Marthas Brandybuck Abbey Brown

Brewed by Marthas Exchange Restaurant and Brewing
Style: Abbey Dubbel
Nashua, New Hampshire USA

on tap-pours a creamy tan head and red/brown color. Aroma is sweet-rock candy. Taste is sweet-fruit, rock candy, malt, spices, yeast. Sipping.

Cask. Brown in color with ruby highlights and a large off-white head. Aroms of bready malt,fruit and sugar. Flavor is sweet with notes of dark fruit,rasins,brown sugar,molasses and spice. Medium body.

Draught pint at the brewery on 3/21/06
Opaque or near opaque maple syrup colored brown body has some deep tan and light mahogany hues in it. Head is initially small, tannish-yellow and poorly retained, forming a ring on the edges, with no lacing.
The nose has your typical esters and phenols; bananas, bubble gum, clove, black pepper. Don’t remember the alcohol, but there’s no sign of it. A very sweet, brown sugar and caramel malt note grows stronger and prunes seem to come forth as it warms. Prunes or light raisins, anyways. The phenols keep it sufficiently dry in the nose, while there is a light graininess from the unfiltered/unpasteurized character of the beer.
The flavor begins with light milk chocolate, dotted with flecks of light toasted brown malts, almost a touch of vinousness, but blotted out by a bubble gum and banana ester that sweetens things considerably before being, in turn, dried out by strong, strong phenols on the end. More black pepper, than clove, as they arent so much flavorful and spicy as they are just dry and peppery. I appreciate the low carbonation with which these Belgian styles are served, and this one is no exception. Sweet, richly malted texture, sugary and thick with non-filtration. Rather dominated by the esters/phenols, which prevent too much malt complexity from arising, at first. But the longer I sit and drink it, the more a sticky, caramelized sugar note begins to emerge and really stick to the palate and lips, quite chewy. Perhaps palate accustoms itself to the phenols (more than likely) but they are not nearly as dominant towards the end as the start. No alcohol, even after fully warming and breathing.