Perfect Match NA Stoofschotel / Ragoût
Delhaize in Brussel / Bruxelles / Brussels, Brussels Capital Region, Belgium 🇧🇪
Brewed at/by: De ProefbrouwerijNon Alcoholic / Low Alcohol Special Out of Production
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Score
5.70
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Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 4 | Flavor - 3 | Texture - 4 | Overall - 4
F: big, tan, long lasting. C: brown, hazy, opaque. A: light malty, vaguely fruity, bit vegetables yet not as DMS, hint of caramel. T: light malty, bit sour grainy, harsh bitterness, bit caramel, metallic tones, something like kind of table beer so not my thing at all, vaguely fruity, light watery body, medium carbonation, so-so drinkable for low alc. beer, 33cl bottle from Delhaize Chazal in Brussels.
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 4 | Flavor - 4 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 3.5
Apparently all of Delhaize's 'Perfect Match' beers have a non-alcoholic version, bottled in small bottles as opposed to the 75 cl bottles their 'complete' and alcoholic counterparts are sold in; this is the one intended to accompany stews, so conceptually speaking a non-alcoholic quadrupel, contradictory as it sounds. In practice, this means 'bruin tafelbier' of course, and that is exactly what this will turn out to be. Very light gusher, strangely so as I never saw that in a practically alcohol-free beer... Pale greyish white, mousy and stable, very tightly and intricately 'Brugse kant'-like lacing head, lightly hazy mahogany robe with coppery hue. Rather weird and hardly inviting aroma of wet brown paper, cotton, cold vegetable soup in an artificial form (Cup-a-Soup, even quite strongly so), natural rubber, popcorn, light caramel, iron, brown soap, stewed spinach, very vague beef stock somewhere in the background. Sweetish onset - yet strangely a tad less so than in the NA Rood Vlees version - with a sourish undertone, in a very dull way (sourish graininess), quite lively carbonation but not overly so, minerals, slick and rather glueish and soapy mouthfeel, thicker than usual for a beer of almost no alcohol content; some thinned out 'caramelly brownness' but the popcorn- and empty grain-like effects prevail along with a clear metallic 'zing', leading to a finish where the green vegetable element and that vague background whiff of beef stock show up, almost like green Cup-a-Soup in the end, accompanied with a lot of rubberiness and a late hint of leafy hop bitterness, which seems more 'embedded' into the whole than is the case in the NA Rood Vlees version I had prior to this one. No idea how this was made, seems like the regular (alcoholic) version was drained of its alcohol, and therefore its spirit: if the regular was boring and cliché enough, this one has admittedly acquired some weird - but definitely not very pleasant - side flavours more reminiscent of vegetable soup than anything else. Very weird and again, I must conclude that creating alcohol-free beers with the same character and fullness of flavours as their alcoholic counterparts is probably a very naieve idea, even if many people in the beer world seem to claim that this evolution has only just begun. I'll have the alcoholic, quad-like version as an accompaniment to my stew over this any time - and, more likely, a lot of other, existing beers even before that - but admittedly this is a tad more interesting and 'fuller' of flavour than the NA Rood Vlees one. Not the worst non-alcoholic beer, but essentially another Belgian style brown 'tafelbier' as I predicted, with the same metallic edges, bland graininess and aspartame-like sweetness as the classic examples in this old but still somewhat respected style.