The Fourth Beer Of Christmas. If you’re following our instructions and working your way through this list on Christmas Day, then you’re about to be fully lubricated for the Airing Of Grievances. No, YOU listen, damnit!
The Grande Réserve is a Unibroue beer, part of the Sapporo beverage corporation through their Sleaman’s label. It’s an aged extra strong dark ale, which we’ve gone over in the last few posts. A little bit confusing as the label mentions both aged “with” french oak and bottle-refermenting. I’m not sure if it was cask aged, bottled and reyeasted, or as is becoming popular with smaller distilleries, if it’s a chunk of wood fully submerged in the drink. You would assume once you put the yeast in to eat the oxygen in the bottle you wouldn’t open it again but I’m not sure.
Unibroue makes this once a year and numbers the bottles to make sure you feel good and fancy pounding back a beer that’s still partly alive. Creepy, ain’t it? This one was numbered 149699 and here’s what we thought:
smell
Matt – yeast note, smells like Unibroue
Ryan – sediment, foggy, piney
Simon – light colour, grape
Dan – cherry, grass, metallic at end
Goran – grass
taste
Matt – wood, smooth, tastes like a 7%
Ryan – tart finish
Simon – sweet, honey, clean finish, doesn’t taste like 10%
Dan – ginger, spice, bright, not as thick, carbonated
Goran – coffee, walnut, toasted nut bitterness
Unibroue 17 Grand Réserve – 10% 750ml – $9.95 – Quebec
Try it? Yes. Buy it? Yes?
[…] Read the review […]
[…] horsepower. This is sort of our second dance with the Unibroue 17 Grand Reserve, having previous tried the 2013 version. Neither is an every day drinker for sure, but a solid dinner party stand-in for a bottle of wine. […]