My Sweet Tooth Craves Golden Monkey
Written: Jun 07 '06
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Product Rating:
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Pros: a sugary-sweet, yet complex and refreshing, tripel ale
Cons: the sweetness could be overwhelming for some
The Bottom Line: If you are a beer-lover with a sweet tooth, drink this at every opportunity. If sweets aren't for you, neither is Golden Monkey.
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| joyfulgirl91's Full Review: Victory Golden Monkey |
I love Belgian brews for one, simple reason...
My sweet tooth. I am the kind of girl who can never bake a cake without licking the bowl. While I enjoy all sorts of good beer, my favorites will always be sweet and malty.
Victory Golden Monkey is quite sweet. I'm not BJCP certified like some of you boys, but I'm not about to drink Mickey's for the sugar rush. I know the difference between Hershey's and Scharffen Berger, and I know an excellent beer when I taste one. This is a wonderful, complex beer. It's a tripel-style ale, which I've learned from BeerAdvocate.com refers to the brewing process, and involves triple the usual amount of malt. No wonder I love it. This beer is a tall glass of Belgian candy.
From the bottle to the glass
In my area (sunny San Diego, home to many, many fantastic breweries, but not Victory), Golden Monkey is only available in one pint plus 9.4 ounce bottles which are corked with a wire hood, like champagne. This is the beer's one and only drag. I'm all for a generous pour at the bar, but at home, that much beer is a lot to pour down a small girl like me. I'm 5'2 and 112 lbs, and I can't pop that cork unless I have nowhere to be until well into the next morning. The 750 ml bottle of this 9.4% alcohol brew will render me useless for hours, but it isn't as good if you save half the bottle for the next day.
Golden Monkey is bottle conditioned, which is good news for beer nerds but bad news for a fair-weather fan like me. Beer nerds can store bottles of this upright in cool darkness for up to five years, and it will ferment and age into...something good, probably. I will never know, because when I buy beer I intend to drink it as soon as possible. If this is your plan as well, you may be somewhat dismayed to discover that Golden Monkey is one of those beers with a layer of yeast sediment on the bottom. This sediment, or the dregs, are best left in the bottle and definitely not poured into your glass. Usually, this means a continuous and slow pour into a glass until the bottle is horizontal and only the dregs are left behind. However, with a bottle of this size, I am stuck searching for a stopper when my glass is full, setting the bottle back in the fridge in an upright position, and waiting for the sediment to settle back to the bottom of the bottle before I am ready for a refill. Invariably, I am not patient enough, and my refill tastes dirty. I suppose I should share the bottle with my husband, but even so, the glasses must be right beside each other to avoid churning up the sediment in the middle of the pour. Victory recommends a wide-mouthed glass, probably because the aroma greatly enhances the flavor. But first things first...
Pour
In the glass, this beer is deeply golden and only a shade too light for auburn. A good pour yields a high, foamy head, but it quickly fizzes away to a thin layer.
Inhale
The aroma is heavenly. Obviously, a tripel will smell malty, but this is also spicy, like cloves and coriander. I'm in love with this scent and would dab it behind my ears if I weren't the mother of a small child with a reputation to uphold. I also smell yeast, like a bakery.
Drink
The sweetness of this beer is aggressive, even for a sugar-lover like me, but the carbonation is just right to make it clean and refreshing. The taste is a sorbet, and not an ice cream. After the sugary sweetness is the spicyness promised by the bottle where it says ale brewed with spices, and again, I would call the spices cloves, coriander, and maybe something else, perhaps vanilla beans. I taste a mellow hoppy flavor, barely lemony, and not at all bitter. As the beer grows warmer and my tongue gets accustomed to the sweet flavors, I taste yeast. I am reminded of my childhood when my father would bake sourdough bread and give me slices hot from the oven and wet with honey. Since my childhood was pleasant and my father is a nice man, this is a wonderful sense memory and a favorite beer.
Although it tastes light and looks pale, this beer is deceptively big and alcoholic. With its delicious taste and refreshing mouthfeel, I could easily drink far more of this than I should. One pint plus 9.4 ounces is already enough to make me giggly and far too forthcoming with personal information. While I went to school, all the party boys had individual oh-so clever recipes for LPR (Liquid Panty Remover), usually some kind of vodka/fruit juice/schnapps preparation. I usually found these mixtures flatly disgusting, along with the boys who offered them. They should have tried tripel ales. The research involved in this review gave me a solid buzz, an incredibly cheerful outlook on humanity, and goodwill toward the world in general.
If you live near Pennsylvania, I simply hate you.
I buy Victory Golden Monkey every time I see it, because I don't know when I will see it again. On the East Coast, I suppose this is as plentiful as Twizzlers and White Castle burgers. We have some excellent Belgian-style brews on the West Coast, but Golden Monkey is very special if you love sweet beers and welcome a strong alcohol delivery system.
Victory Brewing Co. has its say on their website:
http://www.victorybeer.com/golden_monkey.html
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
joyfulgirl91
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Member: Jessica
Location: San Diego, CA
Reviews written: 157
Trusted by: 138 members
About Me:
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