Bottle from De Hopduvel. Hazy colour, white foam. Light bitter, yeasty, light notes of chamomile. Bit dull and watery.

Bottle from De Caigny shared with Benzai, medium sample. Slight hazy amber color, medium frothy head. Aroma of cookie and toffee, chamomile, bit cardboard yeastiness. Dry in taste, toffee sweetness. Lots of carbonation. Feels a bit homebrewish.

Bottle @ home shared by Caesar. Gusher! Amber color, huge foamy head. Aroma is sweet malts, herbs or spices. Taste malts, tea, sweetness, slightly herbal and slightly floral. Meh.

On tap at Sandar Haandverksbryggeri - Brygghuset, Sandefjord. Slightly hazy deep amber with an off-white head. Wow! Chamomile bomb! Very herbal and floral, remind me of cold chamomile tea. Moderate sweet and rather bitter with strong and too dominating chamomile flavour. Hmmm, bit too much in my book. Interesting stuff, but not my cup of tea...

Donker oranje bier met veel stevig schuim. Smaak is kruidig en licht zoet, kaneel en appel overheerst, echt apart en goed bier.

Stromg red wine notes from the casks

Spice beer with chamomile, collab of BBP with Kaapse, apparently already the second edition, this time brewed at BBP at session strength and not barrel aged. Slow but persistent gusher, foam kept creeping out of the bottle neck for a long time. The result of pouring it, is a very thick, frothy, egg-white, irregular head consisting of large bubbles but still remaining completely closed for quite a while, crowning a hazy, pure orangey amber coloured beer with a suspension of dead yeast dots throughout. Quite delicate, perfumey aroma of strawberries, moist earth, chamomile indeed (recognizable as a faint honeyish, floral sweetness, quite strongly even), chestnut, red apple, blue plum, dried cranberries, freshly baked cake or even light biscuit, raw red cabbage, caramel, peach, rhubarb, sugared tea with a slice of orange in it, baker’s yeast, bread crust, faint hints of vanilla, candied banana and liquorish. Fruity onset, crisp, some dried fruit sweetness, apricot, green banana and red apple with redcurrant sourishness surrounding it, spritzy and minerally carbo with a numbing effect on the tongue, supple caramelly and nutty malt body with a light toasted edge, bittering a bit while the dried fruits continue and a spiciness develops which seems more phenolic than ’physical’, though the floral chamomile flavor does appear in the end, as in chamomile tea, herbal, working well with a herbal hop character, earthy and resinous and leaving behind a spicy, drying but still somehow superficial bitterness; meanwhile an earthy, lightly bready yeastiness, lingering nutty maltiness and clove-like phenols gain equal strength. In all, a thoroughly Belgian spice ale, earthy, very yeasty and floral, which I think could do with a bit more ’cleanliness’ (and less of the gushing, obviously). Comes across as very ’Wallonian’ in style too, with certain saison-like traits in the old sense of the word. Seen in that context, which I believe this should be, this is not bad at all, though spiced Wallonian ’ambrées’ will never be my first choice in terms of beer styles.

330ml Bottle - Hazy copper in colour. Chamomile, raisins and caramel in the aroma. Fruity and moderately sweet taste with caramel, raisins, chamomile and dried apricot.

25th June 2016
Keg at the Bottle Shop. Hazy amber beer, good cream colour head. Palate is light, dry and mildly crisp. Thin caramelly malts. Apple and generic fruits. Dry crisp finish. Odd.