Allagash Curieux

750 ml bottle. Bottled June 2006. Hazy golden color with white head. Sweat aroma and taste. Buurbon taste with a dry after taste. If you like Jim Beam you will like this beer.

Aroma of honey, sourness, bourbon, slightly fruity with hints of caramel and some white wine character. The palate starts lively and bright and transitions to a crisp oaky dryness on the tongue as swallowed. The taste starts out equally sweet and sour transitiioning to a pleasant honey taste, which is quickly replaced by the boubon flavor, transitioning again to a slightly sour oaky dryness and finishing with a lingering alcoholic warmth and peppery spicyness. This beer is in a word, complex.

Loved the Vanilla overtones from the oak barrels. An excellent effort with a complex taste, almost whiskey like.

Rated batch #378 - WOW!!!!! This is incredibly good. Sure it’s a bit one-dimensional, but damn...what a one-dimension it is!!! The aroma is whisky, oak, vanilla, alcohol, orange peel and more whiskey and more oak. INTENSE! The taste is full on alcohol but damned if it doesn’t switch gears and go strong on the whiskey/oak/vanilla combo and then back to alcohol. This is obviously a sipper but what an insanely good beer this is. If it weren’t so damned hard to find I’d buy as much of it as I could. There is something to be said for beer perfection. The guys at Allagash did this one to near perfection.

I don’t yet have bourbon-barrel ennui so I have really enjoyed the two bottles (both from July 2005) I’ve had. I think Allagash’s Tripel is a strong, above average example of the style - and the b-b aging doesn’t compromise it for me. It actually moves it gently in the direction of a Flemish primitive, with the wood combining with the heat of the bourbon and a touch of citrus to give it a really interesting flavor that seems to bloom in the mouth. Better as it warms, this is a really strong entry from Allagash.

750ml corked&caged bottle, dated November 2007. Pours very cloudy, brownish orange with gold and caramel highlights. The head rouses slowly into a thick, cloudy, off-white foam that quickly fades into a very thin ring of foam. The aroma is thick and complex, full of fruit and yeast. There are lots of fruity esters - particularly banana. There are also notes of spice, of caramel, and of alcohol. The bready, doughy yeast is a very attractive component of the aroma, too. As the beer warms, a boozy smell of bourbon comes into the fold. The flavor is solid - what a fantastic tripel this is! Lots of fresh-baked-bread-doughy goodness with lots of funky, Belgian-y esters. And it’s really smooth, too - no flavor is intense or overwhelming. Instead it is a soft, harmonious symphony. In the middle of the tongue, the flavor grows more complex with some spice from the yeast and a touch of wood and vanilla. The back of the palate picks up some more spicy esters as well as a soft, balancing level of noble hops. The back of the palate detects a decent bit of alcohol which results in a slightly boozy finish. It has a subtle taste of sweet bourbon, too, that strengthens as the beer slowly warms in the snifter. The finish is also quite dry and spicy. It is slightly warming on the back of the throat thanks to the dollop of ethanol. Despite some of the boozy flavors, I think this beer hides its strength incredibly well. The mouthfeel is very creamy and light (medium in body - which is quite light for such a strong ale). It is amazingly drinkable. This is the kind of beer that could get one into serious trouble (luckily I only have one, and I’m splitting it with my wife, so the amount of trouble I could get into is quite limited). Overall, a fantastic tripel that is made even more beautiful through the subtle and sublime flavors from its aging in oak whiskey barrels.

Sampled and then bought directly from the brewery. Golden brown to a loose white head, strong oak aroma that lends well to the taste as well. Thinner mouthfeel, lightly hopped just like their true belgian attempts, this was a nice twist to the line and very enjoyable.

Pours a hazy deep gold with minimal head and modest lacing. Alcohol, vanilla, mango, and papaya to the nose. Taste is well balanced with malt, hops, and tropical fruit flavors melding together with the noticeable alcohol content. Great mouthfeel, very smooth and well carbonated.