DuClaw Colossus

Brewed by DuClaw Brewing Company
Style: American Strong Ale
Abingdon, Maryland USA

1L bottle @Noogfest High5 Thanks thebeersommolier–pours no head and amber color. Aroma is sweet medium malt, medium fruit. Taste is sweet medium malt, medium fruit, woody, syrupy. As a sipper for a sample size 3.4, can’t see a pint of this though.

Bottle (served very warm)… O’sS&BS-I-T-YVBThrowdown… Dark beer. Spicy, sweet aroma offers cinnamon and other autumn and winter spices along with a good dose of dark rum. Full-bodied with a creamy mouthfeel and faint carbonation. Sweet, spicy, lightly herbal flavor is very reminiscent of a good glögg. Hearty, to say the least, warm and boozy. Great warm. Don’t know that I would have enjoyed it cool or even at room temperature, but Jim Wagner did suggest it be drunk warm, as a glögg. Thanks to scraff for providing the bottle!

If Buddy The Elf started rating beers this would be his only 5.0 rating! This poured an amber color with a white head. The aroma contains some molasses, raisins, brown sugar, and cinnamon. Look up cloying in the dictionary and you will likely find a pic of this beer. Jumpin geezus christmas says Buddy the Elf. I want to put this on everything I eat! More cinnamon, honey, dark fruit, and molasses flavor. To say the texture is syrupy would be an understatement. Overall this is too sweet and boozy to be enjoyable. Save yourself the $40 and just drink pancake syrup if this is your bag. Just a Colossal MESS!

Ok, this is an interesting one. I sampled it at Noogfest High 5 and found nothing to like other than the smell. The body was medium copper colored. The nose was initially straight booze. Then I began to get some blueberries and leather. The taste was another ballgame. I was disgusted by the sweetness from the first sip and as I had a few more, it didn’t get any better. It was like drinking straight molasses with some raisins mixed in. A failure from the start, this beer should not be released for public consumption. An absolute mess and a travesty for the price. My 1.7 is a generous rating. Horrid.

Courtesy of Hopscotch. At the Otakuden Throwdown. Served hot. Creamy head with a burnt copper color. Nose is wood and port. Lots of caramel and dark fruit with hints of aroma hops. Flavor is super rich and a massive massive mouthfeel. I can taste alot of residual sugar but even so tons of caramel comes through with suprising amounts of bitterness. Sweet portlike notes of caramel, cranberries, figs and raisins. I actually thought this was pretty badass but its a crazy beer for sure.

Sampled at Noogfest High 5. Pours copper with a bubbly beige head. The aroma is rum, maple, wood, and alcohol. The flavor is insanely sweet. Maple syrup, fruits, sugar. The alcohol is masked by the sweetness, which isn’t saying much because it is so obnoxious. There’s a long-lasting sugary aftertaste as the dense beer leaves residue in my mouth. It’s ok, I guess, but this is unnecessarily over the top. It is really, really hard to drink something this sweet.

Sampled at Noogfest, provided generously by TheBeersomellier. So, I understand that this is a giant beer and that it is meant to be sipped slow in tiny proportions. I understand that this is very different as a barley beverage. I understand this is supposed to be sweet like port or mead. Even with all the caution going into this, it is way, way, way too sweet. It is pure, unadulterated, concentrated sugar. It is like drinking straight high fructose corn syrup. The amount of sugar in my mouth from one tiny sip makes my teeth grimace in pain as the cavities instantly explode along my gumline. I cannot tell you how sweet this is. I’ve never had any alcoholic beverage this sugary. No meads, no ports, no cordials, certainly not any beer. I can’t get over this. Even a 1oz. sample is too much. I had a good four or five sips trying to get into this one and gave up before the type II Diabetes kicked in. I can’t imagine attempting to finish even a small pour into a 6 oz. snifter. I cannot come up with any circumstance to enjoy this as a drink. Perhaps as a topping on a dessert this could be passable, but it may be even too sweet for that. That being said, this is certainly a product of an impressive feat in brewing.

Draft at the 2009 MD Spring Fest. Super sweet, not unlike GM. Amber-orange color, looks moderately filtered. Thick and sugary, yet somehow drinkable. Really quite mellow in a liqueur-like vanilla way. Creamy, some orange syrup. Great for what it is.