A Pint Half Full

Three of my good friends chipped in to sign me up to three months with the Rare Beer Club.  This privies me to 2 750 ml bottles of "rare" beer a month.  Stuff that I've never heard before brewed with ingredients that I have yet to fully experience in my craft beer journey.  How rare you ask?  Only a few thousand barrels of these beers are brewed and this club has bought half of the stock for its members.  How do I know?  The Club sends a newsletter along with each beer you receive describing, in excruciating detail, everything from the brewery's background, the thought process behind the beer, and tasting notes.  By the way, this newsletter is front and back, single spaced, 12 pt font.  Pretty intense.

I read through the newsletter for De Proef Brouwerij's (it's Belgian) Flemish Primitive Wild Ale 2008 Special Vintage Reserve and quickly became overwhelmed.  This beer was brewed back in 2008, using wild yeast and a mix of your typical beer ingredients (hops and malt) and gruit.  Gruit apparently is a mix of spices that was used in beer before hops were used for its aroma, flavor, and preservative nature.  What was I to expect?  This has been aging for a couple years, wild yeast at work in the bottle, with a strange mix of spices??  I had no idea.  I wasn't ready.  I popped the bottle...

Poured it out into an imperial pint glass and took a whiff.  I expected weird funk aroma but what I got was your typical Belgian ale smell with distinct clove scent and some tartness.  It rounded out with some banana notes.  The wild yeast enhanced the aroma with a spiciness.  I took a drink and it was actually quite drinkable.  Similar to a nice Belgian like Duvel, light and spicy and smooth.  As it warmed however, the strange ingredients were coming clearer into the picture.  Possibly due to the gruit added, there is a root-like flavor in the bitterness unlike what hops bring to traditional beers.  And by root flavor, I mean like you put tree bark in your mouth.  This beer went great with food and is a real experience due to its ingredient list and brewing process.  Not something I'm completely used to yet but interesting nonetheless.