As promised, here's my review of Russian River's Damnation golden ale.
My parents got me some bottles of this for Christmas 2005 (I love my family, this year my sister got me a pound each of four varieties of hops, which will probably last me a couple years). Damnation is a 750ml bottle conditioned 7%, 25 IBU Belgian style golden ale. A cool thing that Russian River does is mark which batch of a particular bottling a bottle is. This bottle was from batch 6.
It pours with a beautiful golden yellow. If this were the stuff that made yellow snow I'd have no problem eating all I could [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]. Nice head, though it doesn't last long. Good lacing throughout the beer.
It smells very fruity with pears as the dominant aroma. There's some banana in the background. There's also a nice yeastiness to it.
To me the flavor is lacking. There's a bit of fruityness but not what the aroma leads you to believe. There is a nice spicy flavor to it. The body finishes a little dry.
Overall, I'd give this [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img][img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img][img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]. I'm more partial to the sweetness of dubels & tripels so that affected the rating. If I were to judge this strictly by style it would rate higher.
After checking RR's bottle log on their web site, Batch 6 was brewed on 7/17/05 & bottled on 8/12/05. I think I need to find a bottle of a different batch. They state they couldn't use their house yeast for bottle conditioning which resulted in a thinner body than normal. Another cool thing they do on their labels & mark them how long you can age the beer. Damnation can be aged for up to 3 year.
If you're interested in trying it out, you can order bottles on line. $7.50 for the bottle I had. They also have Supplication available. I have a bottle of this as well which I'll probably won't try for a while. I wish they bottled Pliney the Elder.
http://www.russianriverbrewing.com/Merch...ategory_Code=BB
Up next (in a week or so): Supposedly the rarest beer in the UK, Thomas Hardy's Ale (2004 vintage).