Imported from my RateBeer account as Préaris New England IPA (by Vliegende Paard Brouwers):
Aroma: 8/10, Appearance: 3/5, Taste: 7/10, Palate: 2/5, Overall: 14/20, MyTotalScore: 3.4/5

2/VIII/17 - 33cl bottle from the brewery @ holidays - BB: 31/I/2018 (2017-1166) Thanks to Andy for saving me the bottle!

Clear blond to orange beer, big frothy yellowish head, very stable, adhesive, leaving a nice lacing in the glass. Nothing cloudy about it. Aroma: very fruity, bit floral, some tropical fruits, yeast touch. MF: very lively carbon, too much actually, medium body. Taste: fruity start, some tropical fruits, banana juice, citrus, little sweet, mango notes. Aftertaste: fruity, peach candy, bit sweet, more tropical fruits, beneath a pretty yeasty and gentle bitter finish. Definitely not a NE IPA, but instead a pleasant hoppy Belgian ale I'd say.

Bottle from struise beershop. Very high pressure in the bottle, causing minor leak, and a worried drinker ( being me ) After getting home, cooling the beer, there was still a lot of pressure upon opening the bottle. Glad it stayed safe and well, yet this might be a good tip for people that want to try this - drink it ASAP, don’t ship it or carry it around. Pours hazy blonde, as it should, with a very big white head. Smell is juicy hops, but not overly intense. Fairly malty, and yeasty. Taste is very carbonated, mild hoppy aroma, Belgian-like yeast ( which just doesn’t fir the style at all ! ) but a nice malty back ( creamy ) mild touch of bitterness, according to style. overall, this needed a different yeast, and - according to style - no refermentation in the bottle. This simply makes the beer to yeasty ( in this case overcarbonated as well ) and out-does the hoppyness we’ve all come to expect when you see the name NEIPA . a decent brew though, which I can consume with pleasure, even though it doesn’t meet the style criterea

16th July 2017
Very hazy gold beer, huge cream colour head, massive! Bretty nose and mild floral fruit. Palate is airy and fairly dry, decent carbonation. Light malts, a trace of sweetness. Floral fruits, little peach. Mild bretty savoury edge. Smooth dry finish. Not too bad, but last time I looked New England IPA were not bretty, so more of a Belgian IPA.

Bottle shared at THT, May 2017. Foam forcing itself out of the bottle. Cloudy yellow color. Huge white head. Aroma’s of fresh hops and some resin. Retronasal there’s hardly anything. Flavor is bready malts, not much flavor anyway. Medium bodied. Short finish. Not there yet.

New England IPA has been rapidly conquering the craft beer world in the past few years and examples of this new beer (sub-?)style are popping up in Western Europe too now; to my knowledge, this is only the second one in Belgium, after Hof ten Dormaal’s - flawed - attempt, and belonging to the continuously progressing series of limited releases brewed by Andy Dewilde in his own, small installation, with simple black and white labels. The bottle had leaked a bit during transport without loss or even loosening of the crown cap - so I prepared myself for fierce gushing and opened it over the sink as slowly and carefully as possible; still lots and lots of hissing and carbon dioxide pressure indeed, if I had opened this in one swift movement, there is no doubt I would have seen a very violent case of gushing so be warned. Typical ’gusher’ head I reckon: towering high and very foamy initially, but fairly loose and papery in structure and thus collapsing in a short amount of time, leaving behind a complex pattern of tight cobweb lacing around the glass, eventually setting into an irregular layer of egg-white mousse which in the end retained very well; immediately completely cloudy appearance, very misty peach blonde with an ochre tinge - haziness being a natural but well-known side effect of this type of IPAs, this is not worrying whatsoever, though it does seem to become all to ’murky ochre’ in the end even for a NEIPA, looking a lot more like a flawed Belgian blonde. The aroma, however, is already a reason for some concern: delicate ’tropical’ hoppiness is noticeable, but already at a first sniff, it is clear that it stands no chance against an assault of (for this style) inappropriate phenols and esters. Strong band aid and even liquorish-, clove-, cough syrup- and even sweetened medicine phenols, alongside even an unmistakable whiff of bubblegummy banana ester, brutally oppress much more delicate (though very clearly not all NEIPA-related) hints of marmelade and succade, fermenting orange juice, ripe cantaloupe flesh, soggy white bread, overripe sweet pear, apple peel, minerals, rainwater, honey, flowers, old yellowing cucumber flesh, soap, something vaguely minty and ’stroopwafel’. Unsurprisingly, this beer does not behave like a NEIPA in the mouth either: estery onset with hints of banana, orange and peach as well as slightly souring gooseberry, all numbed by - at least in the beginning - an unsurprisingly sharp degree of overcarbonisation, impairing drinkability and in no way related to the creamy, soft mouthfeel one expects from this style; instead, the mouthfeel in general feels rather unpleasantly soapy, the combination of which with the strong overcarbonation reminds much more of an average Belgian blonde rather than anything truly IPA-like. A soft bready malt sweetish backbone carries these esters along to an expectedly very phenolic - spicy but also, again, medicinal - finish with the bubblegummy and soapy effects still lingering; breadiness and earthiness expectedly increase when adding more of the yeast sediment while deep below, the hops establish an earthy, bit peppery, soft bitterness of medium duration, at the same time desperately and vainly trying to push their delicate citrusy and sweet fruit notes through the unbreakable wall of phenols. The label sadly does not mention any hop varieties (a missed opportunity in this type of beers, in my opinion) but what it does mention, is the addition of sugar, which I have not yet seen in any (American) NEIPA recipe - though I am not a brewer of course, so who am I to judge. I can, however, judge whether this is a successful attempt at this new, overly hyped style or not, and in my view it very clearly is not. It may come a bit closer to it in theory than Dormaal’s Troebel in Paradise, but if anything, this one is even more flawed from a purely technical viewpoint; like Troebel, it loses itself in completely irrelevant Belgian side effects, the phenolic part of which is in this case especially strong, to the point that I would consider it a flaw even if we were talking about a Belgian blonde or tripel here. Drinkable beer, in all, don’t get me wrong, but if you tackle a style as hyped and acclaimed as NEIPA is these days, you expose yourself to more strict scrutiny I guess, creating high expectations from the geeks and afficionados. The audience this beer is trying to reach, will most likely be largely disappointed, as those expectations are clearly not met here. I hope Andy intends to immerse himself much more deeply into this style and I’ll be following the first steps of NEIPA in Belgium with suspicion and interest - but to me, this style is still non-existent in Belgium so far. Sorry Andy!

Bottle shared at THT. Hazy golden with enormous off white head. Bready, quite sugary, tropical fruits, light yeast, light metallic finish, soft grass. Medium sweet and light bitter. Medium bodied with some alcohol.

THT May at Kwartje. Sweet malts, plasticcy, bready, hint of vegetal and fruitiness. Moderate sweet and bitter. Medium body, dry and chalky. Quite some carbonation.

Bottle shared at THT May. Very hazy orange with a massive white head. Aroma of grassy hops, bread, yeast, herbal notes and light malt. Flavour is light moderate sweet and above moderate bitter. Light medium bodied with high carbonation. Aside from the haze it’s not really getting the NE thing.

Bottle shared. Hazy peach with a tall off-white head. Notes of citrus, brett, generic bitterness, light medicinal feel.

Too much carbonation... Clouds the taste.