What's In My Glass: 8/5/11

Apologies for not posting an entry yesterday, after the veritable beer fest that broke out Wednesday night I decided to change things up and stick with wine last night. The first beer from tonight I'd like to talk about is Unibroue's La Fin du Monde.

This is a beer that I've known for a long time has a great reputation (as does Unibroue in general), and is pretty easy to find as far as craft beer availability goes. I guess it's relatively ubiquitous nature never made it "exciting" enough to try, but I'm glad I finally got around to picking up a bottle of this one. It's one of the best examples of a tripel I've ever had. The aroma and flavor are both chock full of sweet  pale fruits (think apples and pears) and some light pepper and clove notes from the yeast. There's also a subtle warming sensation from the alcohol.  One of the hallmarks of a world class Belgian beer is an out of this world mouthfeel that combines a relatively dry bodied beer with a relatively bubbly carbonation. It's hard to brew something like that right, and it's the one place where I think La Fin du Monde misses just a little bit. I don't know whether the body comes across as just too heavy, or the carbonation doesn't have quite enough kick, but it's the only real chink in this beer's armor. I drank it on its own tonight, but in my mind this is a great food beer to go with something like chicken.

Beer number two tonight is one that I was very much looking forward to, only to be a bit let down, Breckenridge Vanilla Porter.

I'm a big fan of dark, roasty beers like porters and stouts in general, and adding vanilla usually just turns things up a notch. Aside from the vanilla being a great flavor on its own, it also usually helps highlight any chocolaty flavors to be found in the beer in question. This one though was just lackluster in every sense of the word. The vanilla was there, but tasted like it came from some cheap vanilla extract rather than the imported vanilla beans that were actually used. In addition the only other flavor really present is one of toasted nuts that would be welcome in an English brown ale, but is a bit out of place in a porter taking the place of notes of coffee and/or dark chocolate. Just about the only thing this one has going for it is an impressively rich and full body for only being 4.7%ABV. This was my first beer from Breckenridge, and I won't be in a rush to try another.