100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #20
From the people who brought you Gulden Draak and Piraat (yarrr!) comes Augustijn. This is another strong Belgian abbey-style ale, but unlike all those others it’s not nearly as sweet. I’ve had both of those before and while I liked them well enough, they’re both awful sweet. Gulden Draak was described to me as “candy”, in fact. So I’d say I enjoy them only every once in a while. I was nervous this beer might be more of the same.
Well, it’s not. Being in the same family of abbey ales, it’s still sweet and strong. Don’t get me wrong. However, sweetness is not its primary characteristic. It’s a light golden colored beer, highly effervescent, and with the kind of head that could be formed into shapes. This means something. This is important.
The taste is very complex. There’s sweet and sour flavors, citrus fruit, miscellaneous spices, perhaps even some honey. I’m terrible about describing flavors as you have noticed by now, and I’m especially horrible at picking out flavors when there are so many to choose from in each mouthful. Suffice it to say you’ll have a lot to think about if you try this one out. Strangely enough, I got a distinct corny flavor towards the end. Now I know they wouldn’t really use corn in a Belgian beer so I must be wrong about this, or at least be getting the presence of corn from the interaction of other flavors. However, that’s what I noticed towards the end.
All in all, a decent beer with an intriguing set of flavors. I enjoyed it more than those candy beers but I don’t think I would drink more than one in any given week.