Dupont Avec les Bons Voeux

Brewed by Brasserie Dupont
Style: Saison
Tourpes-Leuze, Belgium

2002 Bottle. Hazy golden color with a large, thick white head. Aroma hit me as I was pouring. Musty, yeasty, with some citrus and spiciness. Awesome! Flavor starts off mildly sweet, with lots of fruitiness, yeast and pepper. Finishes quite dry. Very refreshing, especially for a beer of this strength.

Had this at BJ’s Winter Ale Fest. Beer poured a muddy dark yellow color with a large, frothy, off-white, mostly diminishing head that left behind a pretty curtain of Belgian lace. The aroma was sunny, dry and spicy: light malty notes of toasted grain, moderate hop notes of resin/pine, dry straw; heavy, nice yeasty notes of barnyard, horseblanket and basement. The flavor was moderately sweet and moderately bitter with an average-length, lightly bitter finish. The flavor was remarkable in that the initial balance was extremely on, but the individual sensations were quite discernable—like hearing a tone in either ear. The body was light-to-medium, the texture was watery, the carbonation was fizzy and the was a light alcoholic twinkle at the end. A pretty beer that seems to carry a strong sense of place with it. Neat-o.

Bottle thanks to CMUBEERMAN. Pours hazy bubbly gold. Aroma is bleu cheese, tart, tangy, musty, biting. Flavor is smoky, bleu cheese, with a tartness that tapers.

my sort of beer..... oh god this just makes me weep. lovely herbal/peachy/bready aroma with prominent barnyard. a barnyard on a promontory overlooking a peach orchard - someone is baking herb bread nearby. no sign of 9.5% alcohol - no fusels or solvent in smell at all! thrusting my nose in and breathing deeply and slowly as if i’m going to sing, i smell freshly ground black pepper on top of it. fluffy nougat apricot and peach then a long, broad and green hoppy finish that goes on and on, mingling with black pepper phenols. wahey this is the stuff. for A$15 per 5.6 standard drinks it beats most cheap plonk for bang/buck at the same time as most expensive champagne for quality.

Draft: at Brouwers. Dec 30 ’06

Hazy straw amber with a modest white head and lovely lacing. This beer has a splendid aroma of lemon, barnyard dust, and a hint of vinegarly lambic. The flavor is stunning: lemon and lovely - nay, perfect - bitter hops, more barnyard, a hint of sunflower seed, and warm sweet malts through the middle. The mouthfeel is full and rich without either the heat or the thickness one might attribute to a 9.5% beer; as a result, this one is packed beyond compare with flavor but remains refreshing nonetheless and despite its high alcohol content.

After 600+ ratings, this is the best beer I’ve ever tasted. My new top-rated beer by two points.

Revisit on tap, Feb 18 ’07.

Indeed, after my encounter with the bottled version (described below) I began to wonder if the rating above resulted from one of those fortuitious moments where the beer and the mood and palate and the setting all align in perfect synchrony to raise a very good beer to beyond excellent in the moment.

So the next day, I tried this again on tap, again at Brouwers. The previous 4.7 was no fluke; that beyond-perfect mouthfeel was back, the beer was everything I had experienced the first time, and it was fully deserving of its position alone at the top of my list.

Bottle: 750 ml, 2006 bottling tasted Feb 17 ’07.

From the bottle, this is a somewhat different beer. It’s very good, still, but it doesn’t compare with the mind-blowingly good beer that I tasted on tap. Much of the loss is in the mouthfeel. The bottled version features a coarser head; it is harsher and lacks the smooth creamy fullness of the tap, substituting instead a more oily mouthfeel and more overt 9.5% alcohol. I probably would have rated this about a 4.2 if I was tasting it for the first time. The take-home lesson is that if you haven’t had this one on tap, you haven’t had the full experience of what it can be.

Pours dark yellow with very excited white head. This beer has a piny, citrusy, peppery aroma. This beer tastes of pepper, spices, citrus, and yeast. Finishes dry with some hops and pepper.

750 ml bottle. This saison got my attention from the first sniff and kept it through the last swallow. Appealing frothy white head that sticks around. The body is cloudy dark yellow. The first impression from the aroma is smoke and funk from the yeast. That’s followed with notes of bread and grain, alcohol, caramel and lemon. The flavor is lightly sweet, moderately bitter and moderately acidic. Medium body. Smooth mouthfeel and lively carbonation. Nice warming in the finish. Very nice.

Im not quite sure when this bottle was brewed, but Im am quite sure it was utterly delicious. Sampled with a great friend, and a few others. A delicate, nimble brew, very aromatic. Luscious herbal tones, estery, cork, wood, earth; sexy vibrant funk. White pepper, spice, aged hops? Very delicious, I enjoyed it to the last yeasty drop. Very, very good, in my humble opinion.