Den Engel IPA
Brouwerij De Bock in Beveren, East Flanders, Belgium 🇧🇪
IPA Regular|
Score
6.87
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Alengrin (11675) reviewed Den Engel IPA from Brouwerij De Bock 6 years ago
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7
The ’claim to fame’ from a hobby brewer in my home region (Beveren-Waas to be precise), brewed at Anders. Very thick (hops-enhanced) and frothy, tightly lacing, egg-white, stable, foamy head over a lightly misty, deep orangey amber coloured beer. Aroma of orange peel, sweet red onions, nectarine, banana, old dry ginger powder, dough, powder sugar, pineapple slices, honey, pear, yellow kiwi, moist white pepper, soap, baker’s yeast, faint hints of cloves, raw red cabbage, moldy hazelnuts, strawberry, dry earth, roses. Crisp, fruity onset, bit estery with notes of sweetish banana, pineapple, peach and slight sourish redcurrant, quite sharply carbonated with minerally and lightly numbing effect, ’full’ and supple mouthfeel. Bready, lightly caramelly malt sweet middle with ongoing fruitiness and some spicy phenols here and there on top of it, working towards a gently but confidently bittering, hoppy finish, with lingering spicy hoppiness on the root of the tongue as well as retronasal grapefruit, orange and even light red onion aromas; malt sweetness and yeasty notes prevail, however, and are followed by an afterglow of ’jenever’-like alcohol. Technically very well-executed (as usual with Anders); conceptually this is yet another Belgian tripel with international IPA influences (the word ’IPA’ effectively being mentioned on the front label), so again an argument for the recognition of the ’Belgian IPA’ concept. Belgium is very anal (excusez le mot) when it comes to its own beer traditions but cannot resist the global hop forward movement, resulting in classic Belgian ale concepts being ’updated’ with hoppiness, in the best case New World hoppiness as is the case here - and this is not necessarily a bad thing, I just wish that when I find a new Belgian beer on some beer store’s shelves mentioning the word IPA, I could expect a ’real’, clean and aromatically hoppy American style IPA. I am, however, almost always confronted with this kind of Belgian ’compromises’, usually tripels or blondes with more hops than would be the case traditionally. But that is another issue: seen by itself and regarded as a ’tripel hop’ (i.e. tripel with IPA tendencies, see Duvel Tripel Hop and the like), this is far from the worst example I have encountered so far. Cheers to that.
DirDec (2083) ticked Den Engel IPA from Brouwerij De Bock 6 years ago
nathanvc (7053) reviewed Den Engel IPA from Brouwerij De Bock 6 years ago
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 8
Thanks to Matthias for providing the bottle! Pours clear golden with a lasting, small, foamy, off-white head. Aroma of unripe orange, grapefruit peel, apple, honey, pine, grass, breadcrust, pear, kitchen herbs. Taste is light fruity sweet, 'classic' apple & pear, some orange on a bready-honeyish malty base; medium hoppy bitter in the middle with grapefruit, pine, grass, a bit yeasty & spicy too. Dry, piney hoppy finish, still somewhat grassy, spicy, a bit phenolic, with lingering grapefruit peel. Medium body, creamy texture, fizzy carbonation. Well-made 'hoppy blond', torn between a Belgian and American character.
Sloefmans (15519) reviewed Den Engel IPA from Brouwerij De Bock 7 years ago
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 7
I Draught /I Huge, very dense, light yellow head, very stable over hazy amber-ochre beer. Creamy nose, lots of rosewater, amandine, bit of citrus, giving a very sweet impression; hints of ureum and oxydation. Sweetish, exotic fruit, rosewater and indeed again marzipan/frangipane. Background has a slight bitterish-hoppy touch. Not much in the league of complexity. Creamy, medium bodied, good carbonatioN. Classical rosewater hops, overused, with a (too) sweet/perfumey result.