Dieu du Ciel Péché Mortel

Brewed by Dieu du Ciel
Style: Imperial Stout
Montreal, Canada

As Black as it gets. Big sticky chocolate nitro head which sticks to the glass and laves marks after every sip. The nose is not so affirmative, but it smells coffee beans and not cheap ones at that. Full mouthfeel which is very smooth and easy, ultra-creamy, decadet in fact. Complex flavors which you can just admire as they develop in a complex fireworks: huge dessert malt, rich coffee flavors, burnt chocolate milk is invented. Nicely balanced if you love desert beers. I’d like to compare with Alesmith’s, but heaven is not that close. I’ve had the speedway stout approximately 2 months ago though and I’m convinced that péché mortel is superior, to my liking anyway. The balance is just tremendous, with the hoppy bitterness acting as a fine complement rather than a kick on the face. Definitely a transcendant example of the style to me.. I would not necessarily place this top 10 in the world, but I have yet to taste an imperial stout that deserves it more. Cheers JF Gravel.

Bottle thanks to cgarvieuk. Packed full of choc malt, but thats about it. Taste is similar, alc hideden but heating, nice one.

Bottle #46 Oct. 2004... This beer rocks!... Pitch black ale with no light penetration, even when held up to the Montreal Sunshine. Mid-sized, creamy, khaki-colored head with good retention. The aroma is of coffee beans, bitter-sweet chocolate and vanilla. The flavor is incredible. So rich, so sweet, so bitter, so warming, so complex, so BIG. At first, it is so pleasantly sweet on the tongue and then BANG!, the bitter, burnt flavors kick in. The coffee and hops take over, keeping the sweetness from being even remotely cloying. So many layers of flavor. Mega full-bodied and dry with fizzy carbonation. Lengthy, bitter-sweet finish. What a jewel of a brew! A lot of ratebeerians will be blown away by this one at the RBSG 2005 in Montreal. Thanks go out to Stefan for the bottle since the tap was dry!

First 11.5oz bottling exported into the US: Much sweeter and smoother than the earlier 22oz bottles. More reminiscent of the tap versions at the brewpub. Good residual malty sweetness melds well with the coffee flavors throughout. Very enjoyable and similar to Founders Breakfast stout.

Second batch made for export to US, tried on tap at DDC 7/9/05 (8,5,9,5,17): Now this is what I remember. Very smooth and creamy with great coffee balance. Much better than the first bottled batch and more true to recipe. Good coffee and roasted malt complexity throughout.



US bottle shared by goldtwins first batch (7,4,9,4,15): Pours a viscous, nearly opaque with a tan head. Aroma is very tobacco smoky and ashy with lots of roasty bittering coffee. The flavor is nice and full with decent complexity, but the body could be thicker. This doesn’t come anywhere near the tap version.

On tap at the brewpub 11/10/2003 (8,5,9,5,17): Pours a rich thick dark black with a creamy nitro dark tan head. The body seems to have a certain shine to it. Aroma is complex, but subdued slightly by the nitro tap. Thick dark chocolate, plum, molasses, plenty of bittersweet coffee and even strawberries are all present in the nose. Body is rich and robust and has an almost gritty sugary, yet viscous texture. A very unique imperial stout with a great emphasis on dark chocolate and coffee. I’d say this has more coffee flavor than Speedway Stout. Good complexity and nice balance of a lot of malty sweetness and coffee bitterness. The finish is a more subtle continuation of the body. A near sensory overload and very enjoyable.

courtesy of Laurent Mousson - dark black colour with a modest head retention; roasted aroma of coffee and vanilla, some notes of nuts too; very tasty and full-bodied, very bitter and long coffeish and nutty roasted finish - a wonderful and complex beer

Bottle shared with Oldgrowth at the Sunset Grill, Boston. Intense coffee aromas and flavours. The aroma is very pleasant, took me a while before i actually took a sip. Palate was full-bdied/rich, with lots of dark chocolate characters, and loads of mocha/coffee, some subtle vanilla as well as some charcoal. Finish seemed to go on forever. I guess the coffee may be a little over the top for some people, but i quite enjoyed it in this one.

Specification #46
Black beer, well carbonated, with thick, heavy & creamy greige head, not persistent. Initial nose of pure coffee - or the coffee-based and -containing chocolates popular in Belgiums high-brow confiseries. Aroma of cigarette or even cigar ashes. The fireplace the day after. The breath of that love that used to smoke a package a day.
Take a cup of cold coffee, and mix in the contents of last evenings’ ash trays. Put in some burnt caramel. Then add some essence of hops, and then the blackest scrapings of crème brulée . I do not know if this makes up for deadly sin, but it sure sounds lethal. But it is not Péché Mortel , for new things arrive. Try to imagine tree fruit as chestnuts, horse chestnuts and acorns, stripped of their most forbidding adstringency, and lightly roasted, further sprinkled with black sugar. This needs to grow on you, certainly if you, like me, don’t like coffee and never drink the stuff; and stopped smoking cigarettes before turning 20. There are hints of dry chocolate powder, as covering chocolate truffles, but it is harsh coffee essentialy. Warming up, I have a little hint of pistaccio, which doesn’t spoil anything. On the topic of texture, suffice to say I have to refrain myself taking up a spoon, and start stirring.
I had been warned. Being weaned on gueuze and trappist hardly counts me to the weak-hearted, but cold coffee is a high cliff indeed. I recognise the greatness of this beer, yet it is not my cuppa... coffee.
Important to signal is that my sample was not the ubiquitous US import, but an in-pub bottling of the real stuff. O_MTL, grand merci.

Dark brown colour with a light brown head. Sweet malty aroma, nice blend of coffee bitterness and sweet chocolate. Roasted malty flavor, coffee notes and some sweetness. Thanx to Rene ( sk8viking) for sharing this special beer.