Additional notes: 08/06

19/01/11. $3.29.

Original Review 07/01/04

$2.99 Greens Beverage, Atlanta, GA, USA

July 1st 2004, First day of higher ABV beers being legally sold in GA!

I often fail to pick up and identify fruity aromas in general, but with this beer it’s all ripe bananas and pears with a faint alcohol tinge. Yeasty bread too. The breadiness of the beer continues well into the taste and it dominates rather than the Belgian yeast strain and candy elements that sometimes ride high in beers of this style.

It pours a dark brown, slightly murky color with a good head made up of small bubbles and quite light. Good lacing.

The taste? Well to me it’s a little on the sweet side. I like malty sweetness, and I like strong brews, but this one doesn’t quite strike the perfect balance for me. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a classic, well established and superb Quad but when you get up to 10% ABV, you have to be pretty careful with the balance and the taste, or things can go awry fairly quickly. The alcohol content coupled with the sweetness are *almost* a little too much in combination; certainly this is not a brew you could drink much of in any one sitting.

Mouthfeel is a little lacking depth for me. Not exactly thin, but not really as substantial as you would expect for this type of brew.
A classic example of the style with much to endear it but despite that, for me it’s an occasional rather than a regular in the rotation.