Datsmaaktnaar Meerkoet

Slightly hazy deep brown with light tan head. Sweet roasted and toasted caramel malts, dark berries, butterscotch and bitter tea leaves. Medium sweet and light bitter. Medium body and soft carbonation. Reminiscent of a bock but definitely more fruity.

Bottle shared at Maakun’s. Courtesy of the brewers, gracias muchos. Slightly hazy deep brown with light tan head. Sweet roasted and toasted caramel malts, dark berries, butterscotch and bitter tea leaves. Medium sweet and light bitter. Medium body and soft carbonation. Reminiscent of a bock but definitely more fruity.

Bottle shared thanks to sjogro. Slight hazy reddish brown with good sized but short lasting beige head. Lots of blackberries, apricot, red apple, plums, raisins, light chocolate, toffee. There’s some herbs and a surprisingly highly amount of alcohol in the finish. Medium sweet and bitter. Medium bodied with slick feel.

Bottle @ home shared with Dutchdrebus and Ansjelaah. Beautiful deep mahogany red color, average sized beige head. Smell and taste malts, lightly smoky, a bit sweet, but also a nice underlying malt bitterness and a nice hint of dried and dark fruits. Decent to medium body and carbonation.

Bottle @ home. Amber to ruby colour with a small off-white head. Smells glue, alcohol, esters, sweet. Tastes smokey, sweet, malts. I like the smokey touch.

Bottle kindly delivered by Santa Benzai, many thanks. Dark amber color with medium off-white head. Aroma of caramel, light hops. Taste, caramel, bee wax, burned sugar, alcohol. Good.

Bottle from my Secret Santa anstei. Many thanks! Moderate roast presence, slightly burnt, light alcoholic warmth, light candyish flavour. Rather sweet, but overall balanced. Good one.

Bottle from a Mitra in Lelystad - randomly selected from what appears to be a whole range of European bird-themed beers, this one dedicated to the ordinary coot, a familiar sight for someone living in the countryside like me. Thickly ’papery’ lacing, irregular, pale greyish beige, moussy head, leaving a very steady rim of mousse and a disparate veil in the middle, over a lightly hazy chestnut brown beer with warm burgundy hue. Aroma of chestnut cream sauce, caramel, ripe pear, cappuccino, ripe blue plums, vague baked banana, something faintly raw spinach-like iron, raw cut salsify, dry earth, black radish, apple peel, old cinnamon rolls, brown cardboard, blended whisky, hints of cappuccino, brambleberries, bayleaf, cloves, marmelade, cooked red cabbage. Rounded, sweetish onset of pear, ripe blackberry, very old raisins and dried apricot, matched with a deeply situated but adequate dry elderberry-like sourishness, no traces of cloying brown sugar sweetness, very thinly beefy umami accent somewhere; medium to strongish carbo for this style, but still rounded, full body. Caramelly maltiness in a thick, fat middle, but no overly sweetness, almost instantly evolving into a soft toasted bitterishness, but both the sweetness and the bitterness keep each other at bay for the rest of the ’route’, the toasted aspect gaining more confidence in the very end - as should be expected from a wee heavy. Spicy phenolic notes - subtle enough - and a dark tea-ish, herbal, lightly earthy hop note accentuate the end bitterness, but at the same time quite a lot of slick caramelly maltiness peeps through, still challenged by a more deeply lying, grainy sourishness; yeasty factors add further phenolic complexity and deep earthy accents while alcohol remains all but hidden, ignoring a very, very vague liqueurish hint in the very, very end. Creamy, very malty, toffeeish with that slightly pungent toasted bitterish accent: I honestly had way worse attempts at the ole wee heavy style than this. Little bit generic perhaps, but I tend to concur with the esteemed Dutch raters below that this, however subtle, exhibits a certain amount of individuality. Pleasant beer for sure, highly drinkable in spite of its near-7% ABV - actually coming closer to a ’Scottish ale’, but historically obviously qualifying as a Scotch ale. Belgian aspects too - this almost feels like a more artisanal and ’natural’ rendition of e.g. Gordon Scotch Ale... I wouldn’t have minded some more punch, but in classic style terms, this qualifies just fine. I should have bought the other birds in this series as well.

Sampled at Rootz beer festival. Thin creamy off white head. Hazy amber pour. Light bitterness. Slightly malty