Pale Ale Imperiale - Brasserie Dunham

eat

Quebec (Canada)

3.28/5  rDev +4.5%
look: 2 | smell: 3.5 | taste: 3.5 | feel: 3 | overall: 3

Limited edition of 1200 bottles. Dunham apparently printed only 1200 of these labels and made a point of leaving a space entitled "brewed on" but then neglected to include the date. Nice. Brewed with centennial, chinook and mount hood hops and gambrinus pale, carastan and crystal 40 malts. Nice enough label and I was in the mood for a hoppy beer so I took a chance and bought it.

I poured this one as hard as I could, trying to excite some carbonation but the beer can barely muster up a thin bubbly topping of head. Tons of *large* sediment chunks is not something I want to see in my pale ale, imperial or not (and this is only after pouring the first half). Refermented in the bottle is fine but it looks like I put couscous in my beer. I paid $10 for this pint, guess I have to drink them... Amber coloured body, bits of lacing.

The nose is okay, featuring some decent hops: pine, grapefruit and mango balanced well against caramel. Could be more present.

IBUs are high as advertised (though maybe 104 could be debated) but not a whole lot of hop character comes through. The flavour is mostly dominated by a fairly strong roast malt. Hops show up as resiny pine and grapefruit pith. Sweetness could be brought up here, more caramel or candy would be an improvement; something more to contrast the hops anyway. Too-bitter grapefruit pith lingers on the palate. Only a hint of the 8% ABV shows.

Body is fairly light and carbonation too low (thus almost no head). It almost seems like carbonation was escaping from the cap or something, I don't know how they could ship this out with such a low carbonation.

$10 for this? I could have spent that $10 in so many better ways at the beer store. This one follows a trend established by their IPA Belge, with bitterness disagreeably out-balancing sweetness. I've been consistently let down by Dunham, I think I'm about done giving more chances. Overall it's okay I guess but at this price, not recommended.

Serving type: bottle

10-31-2011 02:44:00 | More by eat