21/IV/20 - 33cl bottle from De Hopduvel (Geers), shared @ home, BB: XI/2020 (2020-357)

Clear red brown beer, small creamy beige head, stable, adhesive, leaving a nice lacing in the glass. Aroma: bit malty, lots of ripe banana, lots of alcohol, bit metallic, caramel, sugary impression. MF: ok carbon, medium to full body. Taste: bit sweet, some caramel, alcohol, malty, lots of grains, nice bitterness. Aftertaste: soft roast, malty, little bitter, milk chocolate, raisins, nice one!

Slightly irregular cream head, fed by fine carbonation in a hazy chestnut coloured beer; shards of lace. Bit gassy, melanoidins & roasted malts, autumn leaves, brown candi sugar, plywood. Roasted & brown candi sugar, molasses, but with a fine acidic edge, spoiling nothing. Finish is drier, wood, light bitter. Feels very slick, viscous, well-bodied and well-carbonated; faint alcoholwarming. Not bad, but there's room for improvement.

Bottle from Prik&Tik, Maldegem. Dark reddish brown colour, beige foam. Sweet, malty, notes of caramel, raisins, dried fruit. Rather bitter en hoppy. Ok Quadrupel.

The newest beer by this young home brewery which very limitedly goes commercial (selling to a handful of local pubs but still expanding), a quadrupel released at Maldegems Bierfestival. Mousy and creamy, papery making, off-white, thick and stable head on a misty dark chocolate brown beer with ruddy hue. Aroma of hard caramel, nutmeg, chocolate powder, dried prunes, fig, bubblegum, diluted coffee grounds, wet toast, ‘jenever’, dry earth, old tea bags. Some dried fig and baked banana in the onset but altogether remaining restrained in sweetness for the style; still a clear bubblegummy undertone, though. Medium carb, full and rounded mouthfeel; dry hard-caramelly malt body with bread-crust- and toast-like edge, the toasty bitterness eventually becoming quite pronounced, especially when it gets accentuated by an earthy, bit leafy hop bitterness. Phenolic clove- and nutmeg-like accents complete the picture, while the alcohol remains altogether well hidden. Not a bad effort at all, notably more dry and bitter than usual for a quad, with the toasty-bitter edge making it somewhat akin to a Scotch ale. Will revisit when I come across it in Ghent, as apparently the brewer now lives there and is trying to get his beers into the city’s main beer pubs.