Goose Island Matilda

Brewed by Goose Island Beer Company
Style: Belgian Ale
Chicago, Illinois USA

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.

12oz bottle. Pours a deep hazy golden orange with a huge fluffy white head that lingers for ages leaving big sheets of lacing. Aroma is fairly subtle and consists of biscuity malts and citrus, including some tart lemon notes. There’s also the underlying Belgian yeasts and spices in the end. The taste is a slightly sweeter version of the nose with the aforementioned Belgian yeasts coming to the forefront and a much stronger fruity sweetness than the nose, with a hint of bananas in there. There is also some spices in the finish with a slight hop presence as well. The mouthfeel is medium bodied with tons of carbonation and leaves the tongue tingling after ever sip. This is a great Belgian from Goose Island and one that I look forward to trying again. Highly recommended!

Pours a dark amber in color. There’s a ginormous three inch head on the pour. Looks great in my Duvel glass. Smell is spicy and yeasty. A little bit of spice in the taste. Very creamy and full in the mouthfeel. A bit of hops in the flavor as well. Not overly complex.