Beer Review - Pere Jacques

Goose Island Brewing Company Pere Jacques Belgian Style Dubbel - 8.7% ABV

The Belgian brewers are the masters of hiding alcohol content.  On numerous occasions I have been blind sided by chugging a couple of high gravity Belgian beers that gave no indication at all of the freight train bearing down on me, leaving me battered and broken and lying in a ditch.  This is not one of those beers.

I typically avoid any Inbev products due to their too often poor quality.  Goose Island is the one line
that I will periodically try some of their specialty beers.  Not that their specialty beers are great, they are just less likely to disappoint. 

This beer was another taken from my aging rack that has been maturing for about a year and I am told that this one peaks at about 3 years and I will tell you why that is a good thing (or a bad thing depending on how you look at it) in a moment.  The smell was of candy sugar, malt and yeasts, which is pretty much matched by the flavor.  The flavor was almost overpowering sweet, which is a bit astonishing as that it had been aging for a year.  Typically the sugars in a sweet beer are devoured by the yeast creating alcohol.  The beer will become less and less sweet as it ages and become stronger and dryer.  This one was still quite sweet after a year, but the alcohol content had gone up considerably, so much so that every time I had a sip I thought, "damn, this has a lot of alcohol".  I think that if I had continued to age it for a few more years that it may have become flammable.  The maltiness is also apparent with a bit of dark fruits in the background.  The Saaz hops that they used are not at all noticeable and as the beer only has an IBU of 26 you hop heads will probably be disappointed. 

Not a great beer but a pretty good beer; I would let it sit a few years to cut into the sweetness.

Goose Island Beer Co.
1800 West Fulton St.
Chicago, IL 60612
http://www.gooseisland.com/