Signature Ale

amber/orange pour with a big head. nice fruity aroma with some citrus hops. flavor is nicely hopped with some orange and a light fruit yeast flavor. some faint spice comes through in the end with a good bitterness. a good blend of belgian yeast flavors and west coast hop.

Pours a nice orange-red with a small creamy white head. Wonderfull aroma of varous fruit - plum, apple, orange and some viniousness and spices. Flavour is the first time you yake a sip quite hoppy, then the at the 2nd and 3rd sips the viniousness, tart fruityness and the different spices becomes apparent (oregano, vanilla, pepper...), burns a little bit - but in a nice way - warms you up...

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.