Jason McGlone

About a week or so after we got home from the hospital, I sent Le Wif out for a brief jaunt in the car because she was starting to get a little stir crazy.  She’d been stuck on the couch and needed a little time doing something else.  Good husband that I am, I happened to have a list of beers to try and sent her out to our local beer mart to grab what she could find for me.  Yeah, I’m pretty sure that it’s the only time I’ve been able to say “Go get me some beer” and have it be a welcome request.

Happily enough, she was able to come up with most of the beers on my list, which pleased me.  One of them, the subject of this review, stood out for a few reasons.  First, it came in a 750 mL bottle.  That figures to, what, 26 oz or something (I’m no good with math)?  Second, it as more or less packaged like a wine bottle.

Third, it has a ridiculous Frenchy name: Unibroue La Terrible.  Doesn’t sound like a beer, does it?  The brewery, Unibroue, is Canadian.  So, that explains it.  Or something.  If I’m correct, Unibroue is owned by Sapporo, the Japanese brewing company.  I’ve never had anything by Sapporo before.  I’ll get around to it, I figure.

Anyhow, I took great pleasure and care in opening the bottle, which had a cork and one of those little wire-cage-things that you see on champagne bottles.

After I opened the beer and poured it, I took a good whiff.  It smelled unlike other dark beers; there was a syrupy quality to the beer, which is apparently a “dark ale.”  There were also woody, cedar-ey overtones to the scent.  Not at all unattractive–really, it’s a pleasant-smelling beer.  It pretty much tastes how it smells–syrupy, complex, bitter but not too much, with woody overtones.  It finishes very nicely, with the 10.5% alcohol burning into the tongue well after you’ve swallowed the Terrible tastiness.  I couldn’t resist.

All tastiness aside, there was one problem I had with La Terrible.  There was too damn much of it.  It’s definitely an after-meal beer meant to be shared with another person–better yet–two other people.  I drank the whole thing myself and felt like absolute garbage the next day, probably because I had a sixer worth of alcohol in a couple hefty glasses. So, let it be a lesson.

But then, I’m a dumbass and should have figured out a way to save the bottle.  Big dumb jerk right here; the one with the headache.  The one who likes La Terrible okay.