Lost Abbey Avant Garde Ale

Brewed by Port Brewing/Lost Abbey
Style: Bière de Garde
San Marcos, California USA

Sample from 750 ml bottle courtesy JoeMcPhee. Pale golden colour with a mostly lasting fizzy and frothy off-white head. Lightly spicy, french bread, yeasty, and citrus aroma. Orange, caramel, bread, and light yeast flavours with a nutty, yeasty, earthy, and lightly metallic bitter finish, plus a touch of alcohol. Medium bodied, soft, creamy, and smooth mouthfeel. Good stuff.

75cL bottle, imbibed on 9/18/07 after some bomb ass sushi in Dana Point. Poured into a trusty Long John Silver’s Schooner Mug (big thanks to the rents for having such a fine drinking vessel on hand), deep goldenrod color with stark white rocky foam that leaves great lacing. Aroma is chock full of ripe fruits, little bit of apple, maybe some peach in there too. Flavor is pretty dead on for the style, maybe a little less in your face than some of the other BDG I’ve had, lots of ripe fruits, good bit of red skinned apples, little bit of spiciness in the finish. Very nice, nowhere near as much of a muddled mess as I was expecting

750mL bottle. Light amber / golden color. Nice white foamy head. Aroma of fruity tartness. Bready malt flavors followed by a very dry tartness.

light yellowish colour with a thin spotty head of barely off white. Light lemon aroma. The flavour isn’t huge, though I didn’t expect it to be. Its hard to describe this one, light and refreshing, has a bit of a strange bitterness at the end.

Big Ole bottle. This pours clear with not much head. Light orange yellow like color. Aroma is citrus lemon like. Flavor is a mix of wheat like Hefeweizen and a Belgian sour or something. It’s decent but not what I was expecting.

Pours a light golden color with just a little head. Smell is yeasty with some citrus fruit undertones. Taste is more acidic citrus with some yeast and spice. Pretty unassaulting and common. To be 100% truthful, I was expecting a little more from this beer. Still tasted and went down smooth, just nothing worth hunting down.

Aroma is bready with a little hops on the backend. Pours a hazy yellowish orange. Flavor is bready malt and I got some wheaty malt as well. A mild crisp bitter finish and a little spice and a little bit of floral hops too. A little alcohol makes its presence known. I really thought this was incredibly average. Nothing overwhelming about it.

Bottle: Dirty straw, very hazy, moreso cloudy once one reaches the depths of the bottle.   Head is moderate to large, frothy, of a whitish color, with spotty lacing.   Soft floral nose, slightly bready, very minor funk.   Sweet floral notes on the tongue, slightly sweet dulled caramel as well.   Slightly bready, but not as much as suggested by the nose.   No real funk, just moreso floral and bready.   Moderate to full bodied, average mouthfeel.   Finishes slightly dry, a little floral astringency but its minor.   A little bright at first, but settles down towards the end.   More entertaining than most other examples.   Thanks Tad!