Goose Island Matilda

Bottle. Aroma of apple, yeast, spice, white meat fruits, and barnyard. Huge foamy white head that lasted and left little lace. Hazy medium orange-amber hue. Flavor is sweet, sour, and musty. Palate is medium bodied and a little bitter on the medium finish. Ok for a Belgian.

nice levels of funk and other belgian spice including coriander make the nose quite weizen like. this is one of the most easily accessible funkdefied belgians available to chicago, and well worth the affordable price. very smooth, well balanced with plenty of notes besides malt/hops to remain interesting. this begs to be warmed in a tulip or snifter.

On tap, bowl goblet. Amber body with a fat finger’s worth of a white head, fading to a spotty lacing. Aroma of field clover, more bitter than sweet, followed by a earthy yeastiness. Initial impressions on the tongue are bitter, hay-scented hops, a floral impression like honey without the sweetness, and wafting over it all a yeasty funk. There’s a moderate amount of carbonation on the tongue, but the dominant mouthfeel impression is dryness. This beer is really quite dry, hardly sweet at all. The yeast ranges all over the place, from the scent before the rain down to wet cardboard. In something neither sweet nor sour, it’s interestering, but I don’t think it works for me in this particular example. As the beer warms, some of the darker malts come through, caramel flavors, just a hint of the wheat-citrus-banana complex, but the beer remains dry and ambiguously funky throughout.

12 oz. bottle graciously given to me by Gregis. Vintage 2006 according to the label. Pour is a gusher, flowing and fizzing off white head on top of a hazed orange and ruby body. Aroma of funk, hay and general barnyard yeast aromas. Very Bretty. Aroma fades somewhat quickly. Taste has quite a bit of the hay initially, with some wheat. Flavor quickly moves to the funk, and rides that through to an earthy, almost sour finish. Aftertaste lingers with all of the flavors, and a bit of wet dirt. Herbal notes throughout. Nice medium palate allows Brett to present itself without as much dryness as expected. Its dry, certainly, just not bone dry. Nice clone, enjoyable to drink.

served as a comparision to orval. much less acidic and smooth than orval. mellow, malty, yeasty and easy drinking. some fruitieness, a little funky/ sour, but not too much.