Lost Abbey Avant Garde Ale

Pours a milky caramel color with a 1 finger creamy white head that has great retention and leaves a few specks of lacing. Aroma is caramel, toast, floral hops, honey, sweet grass, some musty and earthy notes. Flavor is caramel, crusty white bread, grass, basement mustiness, a hint of toffee, sort of spicy (yeast?) notes, floral sweetness and some dried citrus peels. Finish is wet limestone, toasted grain, toffee and a little mossy funk. Palate is medium thin, watery and slightly acidic with a fairly neutral finish. A pleasant but not overly interesting ale that I believe would pair extremely well with most food.

3/11/2009: Okay, I am finally just going to come out and say it... All of the Lost Abbey beers that I have had (mainstream releases) have been good, but they don’t seem like anything special to me. The beers are always right on for the style, but I just can’t find anything overly unique or interesting about them. Am I missing something? I don’t know. Apparently I just don’t fully know how to fully understand or appreciate Belgian beer styles and their nuances and complexities, but I have been saying that for years so that admission should be nothing new. Other than having some honey sweetness and being floral and lightly spicy, there isn’t much else specific I can call out. The appearance is spot on (hazy gold with an off-white head) and I like the maltiness (toffee-ish and slightly fruity) with a good level of sweetness and an inviting and pleasing spicy and grassy hoppiness and mild bitterness in the finish. I’ll say it again, quite good but I don’t see what the big deal is regarding the Lost Abbey brews. That being said, they have some very attractive labels/packaging! Now that I have said all of this stuff, the matliness and sweetness is really growing me! Looks like I need to remove my foot from my mouth now...

1 pint 9.4 fl. oz. corked and caged bottle (7% alc. by vol.) from IrishBoy and shared with Tmoney99 and alexsdad06. Thanks Richard! Rating #391 for this beer.

Bottle shared by shigadeyo. Poured a hazy orange color with an average white frothy head that lasted and produced good lacing. Moderate yeasty and sweet citrus aroma. Medium body with a smooth texture and flat carbonation. Medium yeasty sweet flavor with a smooth citrus sweet finish of average duration. Soft drinkable brew.

Poured a murky caramel color with a bubbly off-white head. Aroma is very dirty and has a biting sour scent, with a little sour cherries and vinegar. Very similar taste. Nice malt backbone, earthy yet sour. Well carbonated, tingly on the tongue, and has a lasting malt finish. Very nice!

Nose of apple, caramel, toffee and cherries. Medium bodied, deep gold color with orange highlights, low head. Flavors mostly toffee, toast, caramel and slight yeast esters. Finish is sweet, mild, creamy. Really needs more farmhouse and yeast character.

Aroma is sweet with malt, a slightly winey character, otherwise restrained and slightly spicy. poured pretty cloudy with an initial big head, that dissipated, but stayed on the edges of the glass. flavor was big on malt initially to the point of being sweet. Flavor of anise than rushes in, perhaps from the hops used. well carbonated with a bit of black pepper. chewy body. in the middle the anise flavor really takes over. very complex and well made beer. finish is the part lacking most, bit of high alcohols, and harshness. All in all an interesting and complex biere de garde.

The beer poured a golden color with a slightly hazy body and a medium white ring around the glass. The aroma was of sweet tarts and a bit earthy. The taste had more of the sweet tart quality and a wheaty character to it with a touch of bitterness on the back end, making for a medium body and easy drinking beer.

Bottle from Hi-Time. This is my first Lost Abbey product from Port Brewing. Pours an amberish color with a nice fluffy off-white head and some pretty good retention. The aroma is a grassy-hay scent along with strong malts and candy-like fruits. The strongest flavors here are funky and bready type of malts but theres quite a bit more going on, some of them subtle; a bit sweet, a little fruitiness, some spices, sour and tart in the finish. A lot of Saison type qualities. More alcohol shows than I would expect and I’d prefer a little of that to hide better. Overall a good beer but perhaps not as good as the high expectaions I had. I do want to try more of these. Re-rate 8/24/09. Amber color, decent head, some retention but pretty good lacing. Aroma is malty and very bready and doughy, light citrusy notes as well. Flavors, oranges, bread, caramel, toffee, not bad but not as good as I remember partly because it’s semi-sticky sweet with an alcohol bite. Slightly dry with a good amount of spice. 3.3 this one, 3.7 previous, I’ll average the two.