Saint Arnold Divine Reserve #2

Formerly brewed at Saint Arnold Brewing Company
Style: Abt/Quadrupel
Houston, Texas USA

12 oz bottle. Misty sunset orange with a dash of foam. A quad? Apple juice and spicy dough. First sip tells you this is to be enjoyed slowly. Citrus honey, candied rose petals and caramel clove dissolve with a nice carb tang. Sticky, but not syrupy. Alcohol comes through in the aftertaste with green hops and yeast.

12 oz Bottle courtesy red, of Secret Santa. Pours a cloudy orangish with a tan head, which quickly disappeared into a few bubbles. Smells of fruits and spices. Kinda goes a bunch of places, quite interesting, Starts out with strong malt, then kind of goes through a whirlwind int some hops. I like it, tastes of bananas, brown sugar. Defintely interesting, and glad i got the chance to try this seemingly rare beer. Thanks Santa! I musta been good

Red/amber appearance, little head. Smooth, almost flat but it tingles when it hit the tongue. Caramel and apple aroma. Malty, perfect barleywine synthesis. The alcohol is muted. Thanks so much to Lumpy for sending this bottle north to me, which I shared with Jazz88.

Orange-amber beer with small but resistant orangey head. Rich cakey nose, with brandy-like alcohol, fruitcake with Mandarine Napoléon, slightly vinous (and just a hint of acetic), citrus & mango (which is citrus as well). Oh, and some noble hops or two....Taste is equally rich, very alcoholic, quality sugar syrup, maybe even maple, citrus (preserved), higher alcohols and quite some esters. Gradually more emphasis of the hops emerges, and that doesn’t spoil anything. One minus point: somewhere a get a ghost of chlorine. Very thick, syrupy to oily. Alcoholburn. Excellent beer - whatever you want to call it, BW or what... Thank you very much, Dewbrewers, and congrats, Brock!

Cloudy orange, no head. Nice sweet, honey-ish, nutty aroma. Flavor is honey and hops, hints of caramel and toffee, molassess, plus some musty, earthy notes. Seems like a Belgian accented Barley wine. Thanks to chef201atc for the beer!

Pours a bright chestnut, sort of a brown with garnet highlights (unusual color), and a mere ring for a head. A swirl reconstitutes a thin beige head but it fades slowly once the beer is still. Aroma is sweet, both sweet malt and sweet alcohol, very much revealing its quad heritage, but with a very slight herbal hoppy note. I might even guess it was dry-hopped just a touch. First tastes are of a bitter quadrupel. Heavy on the toasty malt, some candy sugars, a good mild barleywine profile. But there’s a drying hoppiness as well, some American variety I can’t place. Some faint dark fruit and spices running around, hardly noticeable. Finish is dry and lightly hoppy, not much malty sweetness lingers. Not necessarily hot with alcohol flavors but you can tell it’s there in the aftertaste and the stickiness left on the lips. Mouthfeel is medium slick, like a lighter barleywine. Definitely better than last year’s No. 1, this is more-or-less purchaseable if they continued to make it. It is supposed to be a blend of separately brewed batches of a quadrupel and a strong hoppy ale, and that’s about exactly how it tastes. The brewer chooses to market this as a quad but, if I knew nothing about what was in the glass, I would call it a robust DIPA.

From the bottle, courtesy of Santa, pours an opaque muddy reddish color without much head. Very interesting aroma. Bananas, caramel, toffee, sweet malts, and I swear some coconut. The alcohol comes through immediately in the taste, and is supported by a bit of malt, as well as caramel and toffee, and just a hint of bitter hops at the end. There’s also some sugar in there, both candy and brown. It’s thicker, so like tripel I once homebrewed, I won’t ever plan on trying to drink more than two in a night. Now, I feel a bit compelled to add words to this rating in an effort to make the length of my rating at least as long as the commercial description above, but I’m not going to make numerous threatening threatening references to the U.N., nor am I going to just repeat "Screw Flanders" over and over until I reach 50 words. I’m bigger than that. Anyway, thanks Santa. This was a good one.

Thanks to Puzzl. I really had a good feeling about this brew with the initiall smell of caramel, banana, coconut, and cherries. The taste threw me off a bit. Color is a bit brownish redish with the head fading away quickly. The alcohol overpowers this brew a bit. Taste is of liquorish scotch, with a somewhat fooling quadish taste.