St. Benedict's Breakfast Dubbel

St. Benedict's Breakfast Dubbel came highly recommended by a beer seller in Greensboro, North Carolina. Brewed in Saxapahaw, NC by Haw River Farmhouse Ales, this juicy dubbel contains 7.2% alcohol. According to the info on the 500mL bottle, this Belgian-inspired brewski is made with flaked oats, cocoa nibs, dark Belgian chocolate, and two types of coffee beans sourced from Muddy Dog Roasting Company. All that and a cool label left me aching to crack it open.

My beer flowed out smoothly and with a nice dark brown hue. It poured with such a thick and vigourous head that I had to take a break halfway through pouring the stuff, lest I lose a precious drop. It's nose was sweet, rich, and malty, with elements of chocolate, coffee, and a tart whiff of fruit. The flavour proved to be extremely complex and layered, and a lot more like a porter than a dubbel. For one thing, the beer was not as far along the fruit sweetness spectrum than most of the dubbels I've sampled. As well, the addition of coffee and dark chocolate made for a more bitter ale than the Belgian and Belgian-style dubbels in my repertoire. The beer finished with a pretty decent hops profile, too.

Really a unique dubbel, St. Benedict's Breakfast wasn't a great exemplar of the style, but it was a fantastic beer! Rich and flavourful, with lots of nice ingredient flourishes, this beer left me deeply pleased and sated.

Once again, this came my way from KC, the greatest pal of them all.

Rating: 9.0 out of 10.