Brewed By: Pretty Things Beer & Ale Project
Brewed In: Holyoke, MA
Type: Quadrupel
ABV: 8.6%
What they say (excerpt): “Baby tree is a “quadruple” brewed with a single strain of Belgian yeast. While a commonly used style name on the Internet, “quadruple” isn’t in fact a style name at all but a brand of beer produced by La Trappe in the Netherlands…Our “quadruple” benefits from the addition of 40lbs of dried California plums in the kettle – hopefully contributing to the overall dark-fruit character of the beer.”
Website: The website boasts a large graphic on top with the Pretty Things name, and a few paragraphs explaining what’s going on with the project. Links are neatly lined up on the right side, and stay there no matter where on the site you go, making navigation fairly easy. There’s spots detailing the beers, the story of the project, news, events, and other pertinent information you’d like to find in a brewer’s site like where to find the beers, how to enjoy them, and photographs and testimonials.
Why this one, Show?: Taking a break from the Magic Hat series, I wanted to share with you this new beer I picked up last weekend. The Pretty Things project is one of the more unique things I’ve come across in recent brewing memory. Brewer Dann Paquette and his MIT scientist wife Martha rent space at the Paper City Brewery, and with a bunch of friends conceive, brew, and label the beers they want to make. Currently they have three beers in circulation—this is the most recent offering.
First Thoughts:
Head: Thin, white, quickly dissipating, very little lace cling (though brewer Dann says in the “How to enjoy” section of the website that it’s because my glass was not clean enough—something to check next time).
Nose: Light, slight bit of stone fruit.
Color: Dark brown, slight very dark purple.
Presentation (5): The “Pretty Things Beer & Ale Project,” as they call it, produces bomber bottles with artistic labels on them, incorporating the name of the brew. The tree on the bottle does, in fact, have babies in it (the story of which is gone into much more detail in their website), and is surrounded by some lambs and baby chicks. Across each cap is a label showing the month and year bottled, and what batch number this bottle comes from. This beer is from the first batch, brewed in April 2009. Impressive. 5
Originality (5): I was not aware that the term “quadruple” (or as I’ve seen it written, “quadrupel”) was another in the product-name-as-common-term list (see: Kleenex, Xerox, et. al.). Be that as it may, I’m always up for strong beer experimentation to utilize something other than Belgian candy sugars. The addition of fruits to beers is nothing new, of course, but not too many throw in plums. 4
Body (10): Like any good Belgian beer worth its salt, there’s a definitive mouth presence. The beer spreads about the mouth during the sip, carbonation doing it’s thing to aid that spreading. Medium-bodied, not too heavy, but not light at all. 8
Taste (10): Very nice. There’s a sweetness indicative of many Belgian-style beers, then a small hit of bitterness, and then, once the sip passes down the throat, the slight but very noticeable hit of the plums. The only negative I can find is the sweetness of the malt and the plums gets to be a little bit syrupy after a while. Unfortunately, “a while” was “about a ten oz. glass”. 7
Efficiency (10): No real contest here, is there? It’s a Belgian-style beer brewed by a new brewery very passionate about what they do. In other words, they’re going to stick to accuracy, and an 8.6% ABV is right on the money (to compare, Chimays run between 7% and 9% ABV). The plum flavor only adds to how tasty the beer is (and therefore, makes you want to drink more of it). After a bomber of this, you’ll be feeling like a pretty thing, yourself. 9
Versatility (10): I can’t say that I’ve found Belgian-style beers to be very versatile. They’re good when you want to try something new that you saw at your local beer store. But their bomber-only (most of the time) bottling and price tag in the double-digits doesn’t make them the thing that you bring a bunch of over to your buddy’s house. Their saving grace, however, lies in the fact that they cellar very well. And seeing as you can make a beer cellar out of anywhere cool and dry, that’s pretty versatile. 6
Final Score: 39 – Really Good Beer
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