De Dolle Stille Nacht

Bottle from Cracked Kettle @ home. Reddish brown colour, beige head. Lots of carbonation. Aroma of sour dark fruits, roasted malts, yeast and spice, complex. Flavour is sweet at first, brown sugar and yeast, then really fruity sour and spicy in an odd way. Full bodied, sticky. Worth a try, but wasn’t much to my liking.

Bottle from Holiday. Cloudy copper brown with a tan foamy head. Caramel apple and spice aroma and taste with a tart finish.

1996 vintage, bottle #1531, received via trade with PilsnerPeter. Pours cloudy tawny with an average, fizzy, off-white head, mostly diminishing with fair lacing. Aroma is heavy malt (cookie, caramel, toffee), average hops (flowers, perfume, grass), heavy yeast (horse blanket, barnyard) with notes of light alcohol, raisins, plums, dates, cherry, and cinnamon. Full bodied, sticky texture, lively carbonation, and a bitter finish. Long duration, moderate sweetness, acidity, and bitterness. I could not tell that this beer was twelve years old; if it is not at its prime, damn, send me one at its prime and it will be a 5.0!

Poured a huge whipped cream head in my snifter. Spiced notes and quite a bit of hop bitterness jumping out of the glass. Nice golden colour with a good amount of carbonation. Nice zesty esters and a bit of fusel. The first sip made me do a double-take on the viscosity. They weren’t kidding that this is one of the highest densities for a Belgian. Unfortunately, with that density comes a rather cloying component. In fact, the more I drink of this the more cloying this becomes. On the flip-side, this does display some nice vinuous notes on the finish. A bit of cab, tannins, some nice complexity. Very odd. Alot going on here. Some good, some bad.

Bottle shared at RBSG during the grand tasting held at Pizza Port Carlsbad in San Diego.