By Greg B.  At first, when I saw this bottle on the shelf, I was just amazed but the idea of a pepper beer, that I bought it.  I bought it without first looking and seeing that it was a local brewery (though I think Brewer’s Art makes their beer in PA, but that’s besides the point), and a local brewery with very respectable beer making talents.  But the idea of a beer based around pepper was intriguing.  Hoping to be more impressed by the beer than the mustard ale of the past that I consumed, I opened the bottle.

The beer poured a big, foamy head that was very white in color.  The actual color of the beer itself was a light cold, definitely darker than a straw yellow, but not quite the golden honey color either.  On the nose there were two smells that I could discern and they were exactly what the label promised:  yeast (from the Tripel style) and pepper (of the…yes, you guessed it, peppercorns!).  There were even some alcohol notes on the aroma, but they were mild and sweet and the yeast/pepper aroma was definitely in the front of the nose.

The beer had a very dry mouthfeel to it with a crisp and bitter finish but really very dry, almost like a crisp Belgian cider or a dry champagne.  Sadly, I could not taste the pepper that was so prominent on the nose, and the beer tasted like a standard, average Belgian abbey ale but with a bit stronger alcohol flavor.  I was a little disappointed by the taste actually as it was very simple.  I expected a more complex, aromatic and unique aroma/flavor profile in a Belgian abbey style ale, but perhaps it is difficult to achieve this while working with pepper.  I’d give this beer a 3.0/5.  While it was interesting to try a peppercorn beer, and the beer was palatable, it was also rather uninteresting, once you got past the fact that it smelled like pepper but tasted nothing like pepper.