Popped the cork on a bottle of this over the weekend and quite enjoyed it. Fairly fresh, March 2016 bottle date.
Poured it straight from the fridge which I realized was way too cold. Had a sharp almost metallic aroma when it was that cold. Let it sit in the glass to warm and that went away. Strong fruity/bubblegum esters that I love in a Belgian. A little sweet, lots of malt. Really good example of a Belgian Dark Strong. Really nice.
A little spendy at 8$ for a .5L bottle, but cork finished, bottle conditioned Belgian not bad.
I pay around that here. I agree - most commercial beers are so pricey, I don’t buy unless I’ve had it before or a trusted friend recommends it. There’s a s#!t ton of mediocre beer out there. Mine is better than mediocre.
Brother Thelonious is spotty quality wise for me. That’s not a dig against North Coast but more of a logistics thing. We don’t get a ton of it in the northeast and its either really fresh or a bit old.
I personally like BT when it’s old. When it’s green I am not a big fan.
Yeah, now that I think about it the price is really not that bad. Even with 1,000,000,000,000,000 choices here in Oregon a good number of 22s run in the 6.99-7.99 range. Stuff like Firestone Walker and Arrogant Bastard run in the 12-30$ range, which I know is good stuff but that starts to get a little hard to pay. Ballast Point is like 17$ for a sixer of 12s which really boggles my mind when good local stuff like Deschutes and Hop Valley is like 7$ a sixer. Oh well… to each their own. I have a few things I’m willing to pay for. The 20$ bomber of Ninkasi Ground Control made with yeast from space was worth every penny (it was also a phenomenal beer).
