Brew Reviews

Trois Pistoles

Price comparison: 1½ times what I pay for everyday beer.

Alcohol percentage by volume: 9%

Cute bottle/label? The big brown 750ml bottle with a cork - again. I am becoming a creature of habit. I like popping the cork. The label is another Unibroue Goth-like book-jacket-like illustration, this time of three towers with a winged horse hovering nearby.

(I swear, someone in the tattoo industry has Unibroue on their payroll.)

Appearance: About the color of cola, but with a nice thick light-brown head and lots of laciness. Extreme carbonation, as in, I know this ale is naturally carbonated, but it fizzes like a bottle of pop.

Scent: Reminds me of a variety of black raspberry mocha coffee beans that I used to buy, where the coffee smell was most prevalent, followed by the chocolate in close second, and the fruit as a darkly interesting background to the prevalent aromas.

Flavor: A bit more lemony than I expected based on the deep coloration of the brew. I feel a lot of flavor happening: cloves, citrus peel, apple, and berries, yet the aftereffect is more like that of port wine.

Impressions: The flavoring of this ale is very complex and intricate, but hard to pinpoint due to the liveliness of the carbonation. I think the Trois Pistoles would be an interesting alternative to burgundy with a meal, or to port after a meal.

Will I buy this beer again? Yes, I believe I will. It's certainly more cost-effective than port.

Rating:

4 out of 5 cute beer glasses

La Maudite

Price comparison: About 1½ times what I pay for everyday beer.

Alcohol percentage by volume: 8%.

Cute bottle/label? A 750ml brown glass bottle corked and caged as usual. (Also available in four-packs, but more expensively). The label is an artistic representation of La Chasse-Galerie, a Quebecois legend not unlike The Flying Dutchman, wherein a group of lumberjacks strike a deal with the devil to fly home in their canoes for Christmas, ultimately winding up cursed (maudite). Kind of morbid, but a beautifully rendered piece of artwork.

Appearance: Deep amber with lavish head. Lots of floating yeast, especially toward the bottom of the bottle.

Scent: I could definitely smell the alcohol first, but was also reminded of cinnamon raisin bread.

Flavor: Yeasty and tangy with a hint of bite. In common with the other Unibroues, the alcohol is present but not overpowering. I had two in quick succession and am bound to be sorry tomorrow morning.

Impressions: I drank this beer less than ice-cold, which usually works out for me with the dark brown ales, but in this case I think I'd want my next glass served colder. Like the 11, the Maudite could have stood to age a bit more, but the sugar content is such that, sealed tightly and cellared properly, it could potentially be quite a kicker in a few years. It's already a more-than-acceptable accompaniment for roast beef or something equally hearty.

Will I buy this beer again? Yes, very likely. It's damned good. No pun intended.

Rating:

4 out of 5 cute beer glasses

Éphémère

Price comparison: About twice what I pay for everyday beer.

Alcohol percentage by volume: 5.5%.

Cute bottle/label? Four twelve-ounce bottles. The most beautiful Unibroue label I've seen so far, with an illustration of a fairy in a flowery meadow, overlaid by a green apple. Seems almost a deliberate campaign for conversion into an expensive tattoo.

Appearance: Somewhere between golden and amber, but closer to golden. Fairly cloudy, head died fast and left virtually no lacing.

Scent: If the label wasn't enough of a clue, you certainly get the hint once you crack the bottle open. Apples. Damn. I couldn't smell anything but apples at first, although, after I gave it my best effort and a few more sniffs, I could finally detect some of the promised curaçao lurking in the wings.

(Helpful hint to readers who are unfamiliar with curaçao: it's a liqueur that tastes like orange zest. Incidentally, even though it looks like it ought to be "cure - a - cow", it's actually pronounced "koor - a - SOW".)

Flavor: One of my favorite lines from Dead Again, which is one of my favorite movies, is this one, delivered by Robin Williams' character: "Either you're a smoker or a nonsmoker. The trick is to decide which one you are, and be that." I identify very strongly with that line, because I haven't had a cigarette in over a year, yet I still feel like a smoker.

But I digress. There was a point to my having brought up that line. Pick which one you are, and be that. Éphémère smells like a wine cooler and tastes like beer. I was very tempted to say, "Go away and don't come back till you've made up your mind." Very dry and malty. Gulping it lets you almost taste apple peels; sipping it, not so much.

Impressions: This beer had a lot less character than I was anticipating, especially since its Unibroue cousins have all made me pretty happy. Éphémère is the French for "transitory", and so this is. The label proudly proclaims it to be composed of apple, coriander, and curaçao, but none of the flavors really makes itself known, although the scent of apple is wildly overpowering. I gave another bottle a go, just to be fair (heh) and, with a dash of cinnamon, another of allspice, and a quick grating of fresh nutmeg, it was more palatable, but I shouldn't have to do the work myself, especially at that price.

By the end of the second bottle, I felt slightly more charitable (or, at least, a little more buzzed). The weather may be too cold for me to properly enjoy this obviously summer-oriented beer, but I'm thinking: Italian combo sub, plus one of these, plus warm day, could well equal a decent picnic. As for the balance of this particular four-pack, I'll use one bottle to par-steam ribs before grilling and the other to deglaze the pan next time I make chicken-apple sausage with onions.

