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Gouden Carolus Easter Beer

Where Spotted: ChurchKey, 1337 14th St. NW

Price: $5/4 ounce pour

Money Well Ghent: This ruby-brown beer is reason enough to investigate dark Belgian beers. Anise is the, ahem, star here, accompanied by a deep, complex sweetness of plums and brown sugar that paints a velvety coating over any raw alcohol flavors. It’s enough to make you wish you’d given up lager for Lent.

Twizzlers’ Mother: This beer’s dominant flavor is throat-coating licorice, but don’t let that scare you off. The spices blend with molasses notes in a way that swayed even me, a recovering licorice-hater since my first gummi pipe at age 9. The dark spice notes are a lot like the brewery’s similarly delicious Christmas beer and blue-label Cuvee, so if you like this beer, you might be on your way to Carolus fandom.

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