Brouwerij Van Steenberge

This stout little bottle is quite unassuming. It's got a curvy upper half that looks a bit like soft serve ice cream atop a cone. The label is pretty plain, with it's blue background and curiously menacing stork icon. You can never really judge a beer by it's label so I tried not to develop any preconceived notions about this little Belgian bottle from a brewery I'd never heard of. When I poured this beer into my glass I noticed a pretty big aroma coming off the beer. There was a good deal of malt at first but hints of candied fruit, chocolate and caramel were all present. An odd aroma for a Dubbel, but a great combination nonetheless.

I was wary of this beer for a couple of reasons... This beer's name and label remind me of of all the sketchy vodka I saw in Eastern Germany. These cheap bottles of vodka were named after historical figures like Putin, Gorbachev and Stalin. These products had nothing to do with their namesake, it was just a marketing ploy to cash in on the name recognition... it struck me as being super tacky. When I first saw this bottle of Bruegel Amber Ale with Pieter Bruegel's Peasant Dance slapped on the side of it I couldn't help but Gorbachev Vodka with a birthmark logo on the bottle...

This bottle of Augustijn Ale is a smallish stubby dark bottle with a curious label on it. On the label is a scene of a bald(ing) fat monk stirring a barrel of what I assume is barley. The label is drawn in a way that reminds me of Disney's animated Robin Hood movie from the 1970s. There are no anthropomorphized animals in this monk's cellar but there are a couple of curious medieval banner with animals on them. One banner has three lions in silhouette and the other has three deer or elk... It seems a little out of place but maybe that's because I'm not part of this beer's target audience... I'm not a 14th century monk that looks like he just stepped out of a Disney animated movie.