Bottle. Figgy, rich, with lots of alcohol, soft molasses, sweet sugars, beautiful soft fruits. Yum.

One of Lost Abbey's variations on the old Belgian abbey beer theme, a quadrupel this time, apparently enriched with raisins and refermented with Brettanomyces; 75 cl bottle at Uncle Babe's in Ghent. Thick, pale beige, bubbly and coarse but more or less stable head, yet dissolving into practically nothing in the end; very dark bronze-burgundy robe, almost blackish in general appearance but translucent. Aroma of cola, plums soaked in rum, raisin bread, toffee, ketjap, reduced gravy, soy sauce even, honey, dry wood, brown rum and bourbon, treacle, marmalade. Very sweet onset, bit cloying in fact, cola- and pear syrup-like, raisins, marmalade accent matched with a light gravy- or ketjap-tinged umami factor; thick toffeeish malt body with cashew nut-like edges, still firmly drenched in pear syrup sweetness but drier in the end, when cinnamon- and dried orange peel-like spicy notes pop up alongside a long, warming, rum-like alcohol effect - yet the whole thing remains very sweet. Too sweet for me personally, and too sweet even for a quad - though clearly this beer has a ton of flavours buried underneath this syrupy sweetness and boast a very full, rounded body, more so even than is standard in Belgian quadrupels. Very interesting beer, unusual for a quad, but to me personally, far from Lost Abbey's best, though admittedly the age of this bottle must have something to do with that - should retry this in younger condition.