Unibroue 16

Formerly brewed at Unibroue (Sapporo)
Style: Belgian Strong Ale
Chambly, Canada

Deep orange with an off white head. Aroma is yeast, spices, and orange peels. Flavor is yeasty with banana and some other sweet lighter fruits. Nice big malted yeasty body.

Sampled at the Odds and Ends Tasting II on 10/19/07: This beer is a luminescent reddish copper color with a thick and rocky off-white head that dissipates slowly. Bananas, yeast and spices in the nose. Medium-bodied with yeast, musty malt and spice flavors. Touches of moderately bitter hops as well. The finish is yeast and a hint of black licorice and leaves a spiced aftertaste. Enjoyable throughout.

Sampled at the Newtown Brewfest 07 with Stegosaurus. These guys stole the show bringing the biggest variey of beer and they were awesome guys. Cloudy amber pour with a mild spicy/grassy sweet aroma. Good bready/alcohol taste blended very well and extremely enjoyable.

This orange ale poured with a decent beige head and a sweet malty aroma. The flavor is candy sweet with a carbonated mouthfeel and a strong alcohol presence at the finish. It has a balance of sweet and harsh that is typical of Belgian strong ales.

Orange-red with a thich creamy head. Sweet smell with some yeast smell. Taste is sweet and stong in alcohol. High carbonation with that causes a thich head.

It’s only because some of Unibroue’s prior anniversary beers are insanely good that I was disappointed with this one. Found it unbalanced and the alcohol is noticeable but I have a few bottles in the cellar and will re-rate.

The hours between dinner and sleep are ones of either satiety or extreme deprivation. If the evening repast was delicious and filling I’m likely to spend those very short hours in a half-conscious reverie reading or relaxing. If, however, by my own negligence or poverty I am left hungry or, worse, with a shaken palate, the gruesome minutes between feeding and sleeping are ones of terrible want. This usually comes in two forms. One: I’m hungry and will eat anything so long as it is not abudnant in cellulose or hard metals. Two: I’m hungry, but only for dessert, and have an aching sweet tooth that needs to be put to bed before I can go to bed myself. In the former I can usually muster some toast or paw around in the soil for a snack. In the latter I must rely on my own cache of M&M’s or other sugary delights to deliver me to satiety. In the first situation a beer will do, but not in the second. Not unless it’s the Unibroue 16. Sporting a polyflavoratic easel of skin tingling sweets, the Unibroue 16 is the perfect nightcap for the beer lover who wants to end the day tipsy, full, sweetened and relaxed. The head is a flat white plane, still and lifeless like a windless sea, but below it is a youthful yet muffled orange drink ready to burst with delightful desserts. I poke a hole in the head and immediately a geyser of sweets and sugars meets my olfactory - orange muffins, yeast, custard, oatmeal cookie, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, marshmallow and plum all jig in a merry circle of traditional sweets. My head is swimming and my nose overwrought and overjoyed. It’s a benison paradise of fructose and I’m frolicking in it like it was Candyland. The flavor makes an admirable attempt to mimic the champion aroma, but can only muster a few definitive tastes of butter and cotton candy, even a little watermelon and confectioner’s sugar, before it thrusts into a haphazard milieu of alcohol, hops and wheat. But this temporal touch of delicately sweetened flavors reflects the beer’s stance on good taste - that the sugar should be classy, classical and refined (not that kind) and never cloying. It fulfills its ethos admirably, and makes for a total panacea to all my postprandial woes.

Light hazy amber colour with a beige head. Malty, light caramel sweet aroma with loads of different fruity notes. Malty, sweet and fruity flavor with notes of yeast and alcohol.