Will I buy this beer again? I wouldn't necessarily turn Éphémère down if someone else bought me one, but I take a little exception to the higher cost. I mean, for a bottle of perfume with a pretty label, the price was reasonable, but for a beer I didn't like well enough to do anything other than cook with, it was kind of expensive.

Rating:

2½ out of 5 cute beer glasses

Postscript:
I made pork chops with Éphémère sauce tonight and they came out quite good. Here's my recipe.

L'Onze (11)

Price comparison: A whopping 3½ times what I pay for everyday beer.

Alcohol percentage by volume: 11%. That's not a typo.

Cute bottle/label? This is Unibroue's eleven-year anniversary offering. A 750ml brown glass bottle (with the still-amusing-to-me cork). No label; instead, gilt lettering is applied directly to the bottle.

Appearance: I'd refer to this beer as honey-colored, but something about it makes me prefer the Anglicised spelling. Honey-coloured. Dense but short-lived foam and little to no lace.

Scent: Orange peel, pineapple and crushed mint leaves, maybe a dash of anisette or fennel.

Flavor: Very bright and sparkly tasting at first, like sauterne, but deepens upon further investigation and adds a bite of fresh ginger and nutmeg. There's also a caramel-apple undertone that does a sneaky little play on you, making you think you've had less alcohol than you actually did.

Impressions: I felt like this beer was a little bit sweet and needed to age more, so I'm going to buy another bottle or two and cellar it for next year or the year after. This particular bottle, which, to my embarrassed drunkenness, I have finished, I shall convert into a candlestick 'cos the gilding is just so quool.

Having emptied the bottle, I do venture to say that this is a refreshingly summery beer and yet would also qualify as a satisfying beer on a cool autumn evening in New England, like tonight. Nice by itself anytime you'd normally find yourself drinking cider, but I got very imaginative and decided it'd also be a nice accompaniment to a Thanksgiving or Christmas turkey dinner with trimmings. So probably I should grab another couple of bottles for the holidays.

Will I buy this beer again? What, did I not make enough excuses for buying more already? If not, let me tell you now, they've only bottled six thousand cases of the stuff and only exported twenty-five hundred to the States. Buy some while you can, because when it's gone, there'll be no more. And yes, it is worth the extra money.

Rating:

4½ out of 5 cute beer glasses

(I will probably need to rereview L'Onze next year when I have a more aged bottle on hand. I believe that's going to be the difference between the above score and a possible perfect score.)

Don de Dieu

Availability: Another Unibroue offering, like la Fin du Monde, and available at the same package store.

Do they also carry Bushmill's 1608? Forgot to check. Again. I'll remember just as soon as I need to buy some. Sort of like fixing the roof when it rains.

Price comparison: 1.45 times what I pay for everyday beer.

Alcohol percentage by volume: 9%

Cute bottle/label? Standard-shaped bottle; textured metallic label with a boat on it. Ooh pretty.

Appearance: Looks like your standard pale ale; active carbonation; head disappeared almost immediately but left some lace up the sides of the goblet.

Scent: Yeast is prominent; chased by cloves and peaches, of all things.

Flavor: More yeasty than the Fin du Monde; I was also reminded rather oddly of banana liqueur or possibly maple walnut. The bottom of the bottle was more peppery and felt thicker in my mouth than the rest of the bottle.

Impressions: Not as smooth to me as the Fin du Monde. I was constantly aware of how much more booze per sip I was consuming at any given time, which to me sort of defeated the purpose of having the higher alcohol content.

Will I buy this beer again? Sure. It's not as much of a diva as the Fin; more of a good collaborator with perhaps a white-sauce pasta sauce like carbonara. I had some potato chips with it, since I have little to no class, and it tasted pretty good with them. The main point is that I didn't feel as comfortable drinking this on an empty stomach as I did drinking la Fin du Monde, but they are obviously two different beers with two very different agendas.

Rating:

4 out of 5 cute beer glasses

La Fin du Monde

Availability: Not as close to home as my usual package store, but at one fairly close to work.

Do they also carry Bushmill's 1608? Forgot to check. 'Cos I suck like that. I'll get back to you.

Price comparison: 1.45 times what I pay for everyday beer.

Alcohol percentage by volume: 9%

Cute bottle/label? The label's okay. It also has a foil wrap round the neck; haven't seen one of those in a while. The bottle itself is standard-shaped.

Appearance: Pale, almost like champagne with teensy bubbles chasing up the sides. Stubborn, fluffy foam. Left a lot of suds on the sides of the glass.

Scent: Light and spicy, like perfume.

Flavor: Sweet. I wasn't expecting that. (Been drinking stout all week, my own fault.) Feels almost more like sparkling wine than like beer in my mouth. Good by itself or maybe with something you'd order white wine with, but not a pizza-and-beer sort of beer.

Impressions: This is not a beer to be poured into a mug, even a nice frosty one. Note to self: either get the right sort of glasses or drink it out of the bottle only, because the aroma clashes with the flavor.

Will I buy this beer again? Yes. It's refreshing and interesting. Definitely a good turn-on-the-stereo-and-put-your-feet-up-after-work beer.

Rating:

4.5 out of 5 cute beer glasses