Heavy Seas Holy Sheet Uber Abbey Ale Beer Review

Heavy Seas Holy Sheet Uber Abbey Ale

Review Date 3/25/2008

Try? Re-buy?

I’m not old enough to have seen the old “Batman” series when it first ran in the sixties. I am old enough, though, to have seen it in ubiquitous reruns throughout the seventies. And of course, having seen it, nothing sticks in my mind more than Burt Ward as Robin shouting such classic lines as, “Holy atomic pile, Batman!”, “Holy haberdashery, Batman!”, and “Holy molar, Batman!”.

That said, at this point you may ask, and rightly so, “Holy fermented malt beverage, Bruguru! What does this have to do with beer?” Well, a lot really, because I’m sure if good old Burt Ward were sitting here with me tonight sampling a glass of Heavy Seas Holy Sheet Uber Abbey Ale, he would take a sip and shout….

“Holy Sheet, Batman!”

Ahem. Ok, now that I have that out of my system, please allow me to regale you with a tale of ale. Baltimore’s Clipper City Brewing created the Heavy Seas line as an offering of big, bold, and generally potent brews intended to take their respective styles to the extreme. In my experience, they have succeeded more than they’ve missed, but to be honest there definitely have been some misses along the way.

Not this time, though. Holy Sheet is in the vein of a Belgian styled dubbel, albeit a Belgian style dubbel on steroids. It has a great complexity about it, and it is a definitely a sipping beer perfect for a cold winter or cool spring evening. Newly released for 2008 a month or so as I type, Holy Sheet is also a better bargain than other beers in the Heavy Seas line at about $8.49 a six-pack (compare that to the $6.99 I paid for just four bottles of their Hang Ten Weizenbock.)

I pour my bottle of Holy Sheet Uber Abbey Ale into a bowl-shaped Belgian beer glass to best appreciate its aroma and flavor. The beer pours to a beautiful dark chestnut color with a very faint bubbly head formation and an absolutely heavenly sweet nutty malty nose that is detracted from just a bit by a meddlesome acetone aroma. The palate delivers wonderfully deep, dark and delicious flavors of chocolate and raisin, prune and toasted nuts. I’m also getting cotton candy, banana, and funky yeasty esters. It’s a bit phenolic, too, in a band-aid sort of way.

The beer finishes with a good wallop of alcohol warmth to dry it out, and not much in the way of hops, but that’s to be expected. They call this an “uber abbey ale”, an uber dubbel really, that delivers some of the dark chocolaty qualities of a dubbel at the strength (9%) of a tripel. It’s very complex and delicious, and the fermentation flaws are the only thing keeping it from being a 5-star brew.

And remember, try a new beer today, and drink outside the box.

*Pricing data accurate at time of review or latest update. For reference only, based on actual price paid by reviewer.

(B)=Bottled

(D)=Draft

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