Signature Ale

Bottle. [thank you, after4ever]
Pours hazy coppery orange with a small to medium, creamy, off-white head. Great aroma with lots of flower and spice notes on top of a yeasty and light caramel background. Vanilla, oregano, roses, tulips, oranges as well. Lowish carbonation, quite dry mouthfeel with fine creaminess. Flavour has a feel like Duvel Tripel Hop, but this is far more spicy than hoppy. Sweet maltiness with lots of vanilla, flowery hoppiness and a slight note of tarty brett character. The alcohol warms brilliantly without ever being too much. I think this is a beer that loses something from a small sample - you really have to get it in a big bottle, swirl it around and enjoy the spicy complexity - and the brett only slowly enhances as the beer breathes.

It’s hard to ignore a beer that’s a joint effort between two renowned brewers. In the Signature Ale it’s De Proef and Lost Abbey joining forces to make what I can only assume will be an incredibly high quality beer. The pour slowly explodes wuth a large, dull white foam head, which then listlessly floats on a pumpkin orange brew. The Signature is a beautiful beer, with all the clarity and visible carbonation of a champagne. At to that the circular crown of bubble columns and spires and you get a beer you can admire as if it were on display in an art gallery. The dominant fragrance of the Signature Ale is a rareified apple, almost imperceptible, couched in a soft, gentle and caressing aroma. The bottle describes a hop quality, but aside from a metallic touch I don’t smell anything resembling hops. Rather, this is a soft, almost mead like beer with the gentle caress of apples and a sweet and refined quality - even the aroma of a fresh grape vine from the orchard. That self-sketched hops presence does appear in the flavor, but it’s not the American hop profile I’ve become accustomed to. The Signature begins with a shining, crystal clear taste, textured by an initial paroxysm of fizzle, and then transitions into a brief window of naked hops taste. It is then quickly clothed again in sweet and yeasty garb - a wrapping of flavors. The aftertaste is declaratively hoppy too, and also holds the clearest cut sample of the distinctive brettanomyces that brewers and beer drinkers get so excited about. While this isn’t a beer that I’d fall to my knees in awe for, it’s a grand effort, and shows that whatever the dynamics were that brought about this unique collaborative effort, the teamwork paid off handsomely.

Bottle at the Shenandoah Beer Throwdown. Copper colored, clear, medium white head. Aroma is caramel, citrus. Flavor is hoppy, citrus, grapefruit, and dry finish. Smooth hoppy, and some yeast in the flavor. Very good.

Bottle at RBSG tasting. Pours orange gold with a white head. Aroma of citrus, honey, and some alcohol. I like the attenuation on this one. Flavors of orange and lemon with subtle accents of dry leafy herbs. Finish is dry and slightly bretty. Nice.

Pour is a dull orange with a large foamy white head. Aroma is lots of sweet fruit with a nice funk to it. Flavor is lots of fresh citrus with some vanilla, caramel and again some funk. After the funk you get sme oily hops left on the tounge. This is a pretty tasty beer snd something to sip on for awhile. Now im going to have funk burps all night!

Bottled at Lost Abbey, Batch 2. Poured medium golden with lots of rising carbonation and a short, fizzier cap of white head. The aroma picked up sweeter bready notes upfront accented by lemon zest and brighter floral accents.. seemed to be a lot of floral and perfumey hops present (Amarillo?). The flavor had dry pale and bready notes at the core with spicy floral and citrus bitterness throughout.. dry and funky with great balance. Fluffy on the palate with higher carbonation and a calculated dry feel all the way across.. drier still on the finish and damn-near refreshing (which is quite a feat for a beer of this size). Loved it!

Pours out a orange/dark gold color with a small to moderate lacing white head. Aroma is of some fruit, hops, and slight brett. Taste is complex, banana, citrus hops and some yeast going on in there too, I got the brett a lot more on the aroma than the actual taste, none the less this was enjoyable.

(bottle, thanks Sparky27!) Pours gold with a white head that lingers. The aroma is very unique, with aromas of candied carrots, pepper, and must. The taste is very sweet with some caramel, banana, and vanilla, that then transitions to a dry cracker-like finish. I aged this botle for a few months to see if the brett would show up more, but it needs some more time.