75 cl bottle vintage 2011 @ home. Bottle #023195, BBE 28.10.2030. Rated on 1.6.2014. Aroma has green apples, grapefruit, earthy tones and some oranges. Feels slightly musty. Foamy and rather creamy palate for a gueuze. Flavour has orange, grapefruit, some green apples and citrus. Also earthy notes. Finishes with lactic tones. Nice, could be even more aggressive on the sourness though. 8+3+8+3+16 = 3.8

750mL bottle drunk 2016. Clear, well-carbonated, bright, flaxen-gold with a large, white head showing plentiful carbonation. Green apple, soft, wet hay and light barnyard with a light hint of powdered sugar and soft honey. Pretty easygoing, with fruity bretts and no serious lacto/acetic character. Very round, somewhat sweet and very fruity. In the mouth it's well-carbonated with apple, yeast autolysis, black pepper and plentiful Brett-like tartness. Honey, caramel and powdered sugar give a bit more sweetness/sugar notes than I'd prefer, and it's very mild, round and fruity, but it's endearing and clean, for the most part, if otherwise a bit overly tame.

The second HORAL Mega Blend ever made (for the 2011 Toer de Geuze), tasted at ten years of age at a comparative tasting of all the vintages in existence, thanks again for the invitation Rikkert! Thick, bubbly, egg-white, opening head on an initially clear amber-tinged deep peach blonde beer, misty with sediment - and containing some chunks of dead yeast all the way at the bottom. Aroma strongly oxidized, rusty iron and decades-old white wine, goat shed, wet oak wood, old bread crust, dried lemon peel, hay. Spritzy, minerally onset, dry old lemon peel and apple peel, supple body with still lively and stinging carbonation; bread-crusty core, strongly oxidized, rusty iron effect, very old sherry. Woody tannic effects pair with lingering lemony sourness, making for a very dry ending, but the oxidation never goes away - consolidating our finding that after eight years or more, these HORAL Mega Blends pass their prime. I had an Armand'4 Zomer earlier the same day of exactly the same age and it had aged absolutely wonderfully - a testimony of the sheer solidity of that series, and quite a contrast with the more feeble structure of these Mega Blends; my conclusion from the evening of tasting all Mega Blend vintages: exciting and complex as they may be, they are not the best geuzes for ageing, even though this is of course very relative in geuze and five years or even more should not pose any problems if stored properly.