I love my wife, she travels a bit for work and never fails to seek out a beer store to bring me back.  She doesn’t like most of the beer that she buys me but she is a big supporter of my Yearly Lesson project and does an awesome job of supporting me.  Yeah Steph!

Before I started this Year of Beer, I had never had a Belgian beer and didn’t know a whole lot about the style.  My first exposure to the style was Ommegang’s Abbey Ale and since then, I have been hooked, I have really been enjoying the Belgian style.  She knows this so she bought me a bunch of Belgian beer on her last trip.  This was one of them.

The bottle she bought me is 1 pt 9.4 oz. so there is plenty to drink while writing this review.  The Abt 12 is a classic Dubbel style.

The beer poured a dark reddish brown and had a great tan colored head on it.  The head stuck around for quite awhile and as I drank the beer there was a good bit of lacing on the side of the glass.

It has a sweet malt aroma with a hint of citrus.  It’s not an overpowering aroma but it’s also not one that you have to work real hard to get, it’s really nice.

The beer is pretty smooth and has that classic Belgian taste to it that I believe comes from the Belgian yeast.  I don’t get much of the citrus flavor that I was smelling but I do get some really nice malt and raisin flavors.   As the beer warmed up, the flavor becomes more complex.  I started getting really nice banana and clove flavors along with the raisin.  Although this beer is 10% ABV I don’t taste much of the alcohol.

The mouthfeel is great, it’s very smooth and is pleasant from start to finish.  A little sticky after awhile but not so much that it’s a problem.