Brasserie Dupont Avec les Bons Voeux

The name simply means "With the best wishes from the brewery Dupont". Originally it was given as a gift by the brewery to their best clients, but with its popularity they decided to commercially sell the beer. It's an unfiltered light beer, in the same style as the famous Saison Dupont, but brewed in restricted quantities. The brewery is still independent and family run.

This beer poured a cloudy golden brown, with some floating white sediment appearing in the glass. There was also a huge rocky off-white head that had amazing retention. Lacing was left all over the glass from the beer.

The smell was somewhat bitter, with a touch of skunk apparent in the nose at first, but really not in an unpleasant way. There was a huge wildness to the smell, grassy, earthy, with some wild flowers mixed in. Spice comes through a bit as well, but it's mostly the smell of wild Belgian yeast. There's always this amazingly natural and wild smell to saisons that I just can't get enough of.

The taste just overwhelms the mouth with the very definition of a wild beer. It's like Ommegeddon mixed with Duvel. There was banana and wild flowers present in the taste. It just had this raw quality to it that's hard to describe. It's really not all that sweet tasting, but rather a nice grassy hop bitterness coats the tongue. Normally I wouldn't like a hop dominated flavor but this beer pulls it off so well. It's just wild and untamed. It's a bit tart tasting, but just amazing.

The beer is light in body, with strong tingling carbonation. It even feels good in the mouth. There's a bit of smooth coating left on the teeth, and some warming when it went down the throat. Overall the feel is just light and a bit airy.

Wow. This was an insanely easy beer to drink. I think saisons may be at the top of my favorite styles, and this is definitely the best I've had yet. It even beat out Ommegeddon, which was one of my favorite beers. It's hard to believe that something this good is only rated #4 on Beer Advocate, but I haven't had any of the ones rated higher yet. It's also pretty hard to believe that this beer was 9.5% ABV, since it barely had any indication of the level of alcohol in it. I don't think beer gets much better than this.

- Adam

De Koninck

If you pick up a bottle of De Koninck, you might find yourself asking, "What's with the hand?" Both the label and the bottle cap feature a white hand. Apparently, this comes from an Antwerp landmark, a border post with a statue of a hand, that sits by the coach house that eventually became Brouwerij De Konninck. An interesting side note on this beer - if you ever find yourself in the Cafe Pelgrim located by the brewery, they apparently have a bucket of yeast delivered daily so patrons can take a shot of it with the beer.

Not having any of the De Koninck "bolleke" glasses, we poured into our Chimay glasses, which are similarly shaped. Many Belgian establishments take the glassware very seriously for a beer, and if the proper glass type isn't available they may refuse to serve it. Dan and I aren't so picky as that, but if we have something close we like to use it. One of the reasons is that the shape of the glass effects the way the aromas are released from the beer. Since aroma is so strongly linked to taste, this also has a great impact on how the flavor of the beer comes out.

Like Orval and Leffe, this is considered a Belgian Pale Ale. There's multiple styles of Belgian Ales, so it can be a bit confusing, but I'd say the main 4 categories are Pale, Dark, Strong Pale, and Strong Dark. I'm not sure where the line is drawn between a pale and a dark right now, but the strong ales have a higher alcohol content.

The beer pours a reddish brown that's a little on the cloudy side. It's almost a copper color. There's a small white head, not quite a finger thick, that dissipated fairly quickly and didn't leave any lacing on the glass.

The aroma was a bit on the mild side. It consisted of a blend of apple cider and grassy hops. There's an underlying biscuity smell as well, possibly from the grain and yeast. From the smell I'm expecting some sweet fruity flavors and a bready quality to the beer.

The actual taste has a slightly bitter start that was unexpected, but not unpleasant. There's a muted sweet flavor in there as well, along with some grassy notes. Overall I noted that the flavor was extremely well balanced. The finish was on the dry side, so not really a thirst quencher, but very smooth and palatable.

The mouthfeel was light, and highly carbonated. There's definitely a good tingle to the beer. It had a nice medium body though, so this offset the carbonation well. As previously stated, it is a little dry.

Overall this was a very drinkable beer. Because the flavor is so well balanced, and the alcohol content is not high like many other Belgian beers, the only thing that might keep me from going through a lot of these is the dryness. I can see the similarity to Leffe in it, but not so much with Orval, other than the color. This was definitely a worthwhile purchase, and one I'd go back to try again. Between this and Leffe Blond, I'm not sure which would be the winner for me, but really you can't go wrong with either.

- Adam