This beer is slightly famous (if only to me) as it was so good I forgot to take notes last time I picked one up at Finger Lake Beverages. No such issues this time. There is some need to be clear about which beer sits before me as the Brasserie des Geants has two beers called Goliath or Gouyasse (after a local tradition) a 6% (reviewed here) and a 9% - but this is clearly the heftier triple according to the strength indication on the label. And I think it is my favorite triple, though there are many years of testing ahead of me to confirm the truth of that statement.

This beer pours a heavy lacing white meringue of a head over golden ale with some particulate in the first pour. On the nose there is candy floss or bubble gum as befits a triple but also a good measure of grain as well plus some nutmeg peaking around a corner. From the first sip it is startlingly good: pear juice, candi sugar, heat, French bread crust, sweet biscuit, some twiggy hop, maybe licorice, maybe apricot, maybe white pepper. Sweet, medium bodied, with a slight but balancing astringency. When you think that a beer of this quality in a 750 ml format is available for about the same price as a cheaper Ozzie table wine of almost the same strength, the value proposition that is top quality beer slaps you across the head like a frozen haddock. Yet 5% of BAers would prefer something called David apparently.

Note: as the beer opens, the twig hops do shift some way to steel but not jarringly so. And as it opens more, the white pepper establishes itself to the degree that I want to make a sauce for baked salmon with this stuff.