Specialty Belgian-style 'kruidenbier', i.e. a blonde flavoured with a specific herb and advertised as being centered around that herb, in this case the European spruce, evoking the forests of the Ardennes I guess. Comes from a small brewery in Amel which I had never heard of until I actually visited the place for a couple of days. Thin and open, egg-white, dissolving 'head' over a misty yellow blonde beer. Aroma - completely against expectations - not a wave of piney spruce 'fraîcheur', instead very classically 'blonde' with impressions of red apple, banana peel, field flowers, black radish, pear blossom, honey, sorrel leaf, cereals. Sweetish onset with vaguely sourish edge, some subdued esters (red apple, light banana), more active carbon dioxide than expected; slender cereally core, a bit white-bready, with phenolic clove-like spiciness retronasally as well as a pronounced floral quality (honeyish and blossomy) - much like in a classic Belgian style honey beer, in fact. These floral hops add very little bitterness, however, while the spruce remains bizarrely absent... Maybe this is a honey beer mislabelled as a spruce beer, like fellow rater tderoeck - less ironically than it may seem - suggested? Sure, the head is close to non-existent, or at least very feeble, leading me to suspect that they did put some spruce in here working against head retention with all its resins, but from a beer explicitly named after the spruce, one should expect at least a whiff of 'pineyness'... I am not sure if I would have liked it better in that case, but it is clear that this brew spectacularly misses its own point. Needs a lot more power, effect and character!

10/I/26 - 33cl bottle, shared @ home, BB: 22/VI/27, lot 08-25 (2026-33) Thanks to Alengrin for sharing the bottle!

Cloudy light blond beer, creamy white head, unstable, a bit adhesive. Aroma: sweet impression, lots of honey, yeasty, ripe banana, bit floral, dusty, malty, daikon. MF: soft carbon, medium body. Taste: bit sweet, malty, grain, flat, soft acidity, some banana, slightly metallic. Aftertaste: honey, yeasty, a bit sugary, soft acidity, gentle bitterness, pretty boring, bleh.