Unplugged Abt
Sampled January 2011 A vigorous pour into my Lost Abbey Teku glass produces a four-finger thick, lightly amber tinged, tan colored head. The beer is a dark, concentrated amber to full brown color that shows a brilliantly bright clear, deep ruby with amber leanings hue when held up directly to the light. The aroma smells quite sweet with fruity notes of Brandy, alcohol soaked raisins and fortified plum wine that have all been fortified with cotton candy sugar. The nose also has a good measure of bubble-gum and spicy, turpene-like clove in the finish. If you really dig for it, the finish has a hint of nutty and / or toasty whole grain character to it. Despite all the aromas, this beer smells fairly simplistic, a bit too cloying and a bit too hotly of alcohol; if there was some malt complexity to the nose it would go a long way towards tempering these other notes that can be quite nice when they are part of a balanced beer. Up front this beer isn't quite as cloying as the nose suggested, as it first hits the tongue the beer is sweet, but has some peppery carbonation and tongue lingering clove character to it. As the beer rolls across the tongue it picks up flavors of bubble gum, sweeter clove notes, . The beer finishes with a hot alcohol note that is joined by a lot of higher alcohol notes (that don't quite get to, but suggest at flavors of acetone) that remind me of poorly distilled fruit eau de vie (perhaps even more distinctly like distilled grape skins). As the beer warms up it starts to pick up some butterscotch like notes that help to accentuate an underlying malt character that suggests of caramelized malt, a touch of nutty toasted malt, . The body of this beer is not nearly as cloying as I had initially feared, it is perhaps even on the light bodied side, which is usually a good thing, but when paired with the fusel notes in the finish perhaps finishes a bit too thin (this seems to need more malt / body to stand up to the alcohols). I really wish I wasn't so disappointed with so many of New Glarus' beers. There regular lineup and their wheat beers are stellar, but so many of these Belgian leaning special beers just seem to be lacking in much needed complexity and completeness; the best I can describe it is to say these taste like they are filtered all to hell (even if they aren't and it is just the ingredients / brewing process that makes them seem so).