Birthday Beer 12/15/2009 and 12/16/2009

Eitan: Going out for dinner for my birthday does did have a bunch of advantages. One of them being good food, the other, good beer.

At the Farm on Adderley I had two beers. The first beer was the Southern Tier Harvest Ale. I wasn't happy how it was poured from the bottle, but the beer was pretty good. Nice golden color with a foamy white head. It had a nice hoppy smell. However, the hops taste was not so overwhelming, a nice mix of crisp bitter grapefruit with a hint of sweetness, possibly something like apple. It was very crisp with a nice medium body. Overall a very enjoyable and drinkable beer.

The other beer I had at the Farm was a Belgian one. It was La Botteresse Noire. The had a blonde and another one, but I went with the Noire. It was poured from an 11.2 oz bottle in to a La Chouffe glass. It poured a dark brown color with a huge amount of beige colored head. It had a smell of a good amount of spices and a mix of sweetness. Something along the lines of caramel, licorice and dark fruits, like plums. It had a taste that was similar to a barley wine. At 10%, it was close to being somewhere between a triple and a quadruple. It tasted a bit spicy with some molasses sweetness and plum or prunes. You could slightly taste the alcohol, but it was not off putting at all. It was a medium/heavy body brew, not super smooth, but entirely drinkable. Very good if drinking it slow and savoring all of it.

The second night of dinner, at Markt, I decided on the Maredsous 10 -Triple. It is definitely a modest triple. It is not the best triple out there, but it is good beer to have nonetheless. It was poured from a bottle into a Maredsous wide flute glass. It had a nice amber color with about 1/2 inch white head, with slight retention and a bit of lacing. It had a spicy and sweet smell to it. I would say a heavy mixture of cinnamon and sugar. It started of tasting more on the spicy side with a hint of sweetness and finishing on the spicy side, there was a hint of the taste of the alcohol. It had good carbonation and a medium body. It definitely felt a bit warm while drinking it.