Bottle - Sweet raisin and dark fruit. deep brown with a small light brown head. Dark fruit and lots of woody notes with a bit of a dry finish. Base is nice, but some of the woody notes in the taste are a bit distracting.

Draught @ 7th Borefts Beer Festival 2015, Brouwerij de Molen, Bodegraven, Netherlands. [ As De Molen Cedar-Wood Infused Quad ].Clear dark brown color with a small to average, frothy, fair lacing, mostly diminishing, off-white head. Aroma is moderate malty, sweet malt, candy, dark malt. Flavor is moderate to heavy sweet and moderate bitter with a long duration, woody, roasted, candy, sweet malt, sugary. Body is medium, texture is oily to watery, carbonation is soft. [20150925]

330ml bottle. Pours a hazy reddish-brown with a thin, fully dissipating, tan head. Sweet aroma of dark fruit, caramel malt, alcohol and cedar. Sweet flavour of dark fruit, caramel malt, chocolate malt, brown sugar and cedar with a dry, mildly bitter alcohol finish. Medium body with a sticky, syrupy texture and soft carbonation. Pretty decent.

Bottle, poured warm and slow into a tulip glass. Hard to coax some decent head out of this one, okay brown body and clear and all that. Aroma reminds me of that time I threw all the breath mints into my coca-cola, on a whim, or a joke, or a dare, I can’t care to remember. All that barley-wine stuff, some pine-sol, some Aunt Jemima thrown in for good measure. Flavour is varnished oak, licking on a leg of a piece of cabinet furniture from 1780 in the palace of Versailles; the tour guide is just staring at you like "quel est la fuoq!?!?" and you’re just down there sprawled out with your tongue out on this wooden leg of Charlemagne’s daughter. Or something. But there you go, slobbering away, the fat American woman just retired at 57 from the DMV taking pictures and Instagramming them with the caption "OMG wtf never cummin back 2 France" and the Germans just tightening up their white socks to make sure they don’t fall over their Birkenstocks; you have no idea, though, you’re just goin’ at it trying to get all that sugary 18th century varnish goodness with a hint of wood. Try not to get a splinter on your tongue. Kinda tart on the back end as security finally grabs you and tosses you to the curb. What the hell, time for a Kronenburg down at the cafe after that experience anyway.

Bottle from De Molen’s beer shop. Quite thick, yellowish beige, loosely structured, lightly lacing head dissolving quickly but retaining on the edges and as a light beige veil over the beer’s surface; initially clear, deep purplish burgundy robe with bright ruby hue, misty with deposit. Aroma of nut shells, wet cardboard, field mushroom, cherry pits, wet wood but not necessarily cedar, cranberry, mouldy tree leaves, toffee and even ’Haagse hopjes’, old dusty cocoa powder, damp cloth, forest floor, liquorish, haemoglobin, old madera, ginger. Fairly intense in the mouth, lovely candied cherry and fig sweetness at first with a deep, red berry-like sourishness underlying it as well as a fainter, dried mushroom-like umami accent; soft carbo even for the style. Lean, supple, somewhat oily malt body, caramelly and sweet with a very pleasant nuttiness to it and ending in toasted malt bitterness, further accentuated by notably peppery hops, an unmistakable wood taste (almost ’furniture’-like) and a pronounced presence of bourbon- or sherry-like alcohol, a little bit wry on the root of the tongue; retronasally, apart from the spicy hops and some lingering dried fruit, the cedar wood flavour returns and adds an extra layer of complexity. Ends fairly dry, bittersweet malts, hops and wood are still palpable after swallowing, but so is a flavour (and heat) of alcohol and that is just a bit too much for me. As always with De Molen, a fascinating flavour ’parcours’ from nose to finish, a lot happening here, but there is a strange ’old cloth’ aspect to the nose which I cannot put my finger on and the alcohol is just a tad too ’hot’ for even a quadrupel. Interesting beer for sure, but I think it would have been better to wait a few years (this bottle is a half year old) so that the sharper flavours can calm down a bit - I am therefore convinced that within a couple of years, this will be a very rich and more balanced beer than it is now, as is often the case with the strong Molen ales.

33 cl bottle @ home. Mostly clear, dark brown color. Beige head, not much and quickly receding. Aroma’s: dried fruit, raisins, cola, sweet. Retronasal it’s sweet, sticky toffee, dried fruit, something a bit refreshing on the inside of the mouth, like mint, but different (is this the cedar?). Flavor is sweet, sticky toffee cake. Rather full bodied. Soft carbonation. Long finish, with just light bitterness.

Many thanks to my EU Secret Santa 2015! Dark roasted thick brown beginning. Malt, caramel. Not much bitterness - and not much cedar wood there. There are woody hints of the background of this imposant rich brew, but not worth mentioning. Thick and rich dark sweetish malty aftertaste, hints of dry roast, thick and rich beer with only hints of wood. Sad as I like cedar...

Dark brown colour, beige foam; Sweet nose of caramel and stone fruit. Bitter and woody finish. Notes of citra hops. Good, maybe a bit unbalanced.