Avery The Beast Grand Cru Ale

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

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.

Sampled at From The Vine beer tasting Jul 9th, 2004: Pours a ruby brown color with a medium thick and creamy beige head. Decent lacing. You know you are in trouble when you smell this one. Raisins, port wine, malt and chocolate abound. The body is very thick yet startlingly smooth, with flavors of dark fruit, malt, hops and dark chocolate. The alcohol is felt on the throat more than it is tasted. The finish is sweet with roasted malt and caramel. I was really suprised at how easy this beer is to drink, but taking on an entire bottle by myself might be a chore.

Almost clear dark copper body, very small off-white head. Grossly over-alcoholised beer with nowhere for the alcohol to hide. Toothpaste aroma, burning alcohol sensation the likes of which I expect from a whiskey, very sweet, very aggressive. I tried to focus and find some flavours but I just couldn’t (may have something to do with the state I was in though). It’s a beast indeed, primitive, unsophisticated, violent, aggressive and the same will be said about you if you drink 6 of those.

Bottle,14.6% alcohol, brewed in 2006. Dark bronze colour with a rich yellowish head. Complex raisins and dried fruit nose. Sweet, yet vinous raisins and fruit flavours with very noticeable alcohol and hints of nuts. Sirupy and smooth. An extreme night-cap beer.

#666 and no other brew really seemed worthy of this mark. This is the most amazing winter warmer brew around. Tons of sweet malt, fig, dark fruit, raisin, and lots of sweet caramel malts. Very warming brew with a lot of alcohol in the aroma and flavor, normally this would not be all that good, but when its this cold outside, boooyah! This brew is going to be amazing once its aged for a year or two, let the alcohol settle a bit and the flavors mix and this could be perfect. Very thick body with a nice dry finish really make this brew excellent.

15+%: Deep garnet with burgundy shadows and ruby-red highlights. Sweet-smelling nose with hints of candy sugar and fresh yeast. In-frickin-credible mouthfeel: as smooth as rabbit fur, weighty, thick and rich. Perfectly carbonated. Malts were extremely complex. No single flavor jumped out, but there were a myriad of tasty nuances like candy sugar, cookie dough, caramel, toffee, raisins and dates, with everything melding and getting along nicely. Hops were wholesome, earthy, rounded and complex. Not a lot of "high," wafty hop aromas; mostly "low," rich hop flavors, with some hop bitterness blended in. Dump truck-loads of malts tamed the high IBUs like broken sled dogs. Soul-warming alcohol nips were just painful enough to be extremely pleasurable. In the aftertaste I was happily left with a residual sweetness on my lips, a lingering bitterness on my tongue, a cozy warmth in my throat, and a serious desire to take another sip. Thank God for the fine folks at Avery Brewing -- you guys did it again! This beer kicks ass! 18+%: Deep amber-apple glow. Sweet-smelling nose. Initially, very smooth and weighty on the tongue. Becomes tingly and carbonated. Then it gets warm, and eventually hot. Burns a little at first, but becomes much more drinkable as it warms. Subtle sweetness of candi sugar attempts to surface. Hotness continues well into the aftertaste. A little whiskey-like. I finished a bottle on my own without too much trouble ... don’t know what all the fuss is about. That said, I prefer last year’s batch much more, and my rating reflects it.

12-oz. Batch 4. Deep opaque brown pour with a half inch of moussy tan head and clingy lace atop. Nice looking stuff. Definitely some highly sour horse blanket and barnyard funk happening on the nose. Cherries and candi sugar there as well. The fruit sugar shows through for sure, now that I read the ingredients. Puckery sweet attack, all the way through to the clingy, cloying finish. All those dark fruits and sugars show up, whipped into a liquered frenzy by the boil and fermentation. It’s nice, they’re definitely on to something, but the punishing load of sugars makes this a very occasional thing.

Dark hazy orange amber with a thin beige cap. Sweet raw cane-syrup aroma with ominous ethanol as well. Extremely sweet raw sugar and sponge toffee palate, syrupy mouthfeel, with a salty finish. There is a funny coppery flavour in the finish that just doesn’t fit. The alcohol is fairly well hidden, but it climbs the back of your nose after each swallow. This quickly became much to cloyingly sweet for me. I would not return to it.