Mc Chouffe

Brewed by Brasserie d’Achouffe (Moortgat)
Style: Scotch Ale
Achouffe, Belgium

Bottle. Moderate malt notes of caramel and nutty, light hops of herbs, and a moderate yeast aroma of dough, with wood and brown sugar in the background. Head is huge, both fizzy and rocky, off-white, has good lacing and is mostly lasting. Color is clear brown. Flavor starts moderately sweet and lightly acidic, then finishes lightly sweet, acidic, bitter and sour and just a touch salty. Palate is medium, watery and a little oily, and the carbonation is between lively and fizzy. It finishes a little metallic and astringent. This my first Scotch ale and I like it, mostly for the taste and texture.

Lovely garnet colour & prodigeous head. Big malty aroma & taste, slightly spiced. Just not overly complex. Nothing wrong with it but not exceptional. Gosh, I’m getting fussy.

26/03 A 0.75 l bottle from beershop.hr. New style for me. It poured murky brown to red body with particles and really huge head. Aroma is yeasty, with orange and candies, some smoked malt, as peat is felt, combined with caramel. Flavor is party bitter, partly sweet with first impression of strange metallicity. It turns out later to licorice. Beer is spicy itself, that smoked malt is quite strange, resulting in whole palette of herbal flavors, mixed of course with sweetish caramel malt. Pleasant, longer finish with alcohol being hidden quite well. Really a good beer, even with that strange component I was not used to it happen I liked it and became about the best thing that came from beershop this time.

750ml bottle: Poured a lovely mahogany with a lot of lacing from the tan head. Fruity aroma, with a big caramel nose. Flavor was sweet with chocolate, melon, and fig. Silky smooth body that just was really satisfying.

ever spend forty five minutes searching for tasting notes on a beer you’d once cheerfully labored over-- but never got around to posting on ratebeer? i just did, and never succeeded in finding those notes. it’s easy to romanticize what great truths i might have recorded in those lost impressions. i might have had all of the perfect descriptions set out in elegant prose-- descriptors so "dead on" that the brewer would have wanted to emboss them on his label. perhaps the achouffe people would have paid my way to belgium and named a giant fermenting vessel after me in a grand, fireworks lit, celebratory festival of honor. well, all that is as doubtful as george bush winning a sierra club endorsement-- but at the very least i would have had a head start on describing this baby. now the beer is almost gone, and all i’ve recorded is that "it’s brown, it’s good, and it kicks ass". i’ll have to work fast. first observation: what is that cartoon goblin on the label doing? why do these little freaks always look like their wringing something unsavory out of their beards? the beer itself appears like a cheddar orange substance that’s been baked to a deep pumpkin pie brown. pouring, it has a playground kind of vigor and excitability: the carbonation is sparkly in the glass-- and later, on the tongue as well-- but is too wily and disorganized to maintain much real head. nose has a bit of mandarin orange, coffee, peat --and good ol’ fashioned alcohol in a quantity sufficient to cause one to decide not to go out and participate in motor sports, do competitive shooting, or perform on the balance beam after the beer is finished. snappy carb, a touch of sour cherry and baker’s yeast among the more obvious nutty, pastry-like sweet malts and that zest of citrus bitterness. the later is beyond what we’d probably look for in a scotch ale, but it engenders a nice lingering element if one is not too picky about ’styles’. very tasty medium-bodied belgian strong/scotch crossover. now that i’ve finished-- i was going to go out and operate some heavy construction machinery, but again, the warming ABV in the mc chouffe has had a soothing and tranquilizing effect-- and i know they won’t be "embossing" my impressions. maybe i’ll just stay in and listen to old records. pass me that old coleman hawkins record, pretty please.

This beer got better aas it went along. Poured to a hazy brown with hints of orange. Aroma was apples and a hint of malt. As the glass warmed, the alcohol crept in to nicely round out the aroma. Flavor was good, though nothing really dominated, although hints of spice, possibly cinnamon, were evident. Mouthfeel was spicy, and the finish was smooth and somewhat warming. Not a bad beer.

Pours a nice, dark amber, with thick, light tan head. Nose is nice malty, with strong yeast notes. Flavor is very mild, for the style. Malts and fruit dominate. Mouthfeel is a bit thin. Overall, the beer is less than I had hoped. Good, but its Belgian characteristics seem to dominate the characteristics of the style, and it doesn’t really compete with the best Scots Ales.

Oh, you curious noble little gnome you. You planted and grew a right good little beer here. Syrupy but delicious. Intentionally drank this in an illegal manner. Mmm, well built and tasty alcohol.