14/07/2019 @home - 33cl bottle from Bierhalle Deconinck. Dark brown with a beige head. Nose is malts, caramel, bit roasted, spices. Taste is malts, caramel, hints of roast, bready, spice. Nice.

Dark brown colour, creamy beige foam. Nose of speculaaskruiden, roasted malts, caramel, liquorice. Very spicy, not very roasty. Not really a stout but more a very spicy quadrupel.

The tenth beer in a series that will spawn many more to come if everything goes as planned, a beer deliberately positioned in between a quadrupel and a strong stout, apparently. Steinie bottle from Kevin Devos' BeerShop in Kontich near Antwerp. Thick and creamy, nicely regular, dense and closed, yellowish beige, irregularly lacing head crowning a dark bronze beer, lightly hazy at first and equally misty in the end, with beautifully warm vermillion red glow and minute but vivid strings of sparkling everywhere - an attractive beer to behold, that much is certain. Aroma of dried orange peel, candied figs, caramel candy, 'Babelutten' (an old-fashioned candy from the Belgian seaside, made of butter and candi sugar), quite clear liquorish effect, cognac, raisinbread, toasted hazelnuts, dried banana, old gingerbread or even ginger powder, soggy French toast, notes of coffee grounds, chewing gum, clay, minerals. Sweet onset, very rounded, with adequate but very refined, almost soft carbonation, lots of candied fig, dried banana and raisin sweetness with a slightly sharper, red apple-like edge, bubblegummy slickness, smooth and notably soapy, full caramelly malt body with a layer of residual candi-sugary sweetness on top, bit nutty and eventually toasty-bitter (this is the stout part I presume) but the caramel sweetness proves stronger in the end; boozy, warming finish, earthy and mildly spicy hop bitterness at the tail (along with a touch of liquorish) but eventually more bitterness - even wryness - from a brandy-like, (too) long alcohol effect. Malt and sugar sweetness linger, but the toasty edge of the malts and the hops provide enough balancing bitterness; more powdery 'bread-crumbness' appears in the finish after having added the sediment from the bottle into the glass. Style-wise, there is not that much 'stout' in this one, this is very much a quadrupel with a stout-ish toasty accent to it - but that said, this is a good quad, very Belgian yet characterful and distinctive, full, rich and warming as one can expect from the style (even if the alcohol should have been better hidden). I had many new attempts at quadrupel way below this one. For me definitely one of the better beers in this series so far, cheers Jef!