East End The Ugly American

Aroma: 8 | Appearance: 10 | Mouthfeel: 8 | Flavor: 9 | Overall: 9

Fall 2008 release; Sampled January 2009
A normal pour into my large Tripel Karmeliet glass has me noticing a nicely hoppy (fruitily American accented) scent as well as a backdrop of Belgian Yeast aromatics. The beer ends up with a finger and a half thick layer of frothy, pale tan colored foam. The beer is a rich honey color that shows a bright, clear, copper color when held up to the light. Ahhh, the nose is quite heavenly, more hoppy than anything else, but there is still a substantial Trippel contributing to the aromatics. Hop aromatics of lychee, tropical fruit, candied tangelo zest, and kumquat oil have a backdrop of fermentation character that makes me think of bubblegum, ripe pear, a touch of white pepper, some young ginger in the finish and a solid spicy clove note. I really like the aroma of this one, there is something about combining American hops with a Trippel that always hits the spot for me.

A light, but prickly carbonation up front couples with a touch of body, but still easy drinking quaffability from the light texture. The beer tastes like juicy-fruit bubblegum up front, with a middle and finish that sees a lingering, spicy, clove like turpene character that lightly abrades the tongue. There is a solid hop bitterness to this beer (noticeable compared to a typical Trippel, but not overly aggressive compared to an IPA) as well as a touch of astringency; there is a spiciness to the finish (a bit of pepper, hot alcohol, and the spicy phenolics) that almost provides more balancing character to the fruity hops and fermentation notes than the bitterness. Fruity, fermentation derived, flavors of pear, honeydew melon and perhaps a touch of aromatic apple are buoyed by fruity hop notes of lychee, apricot, aromatic peach and amped up, über-fruity, candied citrus zest. There is also a touch of the more herbal hop components here, but only just barely; hints of pine-needles and a touch of menthol. The heft of this beer is awesome, there is just enough viscous character to hold up the hops and spiciness, but it still is very drinkable.

This is one of those beers that started out strong in the flavor, but had some un-balanced notes that kept it from being schweet, but it is just growing on me more and more as I work my way through this one-thousand milliliters. Well the one damning condemnation for this beer is that my one liter share of it disappeared a lot faster than I would ever have thought possible; in fact before I cracked this I had resigned myself to the fact that I would not be able to finish this bottle in one sitting. Oh how wrong I was, this is exceedingly quaffable, I want more, not only that, but I want a freshly bottled example. I am not sure fresh would be better as it might lose the balance this has, but it would be wonderful to experience the hop character in a closer to raw state.

Aroma: 4 | Appearance: 6 | Mouthfeel: 2 | Flavor: 3 | Overall: 4

Yep, sure is ugly for a lager lover. Special flip top bottle directly from the brewery. Way too much bitter hops and alky and over the top. This is the combination of a rude alky trippel and an IPA....... If you like those types of beers, better get this. Probably should be classified as a trippel IPA! heheheheh I don't like hops, so please ignore my niumbers hop dudes.