Dieu du Ciel Route des Épices

A nose of malt and peppercorn. An amber orange pour. A pepper flavor that just crawls all over your mouth heats you up and eats you up. A very warm beer but not at all in an abv way. A little thins and foamy. A beer I think I would like better just by itself and not during a tasting session.

Poured clear brown with a dissipating offwhite head. The spice is very up front and potent but unique. Nose is nutty and spicy. The peppercorn tickles the back of your throat as you sip and swallow. In the background is a little bit of fruit flavors like fig and plum. Gives you a different kind of burn than what you are used to in beer. Points for originality but I don’t think I can drink more than one of these in one sitting.

This spice ale pours a deep amber color from a 12oz bottle. Medium sized white foamy head, with good retention and nice lacing. The aroma is caramel malt and pepper. A medium bodied spiced ale. The malts are caramel and sweet. The hops are earthy and a touch spicy. That is all dwarfed by the huge amount of black pepper in this beer. It adds an interesting dimension to the beer, but it just way to peppery for me. This is going to be a love it or hate it beer. I don’t much care for it, but it’s a well-made beer. Mouthfeel is full. Finish is clean and smooth. Aftertaste is peppery and spicy.

Beautiful dark brown color with a creamy head. It has a simple aroma, with light caramel and a hint of pepper. Medium body strength, with a dry caramel flavor, too much carbonation, quite poor. The only interesting (and original) note here is the lightly burning pepper feeling, the right strength, but I would imagine it more on a beer with a different structure and different flavor.

This was quite a challenge. I couldn’t read the French fliers and overlooked that there was an English-language one on the counter, so I didn’t know this had pepper, though had I thought about the words on the page I might have remembered from High School French the word for "pepper". I wasn’t expecting the heat. The front end had some complexity, something subtle like curacao or nutmeg or something I couldn’t place. But then...HEAT! But I grew to like it, rather than loathe it like a chili beer or something. Standard brown/chestnut/amber color. Aroma has some caramel but otherwise it seems more woody. So much of this beer is in the finish. (on tap at Mondial de la Biere, 2008, Montreal)

This pours a deep amber body with a modest eggshell head. There’s an interesting contrast of sensations here. The aroma is sweet with caramelly malt and juicy fruits and has only a dash of pepper. Up front the flavor has that caramelly sweetness, but it’s rapidly followed by a rye spiciness and a peppery heat that I normally don’t associate with black pepper. Nice tingly sensation on the tongue. I like this one.

<font size=-4><a href=http://www.ratebeer.com/Places/ShowPlace.asp?PlaceID=3984>Sam’s Wine & Spirits, Downers Grove, IL<font size=-1>

Bouteille de 341 ml. Nos yeux observent une bière qui possède une robe cuivrée avec des reflets rougeâtres. Notre nez découvre des arômes de houblon herbeux, de chocolat noir, de caramel, de poivre, de mangue, de pêche et d’agrumes. Notre palais fait connaissance avec un corps mince-moyen. Notre langue se fait attaquer par des flaveurs piquantes de poivre. On découvre aussi les notes de grains torréfiés, de chocolat noir et de houblon terreux. Lorsqu’on prend une gorgée, on goûte d’abord les noisettes grillées une fraction de seconde puis le poivre vient percuter violemment notre langue puis notre gorge.

Bottle. Dark amber good beige head. Bready malt and way too much BLACK PEPPER. Smooth body, but pepper coats and burns the palate. Interesting, but difficult to drink.