Sunday, 27 January 2008

Gulden Draak -- live from Connecticut

OK, I’ve got a cold, and I feel pretty miserable, so I am going to keep this 40b40 blog entry short. I’ll type it down as a list of bullet points. Please pay attention, as I am only going to write this once.

• The name of the beer is “Gulden Draak”. It is not called “Golden Drake”. Not even in the US. The duck is a red herring, and neither the duck nor the herring is a dragon, let alone a golden dragon.

• It comes from the Van Steenberge brewery like Piraat and Augustijn.

• It comes in a bottle painted a concrete-like off-white colour. To me this makes it look like one of those dodgy beers the down-and-outs drink at 7am at the offy around the corner from my house.

• Don’t judge this beer on first appearances. Despite the silly painted bottle, it’s good. Brian and I both agree it’s the best of the three Van Steenberge beers we’ve tasted.

• The colour is a lovely autumn oak-leaf amber.

• The taste is light carmel and honey, with a fairly well balanced alcohol (though 10.5%), with baked apple and raisin. Maybe a slight medicinal taste, but like a grape cough medicine I had as a kid -- and probably need right now with this cold -- so not at all off-putting. Brian says plum wine. Could be.

• “Quite yummy”, Brian says. Agreed.

2 comments:

  1. If you like this style, you owe it to yourself to try the Duchesse de Bourgogne. Not knocking the Draak, mind you...a fine beer in its own right.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I must agree with the above post. I have seen no mention of Duchesse de Bourgogne on your blog yet it is one of the most distinguishable and pleasant bottles from Belgium.

    ReplyDelete

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.