St. Bernardus Pater 6

Dark brown nice thick head...fruity aroma and taste. Good Belgian Ale. Goes down fast.

(bottle BB 161109): Pours a dark brown color, reddish slight orangish color. Dull tannish head, good lacing. Very grapey dark fruity taste, some spice leather-like. Some olher fruit like mango or something. But somewhat faint. Fizzy dark fruit, dark leather aftertaste, then mellowing. Musky-like. Too heavy a flavor for my liking. Light grapes too, as it warms up.

Very deep amber pour with decent head. Aroma is mild but good, sour and slightly fruity. Flavor is yeasty and sour with a dark maltiness. Very good. Palate is nice too, not too thick like the 12.

Bottle from Beers of Europe. Pours a hazy brown colour with smaller head than expected. Some fruit, yeast and spices on the nose, taste was a bit dissapointing although I would say it did improve as I made my way down the glass, there was an obvious malty sweetness and yeast again evident but overall I found that it lacked the fullness and complexity of it’s two stronger stablemates.

Bottle at Wildeman, Amsterdam. Pours very dark, nearly black with a one-finger small bubble slightly tan head, laces strongly. Aroma is berries and an overarching fruitiness, with a tinge of spice and some dark sugar sweetness. Some yeast character also evident. Slight alcohol at first taste, with dark fruits and caramel coming forward. Slightly rasping, bitter finish with a bit of an off-putting flavor in the aftertaste. Palate is watery and a bit slight, although soft with medium carbonation. Yeah, a bit boring all around - not much to say here.

Bottle at home. Unclear brown - offwhite head. Fruity, yeasty, berries, caramel, bread, dark bread, nutty, sweetness, light candy, soft mouthfeeling. Ok nice - not overwhelming !!

Pour is lighter than some of the other dubbels this was up against. Some lemon and citrus added to the standard dubbel flavors. Some hefe type flavors. Fairly standard, but I expected more given the name. I absolutely loved the Abt 12. This one was nothing to write home about.

Sampled at a blind abbey dubbel tasting hosted by tennisjoel on 4-14-07, along with eight other beers. This was the eighth beer that we tasted. It finished in seventh place in my rankings, and it was seventh place in the group rankings. Originally poured from an 11.2 oz. bottle. The overwhelming winner of the night was ’t Smisje Dubbel, with Corsendonk Pater finishing a strong if distant second. <P>Wheaty, slightly chocolatey aroma. Smells like a dunkelweizen. Good, appetizing aroma. Pours brown with a slight amber tint and a small amount of beige head. The flavor is a little dull. Hoppier and more bitter than most of the beers we tasted that night. I like that; I just wish that the taste was stronger. Bitter finish. Medium in body. Lively and frothy in the palate. Easy to drink. <P>Yes, this beer is boring, but it is good nonetheless. It definitely got lost in the shuffle with the other eight beers in the tasting. If I had tasted St. Bernardus Pater 6 independently, I bet I would have rated it higher. I was not at all surprised after the blind tasting when this beer was revealed to be the St. Bernardus, since its big brother Abt 12 is one of the most boring big beers that I have ever had. Pater 6 is actually better than Abt 12, believe it or not (in my opinion, of course).