We’ve been out of commission here at The Hedonist Jive for nearly a month now, and though we’d ease back in with a beer review of whatever the most recent thing was that we’d tasted. Where have we been, you ask? Where do we start. Work, mostly. Home, a lot of the time – mostly for sleep. I ran a half marathon this past weekend, so there’s that. My reward beer Sunday evening was EERWAARDE PATER, a strong and dark Belgian brown from the heretofore unbeknownst BROUWERIJ HET ALTERNATIEF from Izegem, Belgium. “Alternatief”? Alternatief to what? Let’s find out.My 7-year-old son says to me, after seeing me repeatedly haul out 22-ounce bombers of rarified ale for solo drinking these past few years, “Wow Dad, that’s a small beer”. I guess I felt a little funny after he said that, and almost went down and pulled up another one. This comes in an 11.2-ounce bottle and was indeed someone of an alternatief to most beers I’ve tried recently. While it’s a brown ale matured in oak barrels, it has some of the heaviest, most acidic fermentation I’ve tasted in years. Are you familiar with kombucha? It’s that sort of acidity – and I’m not saying it’s bad. Perhaps it’s even good for digestion. Tastes are of brown sugar, oak and some maple – and I know there are a lot of foamy beers out there, but this was totally extreme. It’s a live one! Interesting and different, and something that you can probably find in the US at a store with a good Belgian beer selection. 7/10.
