Founders Bad Habit Quad

Brewed by Founders Brewing Company
Style: Abt/Quadrupel
Grand Rapids, Michigan USA

Bottle. Huge banana presence. Too much banana. Perfect beer for monkeys. Good, but wouldn’t want a 6 pack.

Founders Bad Habit Quad 12 oz bottle Recent bottling, guilted 11/06 Medium pour in a snifter. Poured copper with a tiny off white quickly diminishing fizzy head. Smelt of strongly bubblegum, bananas, sherry, cinnamon and cloves. Taste was upfront sweet banana, cheap brandy (or more like the European alcohol "mark") , cinnamon and cloves, followed by a harsh yeasty barnyard and mold bitterness on a long finish that dies back to a pleasant banana/bubble gum feel. Mouthfeel was medium bodied, fizzy, creamy, moderately astringent, and excessively alcoholic. Overall, the pieces are there for a good brew, but the alcoholic feel is just too strong and overshadows the overall feel of the beer.

From a bottle at Sunset Grille - I’m not impressed, and I’m in fact disappointed since I’ve loved most of Founders other beers...but this was sticky, syrupy sweet with a strange off-putting flavor of rotting fruits. Thick pour, very cloudy and no head. Very astringent, with alcohol nearly burning.

Bottle at Sunset Grill - pours a nearly still, cloudy caramel color - aromas of yeast, cloves, lots of over ripe, nearly rotten fruit - a little hot - flavors of rum, banana, and spices, making the beer, strangely, taste a little bit like bananas foster - finishes with quite a bit of apparent alcohol - not one of their better beers.

Pours orange/amber, with almost no head. Aromas are banana, spices, alcohol, and citrus fruit. Flavors are banana, spices, brown sugar, alcohol, and bubblegum. Interesting, good, but still rather hot.

12oz bottle via trade with Pailhead. Aroma: Belgian yeast, peppery spiciness, brown sugar, Orange zest, banana, bread dough, strong alcohol presence. Appearance: Pours a reddish-amber. Pretty hazy. Off-white head was big and creamy with great retention for a high abv beer. Good lacing. Flavor: Medium-strong sweet malt, bread dough, strong orange flavor. Bubblegum and slight banana. Coriander-like spiciness. Alcohol is a little intrusive and prevents some of the flavors from fully maturing. Alcohol gets a bit hot into the finish. Palate: Medium bodied. Medium-high carbonation. Strong alcohol warming over entire mouth. Overall: If you tone the alcohol down, this would be a good beer. As it is, alcohol just overwhelms.

A complete waste of the liver. This review really only needs one word: ALCOHOL. Really really sharp alcohol, hot alcohol. Pour was terrible, no head at all, no lacing at all. The aroma was fruity, grapes and cherries. Flavor was hard to pick up under all the alcohol, maybe some caramel under the fruity, grape, bananas, cherry, other dark fruits? Even a thin, although sticky, mouthfeel. A total mess of a quadrupel, sugary sharp alcohol disaster. Sorry, Founders, down there with Avery stuff.

Pours ruby/amber with a small fizzy and edgy off-white head, slow bubbles ease up through the liquid, spotty lacing as an afterthought. Aroma is bananas, actually they arrive before the cap is fully removed, as if they were lying in anticipation of being let out of the bottle, all pent up, huge yeast (dough, earth) aroma follows slowly behind, sweet yeast, malt (hay, straw), flowers, grass and alcohol. Medium bitterness, moderate acidity, fermented, alcohol tainted yeast flavor, bananas and fresh flowers, straw and grass notes. Medium bodied, fizzy and spicy, lively palate.