Brasserie BFM Abbaye de Saint Bon-Chien 2010 Assemblage No. 3 - Bière de garde viellie en fûts de chêne; Switzerland
11% abv; sour beer; very expensive at 24,20€ / 0,75.
But it is a wonderful beer. Red tinged brown. Practically no bubbles. The scent is quite lovely: sour but sweet, vinegary but not overpoweringly so, bready. For a Musaroholic such as myself, these aromas are really rather lovely!
Despite no bubbles and no hop flavor that I can sense, this is very crisp and refreshing and deliciously sour despite some obvious malty(?) sweetness.
The finish is citric and dry and bracing and there is really no touch of sweetness.
I enjoyed this very much. I tend to prefer the sour beers without any hints of sweetness, but here a slight sweetness did work - I guess because it finishes very dry.
Outstanding beer if you like a sour one.
As that says Biere de Garde on the label, do you have any experience with aged bottles?
Sadly not. In this style I have only had aged examples of certain Cantillons and Rodenbachs, and those are drier when young. But I guess since in a way this is “spoiled” beer without fizz, I can’t see what harm oxygen and age could do to it!
I’m thinking it has live yeast and some residual sugar in the bottle and may be more effervescent and a tad drier with a couple years cellaring.
Most of the releases we get in the USA are already 3+ years past vintage when they get here.
Cool. I’ll keep a look out for this one. Thanks, Otto.
This is AWESOME! The 2006 just arrived here locally!
Love this beer! 2010 is way too young to enjoy the full potential.
I recently found the 2006 and have to say that while i loved how it smelled, I thought it tasted of old molasses…and that I didn’t like. I’m not sure I got a bad bottle…but I wont be buying it again at $23/bottle
Like a hypothetical sour barleywine?
I haven’t had barley wine…but I could see that. Really it tasted a bit like sour molasses. I’ve never liked molasses…so that was a HUGE turn off for me.
yeah … “sour molasses” sounds like sour barelywine our a sour dubbel, imo.
I’m really ignorant about those…so I’ll take your word for it. Unfortniately this just wasn’t my cup of tea…
Oh, I wasn’t clear. there is no such beer style as “sour barleywine” or “sour dubbel” — I was merely speaking of a theoretical/hypothetical style.