Brewery: Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, Delaware, USA

Brewery Description: “A deep, mahogany ale brewed with beet sugar, green raisins, and Belgian-style yeast. As complex as a fine, red wine. Voted “American Beer of the Year” in January 2000 by Malt Advocate Magazine.”

Brew Style: Belgian Strong Dark Ale, 8.0% ABV

Recommended Glassware: Goblet, Snifter

The Ugly Truth: First off, sorry its taken me so long to get a new review out.  Been real busy at work lately so just haven’t has the time to do it.

Alright, Dogfish Head Raison D’Etre (reason for being in French) is this session’s offering.  The beer presented with a beautiful warm amber/mahogany color with some ruby highlights when held up to the light.  Minimal head, which I think is off the norm for the style but I could be wrong there.  This is the same style as Chimay Blue, which I’ve had but not in a long time.  There were a lot of bottom rising carbonation bubbles in the beer, at lot more than the taste reflected later on.

Aroma wise, very good nose on it.  Mostly alcohol and malt sweetness, with what I felt were  strong hints of raisin/dried cherry to it.  Overall a good aroma on the beer, aided by the carbonation bubbles.  No hint of hops in the aroma, pretty much all malt.

The body of the beer was medium to medium heavy and felt slick in the mouthfeel for me.  It has a sweet taste to it overall, with the dried cherry notes coming out in the end.  There was very little bitterness in the flavor, primarily consisting of malt sweetness balanced by strong alcohol flavors.  The alcohol gave it a bit of a sharp bite at the end that was pleasant.  I didn’t find it to have what I would call a lingering aftertaste.  I did find that even though I enjoyed the beer at the start, the taste started to lose its appeal about three quarters of the way through.

Overall, I liked this beer.  Not an awesome brew, but definitely solid and one I would recommend for people to try.  It didn’t blow me away, but it was good.  This would probably make a good after dinner beer or late fall/early winter offering.  Its not the best beer I’ve ever had from Dogfish, but its certainly not bad.  My experience with Belgian Strong Ales is somewhat limited so I’m interested to try some more to see what I think in comparison.

Verdict: Good stuff, but not great.  7 out of 10 bottlecaps.