De Dolle Dulle Teve Special Reserva

Formerly brewed at De Dolle Brouwers
Style: Abbey Tripel
Diksmuide, Belgium

Any first impressions?
-A big-bubbled head recedes onto the murky orange.
-Cidery apple vivacity and dry bread crumbs clumsily seduce.
-Dusty yeast dizzies the orange pulp and apple skins. Alcohol takes about the last third of the flavor spectrum for itself.
-Fluffy carbonation helps the swallow, but otherwise the dirtied sweetness and alcohol heat clash.

What if you dig deeper?
-The wooden barrel character is present, but not overdone.
-Lactic notes are slowly revealed in the aroma’s fruitiness.
-Once you get used to the alcohol, the finish also harbors some wooden dryness, hoppy resins, and the caramel sweetness is able to push through.
-A rough and ready experiment to my tastebuds, once which probably needs to meditate on its being for a few more years.

Bottled in 2005.

(bottle - 330 ml) Hazy peach color with about a quarter inch of white head. Light and spicy aroma of yeast, apples and some butterscotch underneath it all. Taste has a lot of sweetness at the beginning with a nice hint of vanilla, butterscotch and some fruits at the end. The aftertaste is slightly bitter with a heavy taste of alcohol. Alcohol is very evident in this one.

33cl - 2005 - Aroma is yeasty, sweet candi sugar, straw, banana, hops, and oak. Pours mud puddle brown with huge fluffy head and great lacing. Flavor matches aroma with a bit of butterscotch and vanilla showing up. Crisp and clean warming palate. A very nice brew.

Beer pous a hazy, bright, medium-yellow color with a large, off-white, frothy, quickly diminishing and mostly lasting head. BL on the glass. Damn pretty. The aroma is heavily malty with notes of toasted bread, cookie and caramel; moderately yeasty with notes of cellar and a trace of band-aid; miscellaneous notes include moderate amounts of butter/butterscotch, strong amounts of sherry, oak and alcohol. The flavor is moderately sweet, moderately acidic with a long, heavily warm, moderately bitter, moderately acidic, lightly sweet finish. The palate is sexy: The body is medium-to-full, the texture is velvety and the carbonation is soft. Plenty of pleasant belly-warming alcohol in the finish. I know this is an idolized brew for some, but it just didn’t enrapture me.

My first rating! Purchased and drank at Max’s on Broadway. Sour nose, huge head. Fruity, spicey, yet dry best describes it. This is a big beer that caught me off guard. Started off tart, ended with a strong alcohol finish...very warming. The backdrop of wood (oak?) is quite present if you know to look for it - it balanced the tart-like tripel edge perfectly. Would have loved to buy one of these for the cellar but someone cleaned out my local store before I got a chance to pick some up. A must find.

Bottle. Cloudy golden color with fizzy white head. Lots of aroma. A touch of apples and plums. Very complex and all in all very good.

It says 2003. Pours to a hazy caramel colored body with a lasting foamy/fizzy white head. The aroma is huge. I get tons of sweet yellow apples and deep Calvados cask conditioning. It smells very Belgian (yeasts). The flavor is quite intense. Strong Belgian yeasts, sweet yellow apples, noticeable Calvados conditioning. The palate is a bit over carbonated. Chewy. This is pretty good, but Jolly Pumpkin does a better job on casking and is more complex.

Cloudy golden with a ton of foam. Once the foam dissapears the head has good retention. Aromas of apple, vanilla, courant, port, alcohol and hints of strawberry. Alcohol was strong in the taste with a bit of a burning sensation. The apple really dominated as someone else said. Palate was a bit too sugary but pretty smooth. I thought this was very good but a bit of a chore to drink because of the strength.