Avery The Beast Grand Cru Ale

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

12 oz bottle, 2006 bottled. Cloud dark copper color with brown head. Sweat aroma of malt, brown suger and molasses. Taste of the smae as the aroma with warming alcohol taste WOW!!!

Pours a reddish amber with small head. The aroma is full with toffee, hops, spices, fruit, molasses, and raisins. the flavor is equally complex with molasses, raisins, dark fruit, maltiniess, and hops. The overall there is a syrupy, like a liquer, mouthfeel.

(Bottle, thanks Jugge) Pours amber/red. Sweet malty aroma with some toffee. Plums and raisins with heavy (exotic) fruits. Peppery alcohol. Small hints of mazipan, spices and honey. Very sweet flavour with Sugar/molasses and some alcohol. Medium bitter mouthfeel. Not to complex, but really good.

2006 bottle. Whew what a strong beer. This took forever for it to warm up for me, but when it did it was great. Very dark ruby color with a head that stays. Flavor is a little too sweet but good. Can taste the high ABV. Lots of candy used. Good brew but not worth the $.

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!