit aroma, with a mixture of dark cherries and apples and citrus. Easily one of the best beers I've ever had. Fucking yummy.
Ounces Consumed: 746(bottle) Hazy dark gold, smallish head, some lacing. A nice clean aroma. The flavor is not too bad. A little musty for some reason. Given a choice between this and the quad, you should always take the quad. Always.
Ounces Consumed: 31(draft) A fairly standard tasting tripel. Perhaps a little more citrus than I'd prefer, but very drinkable.
Ounces Consumed: 30(draft) Looks like a lager, so scary. Smells like unpeeled apples. OMG tastes fantastic! I may just cream. Fucking yummy.
Ounces Consumed: 16(draft) Cloudy gold, huge heaping head. A mild yeast and citrus aroma. Flavor was acidic with oranges and hops. Not bad, not good.
Ounces Consumed: 10(bottle) Hazy light amber. Huge creamy head that was a bit of a hassle. Flavor was fairly mild for such a strong beer. Mostly apple peels and light yeast. The high alcohol is barely detecable, so this is a pretty dangerous beer.
Ounces Consumed: 25(bottle) Ridiculous huge head. Clear dark ruby in color. Very strong aroma of malts and dark fruits, especially while the foam was still present. Flavor not quite as strong as the aroma led me to expect. Darks fruits predominated. A fairly harsh alcohol finish for the first few sips, but after that, this beer was surpringly smooth. The alcohol is hidden very well.
Ounces Consumed: 25(bottle) Hazy gold with lots of fizz. Good-sized head. Aroma fairly standard for Belgian ales. Flavor quite yummy. The usual for this style, but with some tiny hints of spices and maybe even some caramel in there. One of the best.
Ounces Consumed: 78(draft) Hazy bronze. Huge heaping head. Aroma and flavor a little faint for a tripel. I was astonished to discover that this beer has 10% ABV - it's almost undetectable. I like this, but there are a lot of better tripels out there.
Ounces Consumed: 12(draft) Dark red, and sour. The first sip pretty much tells the whol story of this beer. I recommend it to anyone wanting to try something different, and almost everyone who's tried it has liked it a lot.
Ounces Consumed: 115(draft) Cloudy dark brown, with a large tan head. Aroma of dark fruits and something else - maybe caramel? The flavor was much more subdued than my earlier sips had led me to expect. The beer tasted a little flat and/or one dimensional. Not really anything wrong with it, but not worth having again.
Ounces Consumed: 15(draft) Clear ruby-brown in color. A nice fluffy head. Sour charries and apples in both the aroma and the flavor. Very comparable to Metreechs. Quite good.
Ounces Consumed: 10(draft) I asked them to leave the orange wedge out, but I needn't have bothered. This beer was overflowing with citrus aroma and flavor. I should have known better than to even try it. Anyway, it was decent, which is better than anything else I've had from this place.
Ounces Consumed: 16This is what I've been waiting for! A Belgian that won't kill me if I have more than one in a night! Very good, it reminded me of NABC's Tunnel Vision except not quite as sweet. Could use a little more carbonation, and it lacks the appley taste I've become accustomed to from Belgians. I liked it a lot, and I'm looking forward to the next batch to see if they up the carbonation a little.
Ounces Consumed: 110(draft) Cloudy brown. No foam (duh). Aroma of sugar and unidentifiable spices. Flavor is decent - reminds me of pumpkins. There's a slight citrus tang at the finish that I could certainly have lived without.
Ounces Consumed: 10(draft) Hazy light brown. Good head that faded quickly. The aroma is of malts and apples and, of course for this brewery, hops. The mouthfeel is a little thin, as is the flavor. It's got a good flavor, though, it just needs a bit more of it.
Ounces Consumed: 12They're calling it a "Belgian Brown Ale" but I don't really know what that means so I'll call it "Newcastle with Apples in it." It was okay, and the apple undertones weren't that strong. I liked it.
Update 080605: Yes, I know what a Belgian is now. I'd like to see this beer return.
Ounces Consumed: 20(draft) I've gone ahead and updated this rating as this beer has become one of my favorites. Very little head, and the beer is a little flat. But the rye and honey play together quite nicely. One of the few semi-strong beers that I can get my swill-drinking friends to drink.
Ounces Consumed: 340(draft) Pale amber, fizzy, good head. All standard for Belgians of this type. Aroma seemed a tad stale to me. Flavor was average but subdued. The finish was very reminiscent of rubbing alcohol. Bitter and drying. I was disappointed with this beer, and I didn't drink very much of it.
Ounces Consumed: 4(draft) Dark cranberry in color. Huge head. Aroma is a very faint sweetness. Tastes like watery cranberry juice. Kind of disgusting.
Ounces Consumed: 14(bottle) Hazy dark brown. Minimal head. fantastic aroma of malt and raisins. Fairly intense malt flavor. Apples and raisins predominate. Fucking yummy.
Ounces Consumed: 102(bottle) Dark ruby-colored, firm head. Nice but shot-lived head. Strong aroma of various dark fruits. Flavor milder than the aroma indicates. A little drying and fizzy. Not bad at all.
Ounces Consumed: 25(bottle) Hazy yellow. No appreciable head. Aroma of light citrus and malts. Flavor a little acidic and biting, but pretty good. Citrus and light hops predominate. Pretty good, but not quite great.
Dark copper-colored, firm head. A neutral flavor, with perhaps a touch of apple and more hops than I usually prefer. A very fizzy mouthfeel. A good beer. The aroma was a little perfumy.
Ounces Consumed: 40(draft) Clear dark reddish brown. Huge head that lasted forever. Aroma and flavor both surpringly understated, with malts and a hint of cherries. Very smooth. Very good.
Ounces Consumed: 49(bottle) Clear light amber. Decent head. Aroma of orange and almost bourbony spices. Mouthfeel is creamy. Flavor is light and typical for the style. Finish a little citrusy, but not too bad. A good beer.
Ounces Consumed: 25(bottle) Huge head, bordering on the ridiculous. Taste, as I expected, was that of a fairly mild Belgian. A little less sweet and a little more hoppy than I'd generally prefer, but a very good beer anyway.
Ounces Consumed: 12(draft) (draft) This stuff smelled and tasted like apple cider with a perfumy finish. It wasn't really bad, but I can't imagine ever drinking more than one in a night.
Ounces Consumed: 30(bottle) Does weird necessarily equal good? If so, then this is a
very good beer. Very sour in both aroma and flavor. Supposedly oak-aged and stuff but I couldn't detect anything beyond the sourness. Fairly decent, but I cannot imagine ever having more than a single small glass.