Beer 361: Malheur 12

In the embarrassing facts about me category, last evening I was outsmarted by my bottle of Youngs Double Chocolate Stout.  I poured my glass and thoroughly enjoyed it while writing my review. Somehow in the hubbub of eating dinner, cleaning up, finishing writing and finally settling down to relax for a bit, I forgot that I still had beer in the bottle -- it was the big guy -- but my brain didn't make the connection until after I started rinsing out the bottle for recycling. The bottle that still had several ounces of delicious, chocolatey stout in it.

It was quite a scene. Gasping. A stifled scream. Near tears. Now those are signs of a good beer. But lucky for me there was a Malheur 12 waiting to be opened for tonight's review. 

Malheur 12 is a 12% ABV quadrupel brewed by Brouwerij de Landtsheer in Belgium. It pours an opaque brown ale with a loose tan head.  Let me recreate what went through my head with the first sip:  "Wow! Holy flavor!" Then I may or may not have considered knocking Mr. Blog Named Brew over the head with a frying pan and stealing his share of the bottle.

The smell is berries, esters and some copper. The flavor is sweet, rum-like. It has faint notes of punch. It's also earthy and smooth.  Very balanced but nuanced.  Savoring a sip -- breathing through it -- revealed a lot of variations in the flavor. It has a good amount of carbonation and a dry finish. It's amazingly easy to drink even with that ABV. This is an excellent beer.

Cheers!