Avery The Beast Grand Cru Ale

This beer pours a deep deep red color with a thin tan head. There is a sourness in the smell almost like vinegar. The taste is very sweet, lot’s of strong sugars. Not as strong of an alcohol taste as I expected. This is a very sweet beer, but I like it! I will be having another one of these... Cheers!

Pours a a wonderful dark garnet/coppery hue, clear, and with a two fingered head. Wonderful lacing, ring of foam, and the head never truely goes away. Aroma is very involved, and changes a lot as I drink this beer. Starts with some obvious sugar, molasses, caramel, oak, cherries/raspberries, and a red wine/grape tartness hidden all that. Couple minutes later, there’s some ginger, which even later evolves into more wine tartness and sour fruit. Superb aroma. This however does not prepare you for the onslaught of intense sweetness that follows. Strong incredibly thick tastes of sugars, molasses, caramel, and a similar winelike tartness. Then the alcohol washes over, but I expected that to be around. Finishes with a lingering brown sugar taste (there’s that turbinado!) and burnt caramel. As the beer warms, I get a bit of hops, but they’re overpowered. It’s a woody hop bitterness though, and it merges with the yeast, attempting to dry out the cloying finish. This beer could be great, but there’s just not enough hops or dry yeast in the finish to help balance things. As much I love sweet beers and the Beast’s complex aroma, I have to take some points away from the blatant unbalanced nature. I DO like it though, and it’s more complex than Samael, despite being sweet in the same way (yet the styles differ. Hmmm...).

Sampled at Broudy’s Holiday Beerfest 12/2/2006. Batch #4. An interesting Belgian strong, and a good one, but not really great. This beer was thick, very sweet, and noticeably alcoholic. Flavors of raisin, Belgian candy, and Belgian yeast. For all the varieties of hop they say were used, they seem to be completely overpowered by the sweetness.

Clear mahogany, with a lasting tan head - one of those beers that makes you wish that for greater effect you gave most other beers a 1 or a 2 for appearance. Aromas of fruit (dates, pineapple, orange), flowers, leather and port - closer to a British barleywine than anything Belgian I can think of. Very sweet, and thick like honey, with a warming alcohol. Beer for a cold winter!

Pours a beautiful mahogany color with a surprisingly big head. Aroma is sweet and fruity (berry). Flavor a very sweet with strong raisin and honey overtones. The alcohol makes its presence well known. This very much like liquid candy.

Red brown/amber of color. Light off white head. lovely aroma of fruits and sweets, lovely combined. Nasty in my mouth, it is every coin worth! smooth, creamy, i love it!

2005 bottle. mostly clear ruby amber color, but many micro flaoties of yeast throughout the body. light tan thickish foamy head, short and goes quickly. aroma is heavy sweet syrupy malt, a little ginny like juniper berries and a bit of vodka. flavor is very sweet syrupy malt, slightly vinuous but pretty high octane. heat kicks in like a brandy, and keeps the palate warm. sweetness is close to cloying but not too far gone. the syrupy malt is kind of like sweet vermouth, and the finish is clean but I can feel the heat all the way down the gullet! a little bit of the honey malt comes through, dark sugar too. some of the sweetness is like peaches soaked in 151 proof rum.

2006 bottle. Poured red-brown with a thin off-white head. It had a candy sweet aroma. I couldn’t quite say I smelt alcohol but when I smelled the beer, I could feel the alcohol rising up into my eyeballs. It was cloudy with light carbonation. Had a sticky mouthfeel with all candy sweetness and also maybe some brown sugar. There was a slight alcohol burn in the throat but not really in the mouth until it warms up a bit. The only thing I can rally think to compare it to would be a much sweeter Samichlaus, which is on of my favorites. I think I will get another bottle to age.