Avery The Beast Grand Cru Ale

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

Bottle. Batch 5, 2007. WOW....poured a clear copper with an excellent beige head with nice retention. Aroma hits you with strong malt, molasses and alcohol spice. Flavor was of sweet malt, hop flavors, and alcohole spice....Very full bodied beer on the palate, heavy.....low-medium carbonation......VERY tough beer....very good beer.....very nice looking beer...

2004 18.1% Bottle. 2 years old. I could smell this baby as soon as the cap came off. Aroma is very rich with sweet malts. Couple sips of this stuff and the heat begins to hit you. The heat is very prominant but overall the beast is pretty smooth. A nice job with the alcohol but it still a little tough to drink a 22. Needs a 10oz bottle.

Batch 5 bottle at my 1000 Rates Celebratory tasting, bought at Ølbutikken in September 2008 and shared with Mes and tashi. Smells of salt & vinegar crisps, in a really good way! (turns to just malt) Wow, barley wine, to the max. The full court press from the malt, lots of warmth, a sweet aroma. However, the elephant in the room is the alcohol content. It swamps the flavours, compared to say JW Lees Harvest Ale. It doesn’t keep giving new flavours in the way that I feel that the brewer could have achieved the same with 9 or 10%. A very American beer - big is better.

Batch 4 brewed in 2006 12 oz bottle purchsed at Spirits. Poured a clear dense reddish/brown with a large light tan head that leaves a thick pool of head that coats the top of the beer like an oil slick. Sticky sweet aroma of dark fruit, honey. molasses, candied brown sugar, slight alcohol and some light floarl notes. Thick full bodied that fills the mouth yet slides down your throat as smooth and creamy as a milk shake. Noticable carbonation creeping up on the back of my throat competing with a lsight alcohol warming. Very sweet flavor that dances around in your mouth with notes of sugar, honey, maple syrup, figs, prunes, grains, slight alcohol and a malts. Not sure why I’m suprised since I have basically loved everything I have tried from Avery but let me say it....Holy Fuckin Shit is this stuff good. I just can’t figure out why it’s not sold in six packs ridiculous ABC be damned. I’m stocking up on this one!!!!!!

Broke this out for storage for the Bittings gathering. 2004 vintage. This was still young and looking forward to aging many years. Orange clear, no head, light carbonation. Sweet candi aroma. Burning malt flavor. Sweet and ridiculous. Almost like a herb liquor. This one is for burrying in the back yard and digging up in about 20 years!

Batch 2 (2004) 22 oz bomber. Intense caramelly aroma, alcohol, rich berries. Pours light brown/amber. Intense flavor, loads of caramel, sweet, alcohol, dates and molasses are detectable. It makes me shiver.

Wow i liked that one. 2006 version. kinda a deep brown color, nice foam, dried fruits, alcohol and cough medicine nose. pretty sweet flavor at first with again dried fruits berries and almost like Vanilla extract flavor but then the alcohol kicks in when it warms, really nice really nice

This was such a good beer to drink and one that kept me on my toes. It had lots going on in the aroma and the flavor and a few ounces could not do it justice. So much fruit in the aroma that was only matched by the alcohol. This beer offered so much but the drinker should take note of the ABV!