‘Sri Lanka’ Belgian-style Dubbel by Dageraad Brewing

Interesting fact: In Sri Lanka, shaking your head from side to side means ‘yes’ instead of ‘no’. I can only imagine the potentially awkward situations that could arise with tourists that don’t know this.

I’ve always thought that guy had the most punch-worthy face, possibly of all-time. Martin Shkreli, eat your heart out.

Dageraad is all about the Belgian style brews. No IPAs, no stouts, no Pilsner; it’s quite cool that they’ve decided to specialize and not just go with the traditional Westcoast brews. Doing your own thing is something I appreciate greatly, from music, to beers, and everything in between. These guys aren’t reinventing the wheel, but they are markedly different in a rapidly over saturating market, and I salute them for chopping their own pathway. It’d be easy to just blast out a bunch of generic Cascade and Centennial based IPAs and Pales, but no, they understand that unique is good!

I’ve touched on their labelling before; classy, cool font, and so forth.

The pour is a muddy Orange-brown with no head. Just a miniscule collar.

The smells are fruity and sugary. Getting brown sugar, apricots, peppery spices, black plum and odd exotic fruits. Very sweet aroma, no detectable alcohol. Not bad.

The tastes are wildly unique and complex. Starts off sweet with brown sugar, banana, plums, apricots and cane sugar. It’s rounded out by pepper-spice, slight alcohol heat, floral notes and sour grapes. It’s complex, expressive and pretty damn tasty.

The mouthfeel is medium bodied with higher than usual carbonation. Flavors hang around mid-palate and roll back slowly, leaving a sticky, spicy residue.

3.5/5 I honestly thought this was going to suck ass and I was totally wrong. It isn’t my favorite, but it is certainly worth a try. Well rounded and a weirdly fruity flavor unlike anything I’ve ever had before. Sweet and exotic, this gets my recommendation!