REVIEW 136: BELGIAN FREEZE

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN:  USA

BREWERY:   River Horse Brewing Company

STYLE:  Winter Warmer

ABV:  8.0%

PURCHASE:  Draft (13-oz.), $5.50

SERVING:  Tulip glass. From the tap, a pretty standard head of roughly one inch. Mediocre retention.

APPEARANCE:  Translucent and gorgeous auburn-caramel body with an off-white head. No visible bubbling and zero lacing.

BOUQUET:  Banana and dark fruit--namely fig and raisin--above all else. Malty with no real hop presence--at least not aromatically. Significant caramel, with hints of clove and even what seems to be pumpkin spice. Has a ginger snap quality to it.

PALATE:  Slightly heavy mouthfeel with carbonation that goes from 0 to 60 in just a few seconds. Lacks depth and dimension, particularly up front, where it's a bit piney. More rounded at the finish, but only incrementally. The aftertaste is richer, with increased caramel, dark fruit, and spice notes, as well as a slight hop uptick. Enough to salvage an underwhelming start, but what might have been . . .

MUSINGS AND METAPHORS:  This is a hard beer to categorize. Beer Advocate calls it a "Belgian dark ale." But I think that's wrong. It has too high an ABV, for one thing. Then there's the Christmasy, seasonally spicey aspect to it. I don't care if it has the word "Belgian" in the name; this is a winter warmer. So it's actually more English than Belgian. 

Regardless of what beer category you assign it, this is a beer with an aroma that seems to promise so much, but leads to a taste that delivers, well, less than that. Not one of River Horse's best.




GRADE:  C