A while back I brewed a Belgian Abby ale that I called The First Tuesday after the First Monday Abby Ale. The original was an extract brew that I was really pleased with. Now that I have a little lag time in between large volume brews, I figured I would try a 5 or 10 gallon abby again.
In line with coming up with a good brew, I want to do some tasting to decide what I want out of my Dubbel. This brewing in hard stuff.
Anyway, since Wegmans is pimping out with a huge beer selection I figured I would hit them up for an Dubbel I hadn’t tried before. This is Val-Dieu Brune, an authentic Belgian Dubbel that gets much BA love. I have also been doing some other tastings of Dubbel’s in the past few months so I had a lot to think about with this new Val-Dieu.
The nose had hits of brandy with sweet nutty aromas. The color was lighter than both the New Belgium and the Ommegang with hues of red matching the traditional mahogany. The mouth feel of this brew was less intense than many of the other bottle conditioned brews. It was light, sweet and had a creamy feel going down. The flavor was a lot more mellow then some of the other Dubbel’s I’ve had. There were hints of smokiness in the flavor that blended well with the traditional raisin sweet candy of the Dubbel’s profile. There was little or no alcohol burn going down on this one. Very easy to drink for a beer this big.
In the big picture of things, I would say that this is close to what I want to hit. I want something a little less big and bold than the Ommegang, but I also want to drink a Dubbel when I go to drink a dubbel. However, I would not add the smokey earthiness that the Val-Dieu.
More to come on the recipe with this one…Cheers.
Why is there no Wegmans in Watertown? Can you have a word with someone down there?
I know, Wegmans is a beautiful thing.