Troubadour Magma Special Edition 2025 Aura
Brouwerij The Musketeers in Sint-Gillis-Waas, East Flanders, Belgium 🇧🇪
Belgian Style - Strong Ale Series|
Score
7.03
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In this radiant and pearly beer, the combination of different malts harmonises with fruity notes of yeast.
A subtle nutty undertone and a hint of honey sweetness flow together in a warm, full-bodied flavour. The alcohol is well integrated and adds a pleasant warmth to the finish.
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Appearance - 7 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7.5 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 7.5
Pours darker blonde. Big white head. Scent is mild, magma typical notes, but more toned down. Taste is full, very creamy, intense malt profile, rarher sweet. Bit less bitter than i repember magma to be, but more creamy. Quite nice !
Appearance - 7 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 7 | Overall - 6
The Musketeers have been operating for two decades as inspired client brewers before opening their own brewery in my home region of the Waasland (the northeastern corner of East Flanders) in 2019, and have kept the tradition of honouring their original beer with a yearly special alive. I have yet to find the 2024 Special Edition but pending that, I am having this 2025 one already, oddly describing itself very generically as a 'strong blonde' without any further specification - an ominous sign, as I have deplored the decline in 'inspiration' of their beers ever since they set up their state of the art brewing site six years ago. Bottle from De Hopduvel. Medium thick, off-white, paper-lacing, generally stable head on an initially clear 'old golden' robe, a pure golden blonde with a touch of ochre in it, paler in any case than I recall from the original Magma upon which this beer is ultimately based; turns misty with sediment. Aroma of soggy white bread, healthy breakfast cookies, cold chamomile tea, hard unripe pear, green banana, chewing gum, rubber somewhere, industrial chicken 'bouillon' cubes, chicken soup in powdered 'minute soup' form, vague whiff of vanilla, old yellow curry powder, dry sand, spoiled chervil, hint of 'oude jenever'. Spritzy onset, high minerality due to sharp carbonation (or "pearly" as the brewery calls it), sweetish with a bubblegummy undertone accompanying notes of hard pear, green banana and very unripe peach, moving into a smooth-edged, quite full yet slick middle, cereally and white-bready but 'simplistic' in all, acquiring a white-peppery, grassy hop bitterish ending, with a chicken stock cube element lingering behind. 'Jenever'-like alcohol warms things up in the end, a tad wryly so, as a smooth cereally flavour and mild grassy hops keep lingering. The contrast with early editions of Troubadour Magma Special Edition could not be more stark; the only thing setting this Aura apart, bearing in mind that its name refers to gold, is that it aspires to be an 'edelbier' competing with the almighty Duvel. It has the exact same ABV, talks about 'pearliness', is clearly paler than most of its predecessors - I mean come on, it is quite obvious, is it not? Well, if my theory is right, then this only proves how desperately this brewery is trying - and partially succeeding - to establish itself in beery mainstream; this is fine as such, I guess, but it keeps saddening me that in doing so, they constantly forsake their own inspired beginnings. I am beginning to wonder if I should keep following their brews, to be entirely frank...
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 7.5 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 8
Tap at Indewildeman, 1st September 2025. Pours golden. Aroma is yeasty and boozy, floral. Taste is yeasty, citrus and floral, nice