6 Geese a Laying

Review Date 1/24/2015  By John Staradumsky

  Style: Belgian Strong   Brewery: The Bruery   Country: USA   State: California   $ Per OZ: $.35 (B)   ABV: 11.5%

Well folks, here’s my problem with reviewing the Bruery’s Twelve Days of Christmas series: these beers are meant to be aged.  You may wonder why that might be a problem, but most beer geeks are curious to read reviews of beers when they are first offered for sale. Given that I am aging each beer in this series for the following Christmas season, by the time you read my review, you can’t buy the beer anymore.

Or can you? I missed the first four beers in this series, and was lamenting that fact while sipping on my bottle of The Bruery 6 Geese a Laying on New Year’s night (I started my Twelve Days journey with a bottle of 5 Golden Rings last year). Now, used to be you could buy old beer on Ebay if the value of the container exceeded the original sales price (i.e. the bottle itself has become a collectible). Not anymore. Now you can only buy empties. There is a new website, however, where old beers are being bought and sold: Mybeercellar.com. The legalities of same are up to you to decipher before purchasing, but you can indeed buy 6 Geese a Laying here, as well as others. I am considering picking up the first 4 beers in the series myself.

Anyway, on to my bottle of 6 Geese a Laying, which I just purchased tonight. I’ve cellared this for a year and now find it ready to drink. The Bruery says on the label that you could age it up to 6, until the release of the last beer in the series. If you are one of those lucky to tap all 12 bottles upon the release of 12 Drummers Drumming, heed my advice: bring at least 7 friends. All of these beers are over 10% ABV, and with 12 25.6 ounce bottles to get through I think about 3 ounces of each would be enough.

 From the Bruery website:

6 Geese-A-Laying is the 6th beer in our “12 Days of Christmas” series and is a return to the more classic dark and toasty winter ale, following the appropriately blonde 5 Golden Rings. Brewed with cape gooseberries, this malty ale displays notes of plums, dark cherry and bright, citrus-like flavors from the namesake berries. Delicious right now, but suitable for aging up to 6 years, upon the release of 12 Drummers Drumming.

The Bruery 6 Geese a Laying has an alcohol content of 11.5% by volume with 15 IBUs. I paid $9.99 for my 750 ML bottle, which is a deal for a special beer like this, I think. I have picked up a bottle of the 7 Swans a Swimming for next year’s tasting for the same $9.99.

The Bruery 6 Geese-A-Laying pours to a murky dark reddish brown color with a rather light head formation and a gently fruity, subtly yeasty, softly dark malty nose. Taking a sip, I get an amazingly full mouthfeel up front packed with dark berry fruit and a very Belgian-like rich tripel style yeastiness and sweet maltiness. Pineapples dance with the tart gooseberries here, and funky cotton candy yeastiness ties them both up in a web of complex goodness. A big alcohol warmth with a little sourness and more tartness wrap it all up very nicely and makes this perfect for a cold winter’s evening. I aged mine a year but this could easily go a lot longer, I think all the way out to the release of 12 Lords a Leaping in 2019 as the Bruery says.

The more I sip on this one, the more the wonderful tartness from the gooseberries stands out, too. What a delicious, rich and complex beer.

Glad I tried it?  T

Would I rebuy it??