Bruin troebel bier met weinig schuim. Smaak is krachtig, zoet en kruidig met iets van chocolade, vanille en lichte koffie en karamel. Echt genieten!

Het is een amber/bruin bier met een zacht lichtbruin schuim. Het heeft een zoete smaak met hints van chocolade en fruit.

Bottle from Bierhalle Deconinck, one of Verhaeghe’s more recent additions to their Barbe range of classic Belgian ales, this one being advertized as a ’strong wheat beer’, or in other words a ’tarwetripel’. Irregular, light greyish white, lightly lacing head retaining as a dense moussy rim around the glass but thinning quickly in the middle to a disparate landscape of flat ’islands’; deep and warm, lightly hazy brownish bronze colour with deep copper red glow, cloudy with sediment. Sweet earthy aroma of stewed but unsugared plums, red apple peel, calvados, lots of caramel, sweet cashew nuts, red cabbage with brown sugar, beetroot, soap, dry earth, cooked carrot, clove-like phenols, dried red berries, white pepper, dried ginger root, pear syrup or even custard, old dry tree leaves on a forest floor, very old red wine somewhere, hint of ’rusty’, onsetting oxidation. Sweet onset of dried fig, yellow raisin, baked banana and red apple, with sourish hints intermingled providing balance, residual brown sugar but luckily not too cloying, spritzy but finely structured carbo, coarsening an otherwise smooth, ’full’ mouthfeel. Caramelly middle, with the residual sugary sweetness enhancing the sweetish properties of the malt, nutty touch paired with a dim wheat sourishness, leading to an earthy finish with yeasty clove-ish phenols, an earthy hop bitterish touch incapable of balancing out the sweetness which does stick a bit to the back of the throat, caramel passing through almost unabated and, at last and alas, ’jenever’-like alcohol which feels a tad astringent on the root of the tongue. I don’t get this beer: reminds me a little bit of the original Waase Wolf by Boelens, but sweeter and more caramelly, the latter pointing at - I’m guessing - artificially added caramel for coloring. Caramelized sugar rules here and in some Belgian beers this works fine, but here I get the feeling it overpowers the basic character of the beer, which is probably not that impressive to begin with. Drinkable, earthy, old-fashioned like most of Verhaeghe’s beers (not necessarily a bad thing), but somehow missing the point and not all too well balanced. Feels redundant in this day and age as well. This brewery would do the contemporary craft beer community a greater favor in concentrating on their oud bruin heritage and e.g. elaborating on Vichtenaar and Duchesse de Bourgogne, as I explained to their sales representative in Ghent last year, but apparently they are still trying to cash in on 20th-century - sweet and yeasty - Belgian formulas which have little future anymore in my opinion, not counting the true standards. I hope this approach will not make them go the same way as Palm, Bosteels and others...

Medium, dense yellow-cream head; hazy reddish amber beer. Cooikes, brown sugar, cassonade, syrup, a hint of lactic, coffee cream, wood and esters. Bitterish, wheat, green herbs, cassonade in the flavour. Wry, woodbitterness, tannines, and again lactic acid. Dry despite all the sugar addition, false creamy MF. I cannot help to suspect here’s a lot of sweet additions, in order to cover for...?

Red brown colour with quick fading head. Has a fairly sweet taste with hints of red fruits.

(Bottle, Delirium Café, 17 Oct 2015) Dark brown colour, hazy, with frothy off-white head. Malty, wheaty nose with dark bread, raisins, prunes, clove and some chocolate. Malty, wheaty taste with notes of chocolate, banana, dark bread, prunes, and a slightly estery finish with low bitterness. Almost full body, with a certain sweetness. Tasty dark wheat bock, some alcohol shining through. Quite nice.

Bottle at THT. Yeah I probably should have written something about this. Backlog from 2015/11/27.