It's all Guld, yo.

Day #613 Gulden Draak 9000 / Brouwerij Van Steenberge, Ertvelde, Belgium
Previously from this brewery: Seriously, make it easy on me and just click here

Continuing on with our Beercycling recap, we stick with Van Steenberge for an interesting beer, the Gulden Draak 9000.  Bottles of ordinary Gulden Draak are readily available near me in the Philly 'burbs, but I was excited to try this alternate version.  The story we heard was that the 9000 was a fortuitous error - during production of Gulden Draak one fateful day, someone forgot to add caramel malts, thus creating a much lighter color beer. The staff at the brewery tried it, figured out it was delicious, and shazam - the 9000 is born.  True story? Don't know, but when it comes from the guy who owns the place, you have a tendency to believe.

This beer has a dark gold color, and once you get past the big fluffy white head, you pick up notes of candi sugar, a honey sweetness, bread, and dark fruits.  Like with all of the beers we sampled, a nice balance of malt and hops, with great flavors folded in.  What you may not notice is that this beer packs a 10.5% ABV, which is serious business.  Really a unique and fantastic beer, a definite highlight of the trip.  Better than the gigantic bottle of aged for four years Gulden Draak that the owner brought from his private collection for us to pound furiously drink respectfully? Maybe not, but that's another story for another time, kids.  Besides, you're sick of hearing about Belgium by now.

Unleash the dragon...

This beer is named for a famous golden dragon statue that sits atop a belfry in Ghent.  I unfortunately do not have a photo of that, so instead you get a photo of a canal that runs through the heart of the town (near said belfry).  The number sequence 9000 is the postal code of Ghent, in case you were wondering (you were).

Nice!

Thing to Think About Today:
If the beer today is the 9000 and we're being all four digit numerical, what if we dropped in some Andre 3000?  Because everyone loves the co-front man from Outkast, I think I'm going to do just that.  Let's wrap up with Hey Ya, always a crowd favorite.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWgvGjAhvIw