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Beer Reviews

Abt

New Glarus Brewing Company
New Glarus, WI
USA
http://www.newglarusbrewing.com/

Style: Abt/Quadrupel
ABV: 9.75%

Eddie’s Rating:
one beerone beerone beerone beerone beer   (Outstanding within its style.)


Comments:
It’s back to the Belgians again for New Glarus with Abt, a beer from their Unplugged Series. The name comes from Flemish monks who brewed up a special beer in honor of their abbot. When they texted each other about the beer, they shortened it to Abt.

Come to think of it, I’m not quite sure about that last tidbit of historical knowledge. You might want to verify that fact on something other than Wikipedia …

The brew slides out of the bottle a slightly muddy amber, but once settling in the goblet it’s more of a dark, dark ruby. The head’s your basic tan color, fine-bubbled and quite sticky.

The aroma is yeasty—really yeasty—bread-like, mixed with earthy malt, and peppered with spicy phenols in the background. The first sip smacks the tongue with sugary sweet malt, but later sips fade into a mix of spicy Belgian yeast (although not powerfully so) and autumnal maltiness. Abt finishes with a touch of musty hops, keeping things shorter than the sweetness of the rest of the sip would predict.

This is a very good beer. At cooler temps the flavors are masked, and at first blush the beer seems a bit thin and one-dimensional. Drink it warmer and it opens up, showing its subtle complexities despite a relatively light body. Also despite that light body is some hefty alcohol: 9.75 percent (probably from copious amounts of “Belgian Dark Candi Sugar”—also known as “sugar”—dumped into the boil). A good sign that those monks could really live it up when toasting the old man. I hope they didn’t drunk text afterward, though. I think that’s a sin. But don’t quote me on that.

Reviewed by Eddie Glick on November 12, 2010.
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