Brewery Boelens Bieken Strong Belgian Pale Ale

Something that craft beer enthusiast likes to do with beers in to age them. Some styles are more suitable for aging than others; stouts and porters are a good beer to age as well as Belgian quads and abbeys. This process allows the beer to mellow out and become richer in some flavors. Usually a craft beer enthusiast will drink the aged beer with a new fresh version of the same exact beer for comparison. What I have here is a two-year old Brewery Boelens Bieken Beligan Strong Pale Ale, 8.5%. Brewery Boelens is a Belgian Brewery in Belsele Belgiam in East Flanders. Now I know that pale ales aren’t the best style to age but it was the last one when I came across it and it looked very interesting. Bieken’s pours a golden color with a three finger bright solid white fluffy head that slowly dissipates and leaves behind nice looking whips of lacing. Its aroma is sweeter than normal pale ales and not as earthy as it would normally be due it mellowing during aging. There is almost a honey like scent on the nose with a strong booze/alcohol aroma. Bieken has a sweet and somewhat mellow flavor on the taste but towards the back of the mouth it gets slightly stronger. You do get a nice almost honey-sweet flavor with a little bit of alcohol but a little mellow alcohol note. The mouth feel is full but nice with a nice sweeter finish with hints of faint earthy flavors. The after taste is a sweet and faintly earthy. Over all this Brewery Boelens Bieken ages nicely, so I would give this A-. The sweetness on this beer was slightly mild and not to overwhelming and it was a big wow factor with this beer. It was still pretty good in my opinion. With Pale Ale and IPA you really should drink them as fresh as possible. Just drink them as close to the bottled date if there is one on that beer. I think you should try aging a beer at least once. Buy two on to keep for aging and one to drink now and compare them. I think they get better with age. Cheers! Please Enjoy Responsible!