Keg at stadsbrouwhuis. Pours hazy orange, nose is caramel, toffee, sugary, taste is sweet, sugary, toffee.

keg at the stadsbrouwhuis... soft sweet caramel toffee.. sweet suger nose... juicy juicy sweet bready fruit.. juicy bready fruit

Tap. Unclear golden-orange color with white head. Aroma is estery, mild booze, peach and bananas. Taste is estery, peach. High foamy carbonation, boozy finish. Alright, nothing wrong with it.

The tripel in this Texels series, originating from the Wadden island of Texel and at least partially produced there, but since 2020 in the clutches of Heineken and considering their beers were not all that great before that, it should not surprise anyone that quality has only declined since then. Bottle from an Albert Heijn supermarket. Medium thick and thinning, breaking, eggshell-white, tiny-bubbled, membrane-lacing head, the remains of which rest stable on a misty apricot blonde beer with pale orangey tinge - and a haze of tiny dead yeast bits throughout, usually a bad sign. Weak aroma of dried peach, banana, soggy sandwiches, rainwater, calvados, hints of clove, faint pineapple ester, leftover dough, raw sweet potato, field flowers, honey, candy apple. Sweetish, fruity onset, banana and pineapple mingled with peach, minerally carbonation, soft but - for ABV - remarkably thin body; brioche-bready and cereally maltiness, sweetish with some residual sugars on top but nowhere overly sweet, working to a spicy finish with pronounced clove-like phenols and coriander seed notes, alongside a somewhat earthy, peppery hop bitter aspect which lingers for a while without overtaking the initial sweetness. As is all too often the case with these cheap 'macro tripels' (see my previous rating), the alcohol is again badly hidden and provides an unpleasant wodka-like astringency in the end, overruling the bitterness of the hops; traces of sweet (candied) yellow fruit do remain present at that stage. Thin, boozy, simple tripel, but at least it is refermented in the bottle and shows a somewhat more 'layered' maltiness and balancing hop bitterness than that awful St. Pierre Tripel I had before this one. Passes, but barely.

Bottle at home, darker golden amber beer, small head. Aroma is yeast, fruit, malt, sweet. Taste is the same, yeast, bitter, fruit, malt. average.

LCI

Bottle. Slightly unclear deep gold beer with a dense white head. Restrained but pleasant aroma with gentle citrus, hay, light dough. Fair bit of body, medium high carbonation. Some stone fruit joins the citrus. Moderately sweet with a bit of a booze-assisted lean towards dry at the end. Balanced with slightly spiced bitterness nipping in at the end. Good but no thriller: Stolid.