1er Anniversaire - Bad Habit Belgian Dubbel

What a difference a year makes!

I cooked up my first Belgian style ale in April 2014, and for the first few months of its life I was prepared to chalk it up as a not-to-be-repeated disaster. It was flat, uninteresting, brown and ugly.

But just fourteen short months after bottling, there's a world of difference.

It's now an incredible ruby colour that really catches the light. Clear and bright, no signs of brown, yeasty murk lingering anywhere but right at the bottom of the bottle. The flavours have developed too: I get a strong sense of caramel now. It's still a bit on the heavy side thanks to using dextrose rather than something that thins the beer out, but overall I am - at long last - quite pleased with my first Belgian and would gladly use this yeast again.

In the name of science, this is what it looked like a year ago.