Avery The Beast Grand Cru Ale

Brewed by Avery Brewing Company
Style: Belgian Strong Ale
Boulder, Colorado USA

Gorgeous dark amber color, but not opaque, allowing you to peer through and admire it for the color it turns the world behind it. A short creamy beige head sits on top. The aroma is a sticky sweet and alcoholic perfume of sugars and spices. Raisins and other fruits are obvious on the nose. The flavor is slightly less sweet than the aroma would lead you to expect. It’s wonderfully spicy with bite of hoppy bitterness. Caramel and dried fruit sweetness blends with the hot alcohol that makes itself known and not soon forgotten.

I had a bottle of the 2006 version. My first sip was a bit rough but I warmed up to this beer about half way through. A very sweet fig taste was left on my lips. The sweetness masks the alcohol rather well. I doubt I could drink more than one in a sitting.

Pours a vey thick copper with a creamy white head. Lots of alchol on the nose. Hints of very sweet fruit. Tastes is very sweet and sharp. Lots of alchol. Finish is warm a sugary. Hard to get alot of flavor off of this one. More of a barley wine.

12 oz bottle. Pours a red-gold with a smallish head. Delicious aroma of caramel, bruised pears, dates/raisins, and very mild, earthy hops. Palate is sticky and mouth-coating. This beer pounds your tastebuds with sweetness, giving you all sorts of forbidden fruits to play with. These include apples, pears, figs, plums and dates with a healthy dose of caramel for good measure. Wonderfully complex, it warms as it goes down (2007 vintage listed at 16.42%, but you don’t feel it much until afterwards) and leaves you wondering whether beer is the work of some god, or something more sinister. Will enjoy this again soon.

Batch 5 (2007). Wow, and now for something completely different. . . Aroma is complex. Caramel, resin, raisin, apple, banana, honey, dates and figs, as well as alcohol. Pours with a small off-white/to almost yellow head. Excellent Lacing. Body is clear and an amber red/brown. Really shocking taste. An explosion of flavor accompanied by an explosion of alcohol, it may be a bit too sweet. Starts off quite sweet and goes a bit acetic. Body is creamy smooth offset by lively carbonation and a strongly alcoholic and mildly astringent (not really in a bad way) finish. If you like your hard liquors then the palate is awsomem but very much unlike any other beer that I have found so far.

Bottle, at various locations during the Zythos weekend, March 2006. Copper bronze, no head and good condition. Big barley wine sweet sticky maltiness and an aged oaky woodiness in the aroma, intense and sweet in the mouth with more woody oak notes, a background bitterness and some unsubtle alcohol, lingering sticky sweet maltiness in the finish.

2005 bottle. Big beer that I thought would be difficult to get through, but this was surprisingly drinkable. Reddish-brown body with a tan head. Nice malty aroma of candy and caramel with notes of apricot and honey. Some sweet fruits, plum and cherry, are evident. The flavor is heavily sweet, lightly acidic, slightly bitter. Tart finish. Boozy flavor from the alcohol. Medium body and syrupy texture.

2005 bottle. NO head; into sediment filled murky brownish orange body. aromas of dark fruit, candied sugar, moderate caramel, hops, light spicyness, and some vinousness. alcohol was present as well but considering 14.9% not overpowering. flavor is stong on bitterness with some moderate sweetness as well. very long, dry finish. average carbonation. thick mouthfeel. enjoyable but a bit too much to want more than one at a time.