Bluegrass Welts Bat Quad

Formerly brewed at Bluegrass Brewing Company
Style: Abt/Quadrupel
Louisville, Kentucky USA

Serve in Trappist glass

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Draught at the brewpub. Pours rusty mahogany with very thin off-white head. The aroma is caramel, plum, malt, and burnt sugar. The flavor has a crapton of burnt sugar, almost overwhelmingly so. There is also some green wood, honey, and melon. The aftertaste is quite sticky. This could be good, but the cloying sweetness ruins it for me.

draught. I was pretty stoked for this one after sampling their tasty stout. Unfortunately, I was really let down. This brew is hugely sweet. Sweet to the point where it’s laborious to finish a half-pint. There are a bit of spices evident, but due to the ovebearing sugar it really comes across as some type of hard candy. The nose didn’t warn me of the danger ahead and was overall pleasing enough. It was more vinous with some plums and nutmeg, though a bit of the sugar was there.

Pours reddish amber with a fully receding tan head. Aroma of malty sugar, cloves, caramel, candied figs, and brown sugar. Taste is quite sweet and fruity which hides the alcohol well, but this is not nearly well balanced enough to be considered a good Belgian Quad. Mouthfeel is heavy with a sticky body and lush carbonation. Not bad, but the expected standard of quality is set high when you attempt a Belgian style.

Draft - minimal aroma, possibly due to temperature. A ruby body with a small ring of beige bubbles around the glass rim. Very sweet flavor! Bordering on - if not crossing into - unbalanced despite 55 IBUs. I do not get the complexity that is typical of the style and advertised in their literature. No spices, no hops. A miss.

GABF 2005: poured a clear brown/orange with a medium tan head. Aroma is fruity with a bit of caramel. Flavor is very sweet with fruit and malt. Powerful alcohol presence. Pretty tasty but a huge beer.

Mostly headless clear and pale copper. Highly liquorous nose makes one think of coencentrated brown sugar at first, but a huge slap of honey and maple ultimately dominates. Very fruity on the palate, it evocates grape, fig and juicy prunes, in an extremely sweet fashion that makes you think of vanilla. Oaky, cola-ish and beanily vegetal, it tries to bring a sense of balance through a light tartness, but the candi sugar wins and it remains one of those extreme beers throughout pure sweetness.

GABF 2005: I’ll be honest, my notes on this aren’t real good - it was towards the end of the festival. It had a really sweet aroma with a combination of malt and maybe something fruity. It had a good head that stuck around but, not much for lacing. The taste was sweet with a dry after-taste.