I suppose with the weight of alcohol in a 750ml bottle this is more of a sharing beer, but apart from my youngest daughter (3 yrs) who likes to dip her fingers in my beer and taste them and my oldest daughter (18yrs) who doesn’t live with me, I have no one to share with, and so it was with some trepidation that I opened this at seven fifteen on a Saturday night.
I popped the cork on this bottle and was greeted by a thick fog of fruits and yeast.
A good start, right?
Right.
This is one hell of a big beer.
It sits in the glass the colour of rum and coke with a granny’s hairdo of foam and smell, well, divine.
It’s all treacle and pepper and fruits and yeast.
Grand Cru feels oily and sumptuous on your tongue and gives an initial treacle tart flavour, butter shortcrust base and all.
It’s puddingy and plump, with plums steeped in Calvados, while still keeping that Belgian yeast bite that I love so much.
Sitting slap bang in the middle of this beer is an enormous glass of rum, and floating in it are juicy raisins and biscuit crumbs, all of which gives of an alcohol warmth that goes right to your core.
Towards the end the hops have their say with autumnal leafy spices and a dry finish that remains slightly sticky with toffee.
What an absolute beauty of a beer.