Southampton Abbot 12

Brewed by Southampton Publick House
Style: Abt/Quadrupel
Southampton, New York USA

2006 vintage from puzzl. Plummy, hazy red-brown body, medium off-white head. Aroma of toffee, brown sugar, and sweet toasts, a bread pudding complete with spicy esters derived from the yeast. Plummy, sweet breads dominate the flavor profile, too, with toffee and plenty of spice. Alcohol is suitably warming. Very good but not quite top echelon material, lacking the depth and complexity of the top quads. The carbonation is a tad too robust.

Bottle. Chestnut brown color with a loose cream colored head. Aroma of toffee, figs, nuts, dark fruit, alcohol, and slightly salty. Really round aroma, complex and clearly a quad. Huge toffee flavor, caramel, vanilla, hugely malty and round. Spicy. Chewy full flavor. Nice finish, really smooth. A tad sweet but hugely drinkable. Another nice beer from southampton.

Bottle courtesy of Adrian910ss: Poured a deep burgundy color ale with a big off-white foamy head with good retention and lacing. Aroma of sweet malt with some hints of dry fruits (figs and plums). Taste consisted of some sweet malt with some very subtle Belgian yeast and some very subtle dry fruits such as figs and plums. Body is slightly above average with no alcohol discernable. I don’t know if my expectation were too high or if I got another so-so bottle of Southampton but I wasn’t impressed at all and thought this was quite far from the staple of the style (Rochefort, Westy, St-Bernadus).

750 supplied by after4ever. Thanks, Tom! Pours a cloudy dark amber with a fluffy off-white head. Aroma of oxidized apples and spice. Full body and moderate carbonation. Sweet spiced fruit and roasted apples in the taste.

750. Thanks, Luiss! Pours dark cloudy copper-amber. Huge sudsy tan head that falls to film and then sticks around. Red apples and lots of spice on the nose, rather cidery, even. Beautifully balanced attack; fruits and spices and caramel and biscuit on the mid-palate. Watery (a bit), and too light on the finish, but otherwise astonishingly good. Could easily have gone a few notches higher for a richer body and deeper finish.

750mL bottle, 2006 vintage, courtesy of Dickinsonbeer. Thanks, Paul! Pours a murky yellowish-brown; lightest tan head with good lacing. Bready and caramel-dominated aroma; hints of dried fruit. A very balanced quad: not overly yeasty, but lots of doughy and ester character; citrus hops and nougat rounding out the mouthfeel. Long, smooth finish of vanilla and bread.

2006 Bottle from a trade a while back(?). Dark cherry reddish brown with nice big head. Nice sweet malt aroma with hints of belgian yeast and the goodness to come. Taste goes beyond what the aroma was offering. Not overly sweet, and just a great yeasty flavor with some dark fruit. After letting it warm up a little I can smell and taste lots of brown sugar and a decent kick of alcohol. Light carbonation and decent thickness. Lovely. Rivals the trappist beers for quality.

This was by far the superior offering Southampton brought to the table at the 2006 GABF. There must be something to the “Quad” prefix because every time I pick up a bottle of such it ends up being as complex and entertaining as any good work of Victorian literature. The Abbott 12 carries the tradition with pride, offering up a slightly jumbled but toothsome array of tongue pleasers that managed to pierce the rapid beer tasting haze with an incredulously mild mannered but complex flavor profile. In my tiny sampling glass I see a clouded, brown mixture which, humble as it may be, practically begs to be consumed. I oblige, but first I give it a quick smell sample. The profile reads out with almost nothing. The aroma is very timid. Nothing perceptible comes through except some alcohol, so I leave its bashful self alone and move onto the taste, which I hope will be a little more extroverted. I’m rewarded with the stellar taste I mentioned above. Burnt honey, caramel and roasted apple immediately remind me of a thousand small town candy stores I’ve passed by in my life. At each one I peered through the window with eager eyes. They shined with gluttony as I glanced at the copper bowl where a worker is crafting gorgeous candied apples. It is an art lost on the urbane. A little charred wood adds to the quaint and cozy story the Abbott 12 is weaving, invoking a small fire with a few ruddy faces gathered ‘round it. There’s also a sizeable mountain of brown sugar entangled in the beer, coaxing me with its mature, sugary flavor. Most distinguishable is all the flavors of burnt carbon matter. Each one makes up a different flavorful fuel, but they all cooperate with their shared history of arson victimization. The delicately organized taste is but short lived, and soon disappears leaving only the brown sugar to console the tongue with its murky molasses. This would be the ideal company for any late evening outing to a building older than fifty years. The whole character beautifully matches with many of these old mining towns in the Rocky Mountains who’ve relied on their old, rustic charm to keep the revenue flowing. If they could only offer up this Abbott 12 on a regular basis it would make for an unforgettable evening of relaxation and rumination.