Unibroue's La Fin du Monde - I got a little excited and started drinking before I took the picture
From the label:
The excellence of triple fermentation through a blend of special yeasts gives this malt beverage LA FIN DU MONDE (The End of the World) an exquisitely robust flavour of exceptional refinement.
From my notes:
Get a whiff of the yeast and banana coming off of this beer. There also seems to be some spice and lemon in there. Large bubbled head about one and a half inches thick, leaves nice lacing (as you can see…) The taste delivers on the promise of the smell. Banana and yeast with the spice kicking in, cloves specifically. Mild hop finish with a lingering taste of spices.
La Fin du Monde is a wonderful Tripel style beer. Tripel’s are actually pale ales but because they use triple the amount of malt in the making, as well as a lot of sugar it’s hard to tell. Another thing to remember with tripel’s is the high alcohol content (La Fin’s is 9% ABV!?) this isn’t a beer to be chugged. So pop a cap and sip this beautiful drink while you watch the sunset, or the game. Whatever it is you do to relax.
Dark, malty and mysterious, this porter is as complex as the man it celebrates. Brewed to honor the life of Hunter S. Thompson, Gonzo Imperial Porter is an assault on your taste buds with just the right amount of irreverence thrown in.
First, I apologize for pouring this beer into the wrong style glass. But, I don’t have any tulip glasses, yet. Second, sorry about the poor notes on the beer. I drank this beer quite awhile ago. I suppose for those of you who don’t know, and this might be an internet secret, but, I drink these beers beforehand and have about ten of these lined up at a time. I had this one before I started making a concerted effort to expand my palate by drinking beers with a more robust hop profile. So, I do need to go back and give this beer another try. For that reason I’m not rating this beer yet.
I don’t want this post to be an absolute waste though so let me drop some knowledge on you about Imperials. Historically, Imperial was a term used to describe beers that were made specifically for export and brewed in such a way as to prevent the beer from spoiling before arriving at market. Today, it is more often used to mean STRONG. What does that mean? Well, it means it should be more alcoholic for sure… An example of this is a barley wine, which is just a stronger version of a pale ale. It’s not a very fixed definition for sure but it should give you a rough guide to what it means when you see the word emblazoned across a can or bottle!
The orange powder stains not only your body... but, your soul as well! *GASP*
Welp, before I turn it over and look at the list of ingredients on the back I’m going to make a guess that it is mostly corn, maybe with some cheese product and then some chemicals derived from oil. Let’s find out!
Enriched means better!
Enriched Corn Meal – Cornmeal is flour ground from dried maize. It is a common staple food, and common in processed foods. Enriched means that it nutrients such as iron and B vitamins have been put back into the product after it has been ground down in order to match the nutritional content of the unrefined product.
Vegetable Oil – Cooking oil derived from plants, as the list on the back of the package states it’s either from American Corn, Soybean or Sunflower. I’m guessing it’s either a blend or is merely determined by the cost of oil at the time of purchase…
Cheese Seasoning – Which is a complicated slurry of natural and unnatural products. I highlighted the interesting ones below
Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil – Hydrogenation is a complex chemical process. What it basically does tough is converts liquid vegetable oils in to solid or semi-solid fats. These solid or semi-solid fats are preferred in baking and cheaper than the animal source equivalent.
Maltodextrin – A food additive. Here in the United States it is usually derived from corn. According to Wikipedia: Maltodextrin is easily digestible, being absorbed as rapidly as glucose, and might be either moderately sweet or almost flavorless. It is commonly used for the production of sodas and candy. It can also be found as an ingredient in a variety of other processed foods.
Disodium Phosphate – A sodium salt of phosphoric acid, Disodium Phosphate is hygroscopic, which means it attracts and holds water from the environment. It is used as an anti-caking agent in powdered foods and products. It is also used in conjunction with Trisodium phosphate in many steam-boiler applications, the two act to retard calcium scale formation.
Sour Cream – A fat rich dairy product created by fermenting regular cream with lactic bacteria.
Artificial Flavor – This is the top secret stuff and usually not developed by the company itself but instead done by an outside “flavor company” that employs highly skilled and trained chemists who go about constructing the requested flavors. Artificial flavors are define as: flavoring substances not identified in a natural product intended for human consumption, whether or not the product is processed. These are typically produced by fractional distillation and additional chemical manipulation of naturally sourced chemicals, crude oil or coal tar. Yum, coal tar!
Monosodium Glutamate – Good Ol’ MSG! MSG is one of the most abundant, naturally occurring, non-essential amino acids. The MSG you find today is “manufactured” through a process of bacterial fermentation. MSG is a flavor enhancer because it balances, blends and rounds the total perception of other tastes. This is what it most often does in processed foods as well as to preserve food quality
Lactic Acid – Found naturally in many food items. Lactic acid is formed by natural fermentation in products such as cheese, yogurt, meat products and pickled vegetables. In food products it is most often used as either a pH regulator or as a preservative. It is also used as a flavoring agent.
Artificial Color including Yellow 6 -Much like artificial flavors artificial colors are generally derived from petroleum. Yellow 6 also known as Sunset Yellow is useful in fermented foods which must be heat treated. It may be found in orange sodas, marzipan, Swiss rolls, apricot jam, citrus marmalade, lemon curd,sweets, beverage mix and packet soups, margarine, custard powders, packaged lemon gelatin desserts, energy drinks such as Lucozade, breadcrumbs, snack chips such as Doritos, packaged instant noodles, cheese sauce mixes and powdered marinades, bottled yellow and green food colouring, ice creams, pharmaceutical pills and prescription medicines, over-the-counter medicines (especially children’s medicines) cake decorations and icings, squashes, and other products with artificial yellow, orange or red colours.
Why is this beer different from all other beers? In the beginning, there was an idea, and it was good: A Gourmet Kosher Microbrew to celebrate the bounty of our own American land of milk and honey. Witness, a renewed Genesis: the evolution of our first creation! A smidgen of Middle East inspiration, a dash of West Coast ingenuity and an East Coast garden of brewing delights… Then we tasted it, and it was very good. After 5000 years of civilization, savor a microbrew with the chutzpah to keep calling itself the Chosen Beer. From the Golden Gate to the City of Gold, may He’Brew join in the blessings of your lives. To life! L’Chaim!
from my notes:
Pours a nice clear strawberry blond color. Nice, thick head with an off-white color that quickly fades. Smells of citrus, herbs and hops. When Genesis first hits your tongue you taste the malt with some citrus notes then the mild hops kick in with some earthy undertones. Not as strong as a Pale Ale just enough to let you know this is a hoppy beer.
The head settled quicker than my ability to take pictures of it (or I got distracted)
Not a bad American Pale Ale but I’ve had better (Red Chair, Inversion) If you like your beer with some mild hop bite to it this is a good place to start.
