2005 draught pint at Red Bones on 11/12/05. Dark copper amber with a thin beige head, well-retained. Smells like cherries and cranberries. That’s about it. Some sweetness to the cherries, but little in the way of thick malts and certainly no hops apparency. Just lightly dry toffee at best. At first sip, the amount of fruity yeast apparency is quite surprising. All kinds of fruity esters apparent, cherries, plums, cranberries, apples, blackberries. Sweeter than expected malt interacts with the yeast to produce what I would describe most closely as candied apples and caramel-covered apples. Syrupy texture is soft (very low carbonation) and soothing, while the medium-full body is predominantly sweet. No hop apparency. Alcohol dries the flavor out to add balance, without any harsh fusel notes. Tone down Avery Samaels intense, near-cloying sweetness, subtract the oak, add back the mouthfeel that was removed from filtration and it comes out similar to this.

Hazy brick colour. Toasty, caramelly aroma and palate. Sligtht earthiness and phenols. Rather poorly developed flavour profile. Sort of fizzy, which isn’t normal in their beers. Not up to their usually high standards. As it seemingly wasn’t much when mjames visited and it is low season at North Fork, I wonder if this beer hasn’t been sitting around too long. I’ll give this another shot in winter.

OnTap at the North Fork. A cloudy light yellow/amber with a slight white film of a head. Lots of fine sheeting lacing. A distinctive belgian yeat aroma but faint and a bit lemony from the wedge they stuck on my glass. Soft unfiltered feel that had very low carbonation and the expected belgian spiciness. All flavors seemed subdued and soft and worked very well togeher.

1 1/2 years old. Very dark amber colour. The aroma is malty, showing brown sugar, cherry and hints of toffee. Soft body. Chewy, richly fruity and malty flavour (toffee, demerara, cherry, burnt plum). Just a hint of alcohol in the finish provides nice balance. A quaffable BW.

Dark amber colour. Light toffeeish aroma. Chewy, big toffee flavour with demerara. Long finish. Lots of hops, too, providing a bitterness that clashes with the rich malts because it takes the beer in two different directions at the same time. So definitely a soft bittering hop would complement the malts better.

Cloudy dull amber colour. Very floral aroma with plenty of woodiness. Fairly toasty maltiness, but with lively fruit notes and lots of American hops as well. A fun, flavourful and most importantly well-structured amber. Re-rate confirms this.

Update: Three resamples since that glorious pint in May ’05 and it’s really not lived up to that. A decent hefe, bouncing between sweet and tart, with a bit of a dirty yeastiness. Quite variable in character, but sadly I can’t keep the old score.

May 22, 2005: Densely-sedimented light tan colour. Rich, thick head. Fruity aroma - wheat, banana, peaches, sweat. Excellent banana character with hints of leather and sweat, and lots of clean, sweet pale malts. One of the best I’ve ever had. Ar 8 Ap 5 F 8 P 5 O18 = 4.4

Dark amber colour. Strong and sweet. A lot of brown sugary dark malt notes, a little bit of toastiness.