Goose Island Matilda

12oz bottle. Bottled 7/7/08. Drunk next to Orval (could be a mistake). Pours a nice dark pumpkin orange with pretty much no head. A head formed at first but then pretty much disappeared. A strong, malty, fruity aroma. Dried candied fruits. Whatever that dried orange fruit is in trail mixes, that’s what this smells like. Very fruity. Nice aroma though not what I was expecting. Taste is fruity, easier to drink than expected, same basic flavor as the aroma. Relatively dry but not as much as Orval or anything close to that. Overall this is pretty nice. This is a fresh bottle so I’d like to revist this one in the future 6 months or a year down the road.

(Bottle, Monk’s Café, Stockholm, 28 Aug 2008) Amber colour with frothy, beige head. Malty, fruity nose with dried fruit, apricots and spicy hops. Fruity, malty taste with notes of dried fruit (apricots), orange peel and a decent spicy bitterness in the finish. Fairly sweet, but the sweetness is balanced by the spicy hops. Tasty and very nice beer.

On tap. Big golden pour with plenty of foam. Big fruity, yeasty nose. Flavor is fruity and spicy, a bit of dryness in the finish. Some brett, some apricot. A bit of spice. Nice to drink.

Bottle. Aroma of apple, yeast, spice, white meat fruits, and barnyard. Huge foamy white head that lasted and left little lace. Hazy medium orange-amber hue. Flavor is sweet, sour, and musty. Palate is medium bodied and a little bitter on the medium finish. Ok for a Belgian.

nose of moderate yeast funk and good esters. appearance is well clouded amber. flavor is of well developed malt, yeast and lightly sweetened dubbel esters.

On tap, bowl goblet. Amber body with a fat finger’s worth of a white head, fading to a spotty lacing. Aroma of field clover, more bitter than sweet, followed by a earthy yeastiness. Initial impressions on the tongue are bitter, hay-scented hops, a floral impression like honey without the sweetness, and wafting over it all a yeasty funk. There’s a moderate amount of carbonation on the tongue, but the dominant mouthfeel impression is dryness. This beer is really quite dry, hardly sweet at all. The yeast ranges all over the place, from the scent before the rain down to wet cardboard. In something neither sweet nor sour, it’s interestering, but I don’t think it works for me in this particular example. As the beer warms, some of the darker malts come through, caramel flavors, just a hint of the wheat-citrus-banana complex, but the beer remains dry and ambiguously funky throughout.

12 oz. bottle graciously given to me by Gregis. Vintage 2006 according to the label. Pour is a gusher, flowing and fizzing off white head on top of a hazed orange and ruby body. Aroma of funk, hay and general barnyard yeast aromas. Very Bretty. Aroma fades somewhat quickly. Taste has quite a bit of the hay initially, with some wheat. Flavor quickly moves to the funk, and rides that through to an earthy, almost sour finish. Aftertaste lingers with all of the flavors, and a bit of wet dirt. Herbal notes throughout. Nice medium palate allows Brett to present itself without as much dryness as expected. Its dry, certainly, just not bone dry. Nice clone, enjoyable to drink.

served as a comparision to orval. much less acidic and smooth than orval. mellow, malty, yeasty and easy drinking. some fruitieness, a little funky/ sour, but not too much.