Review: Cuvee de Noel – Aledvent Calendbeer 19
Beer: Cuvee de Noel
Brewery: St. Feuillien
Type: Belgian Strong Ale
Served: Bottled
Alc: 9% Vol.
Aledvent Calendbeer Number: 19
Its been an up and down few ales during Aledvent Calendbeer recently, but we’re firmly back on track with this festive treat. Its a promising 9% on the old fashioned bottle, but I’ll come to this later.
Its a very satisfying drink to pour, the smell hits you as you drop it into a pint glass, the nose immediately hitting yours and a very dense foamy head bubbling up a light yellow/amber; this colour, for this reviewer, is nearly always a good sign. You can smell the yeast working away as well mixed in with the banana and butterscotch notes; from this you can tell this is beer that lays it on thick with a trowel from a brewery that clearly knows what its doing.
The colour itself is a rick chestnutty brown and the persistant head you’ll notice after a moment or so starts to be speckled with dense dots of dark orange.
As soon as you taste it that yeast comes in to play again, so much so its almost prickly to the tongue; its a fantastic sensation. You can really taste the yeast on the foretaste as well, giving it a very coca-cola style hit of sweetness. This sweetness follows on through to the mid-taste of caramel. The after-taste then melds this into a butterscotch that dominates the mouth a long time after the taste. It holds on fantastically and actually gums the lips a little. Its deliciously sickly and the whole thing tastes like a coke float. But its that strong, 9% punch of alcohol that really works the magic here, really offsetting and contradicting the sweetness.
This is a fine beer and the first I believe I’ve tried from this brewery; I’ll definitely be checking more out from the makers of this in the coming year.
Ale to the King. 