On tap@Cimmeria, Oviedo. 30/01/2020 Color marrón corona de espuma blanca, aromas ácidos, sabor maltosa, madera notas ácidas, cuerpo medio.

Caña en Cimmeria 01..01..2020. Color oscuro turbio con espuma blanca oscuro. Sabores maltosos ligeramente tostados con toques ácidos suaves y suaves alicorados. Cuerpo medio con densidad ligera tipo licor. Se esperaba algo más, es como si algo no acabará de encajar del todo bien.

Bottle, 750 ml, courtesy of kajser27. Shared with him, Max and Fran. Brown, with beige head. Caramel, some dried fruit, barrel, some sweetness, sourish. Medium bodied.

Shrewsbury Beer Share Group Meeting, Chez Sophie; 28th Oct 2019. Cheers Mat for this 750ml bottle. Slight haze to the brown body, beige head on top. I love the base beer, but this didn't sit well with me at all, more like an old, oxidized original than a barrel aged blend. For me, the worst beer from this brewery I've had.

75cl bottle @ monthly tasting, Chez Sophie, Oct 19, paired with St Bernardus Abt 12 pâté and warm tomato and cheddar ciabatta. Pours hazed dark brown, frothy off-white head. Familiar rich sweet quadrupel nose, lactic hints. Taste and body seems lifted somewhat by gentle oud bruin notes, a little cola, the abt12 is there, but lighter than usual. I expect the blending with the original was necessary to bring a bit of life back to the beer. Interesting blend, but I'm not fully convinced.

A sour version of the legendary Sint-Bernardus Abt 10, limitedly available in the fall of 2019 in 75 cl bottles with cork and muselet. Irregularly edged, off-white, mousy, dissolving head on a misty chestnut brown beer with coppery hue, near clear initially but clouded with sediment. Aroma of sour apples, Liège pear syrup, yoghurt, lemon juice from a plastic bottle, caramel, calvados, brown sugar, fig, redcurrant jam, some glue-ish solventy effects. Sweet and sour onset, sour gooseberry and apple effect but ‘superficially’ so, with the – lactic – sourness forming a layer on top of the regular sweet and malty Abt profile rather than deeply penetrating it; candied fig, brown sugar and pear syrup aspects interact with a caramelly malt body, leading to a sweet finish with still that superficial lactic sourness on top, only adding a very mildly drying effect; light herbal hop bitterishness, no woodiness worth mentioning (so how about that whole “barrel ageing” thing then?) and warming calvados-like alcohol appear in the end. Only lightly sour, this is among the most prudent and subdued of sour ales I had so far: there certainly is a lactic sourness to it, but as said, it only acts as a thin layer on top of the regular Abt character, and does not further interact with it. Feels all too ‘easy’, but I can imagine an established brewery like Sint-Bernardus not putting trust in working with actual mixed fermentation (let alone spontaneous fermentation) – so my educated guess here is that they simply added a splash of industrial, ‘instant’ lactic acid to Sint-Bernardus Abt (much like Alken-Maes used to do with Zulte), or they even made a downright mistake by pouring in too much of it accidentally and then trying to sell it off as a sour, cleverly considering how sour ales are a hot thing among craft beer lovers today. In any case this is kind of a ‘fake’ sour, like the aforementioned Zulte of years ago, with a similar ‘imitation oud bruin’ profile to it. In all: enjoyable, but rather in spite of the lactic acid addition (and thanks to the Abt being an extremely solid beer) than thanks to it.

19/X/19 - 75cl bottle @ Wim VL's Stoofvlees Tasting, BB: 13/VI/19 - (2019-1748) Thanks to Alengrin for sharing the bottle!

Clear red brown beer, small creamy beige head, unstable, non adhesive. Aroma: lots of caramel, dried fruits, pretty oxidized, lots of CO2, bit metallic, some solvents. MF: very lively carbon, medium body. Taste: sweet, fruity start, bit oxidized, caramel, some dried fruits, red berries, more fruit. Aftertaste: pretty metallic, bit malty, dried fruits, soft acidity, decent and original, but not as good as I had hoped for.

Imported from untappd on 02-05-2020