dsc00791Judgment Day. The Apocalypse. Armageddon. If you believe in such things, you better hope you’ve lived a clean and pure existence when the shit goes down. As for me? I believe in Energy Bundles, as my buddy Mills would put it. That’s right…the natural flow of energy throughout this universe. In my book, it’s the only real certainty. In part, it even encompasses what some call the elusive and hypothetical dark matter (or dark energy) that apparently makes up most of our universe and still baffles physicists to this day. We’re all made up of the stuff. No matter if it’s the natural decomposition that takes place in carbon-based life forms, the leaves falling off a tree, a kid crossing the street, a volcanic eruption, a house burning down, or solar radiation hitting the earth’s surface, it all pretty much boils down to the same thing. Equilibrium. Ebb and flow. The transfer or shift of energy from one form to another.

In some ways, the concept is a bit like what we learned in high school about inertia. A body in motion tends to stay in motion until acted upon by another force. And how is that force embodied? It doesn’t really matter. Could be a car slamming into a stop sign. Or a baby crying. Or the effects of old age. Or maybe some guy having a heart attack and falling down on his daily walk. To dive even further into the weeds, by definition the transfer of energy between a “system” and adjacent regions is called work. Every time we do something as seemingly minor as blink our eyes, there’s work being performed…a perfect transfer of energy from one entity to another. Which means that, if you follow my line of existentialism, everything in this universe is in some way shape or form “working” to transfer its conserved energy to something else. Over the course of a lifetime, that’s a lot of work, but it all leads to the same place. If you take it another step and extrapolate even further, it also means that there is a finite amount of energy in this universe that can neither be created nor destroyed. One system is simply borrowing from another, and another, and another, ad nauseum.

So where did this energy come from? Maybe the Big Bang? Maybe a higher power? Some combination of the two? I don’t claim to know, and frankly think it’s rather presumptuous of humans to feel like they have the answers. Now, whether you want to assign terms like “soul” or “spirit” to that energy when it comes to humans, that’s your business. And if you want to call me an atheist, that’s also your business. I prefer Energist. Sorry if that’s too deep for a beer blog. But when sitting around drinking The Lost Abbey Judgment Day, one starts thinking about these kinds of things. God I love beer.

Judgment Day is a Belgian quadrupel, 10.5% ABV. I really looked forward to trying this one, since I’ve heard great things about Port Brewing. Poured with a pretty thin head, but also a very interesting color, almost purple in a way. I buried my nose in the glass and got prunes, chocolate and Belgian candi sugar. The beer is actually brewed with raisins, so I guess it makes sense.

Very unique taste going on here. This may sound weird, but a little like grape soda in an alcoholic, beer-like way. Also plenty of dark cherries. Judgment Day is also pretty boozy, which is what I’d expect from a Belgian quad. I really enjoyed this beer. And decided after I was finished with the bottle to turn to something that would promote fewer philisophical wanderings in my brain. As Humphrey Bogart said, “the problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind.”

Rating: A-