Royale IPA Cascade

(bottle) clear, bright golden colour with a medium tall, white head; aroma of honey, herbs; balanced flavour with a long, light bitter finish; little hop character for an ipa, and very little west coast hop character for that; not a very convincing attempt

33 cl. bottle @ the bungalow in Vencimont, bought @ Delhaize, Beauraing. Clear golden with a white head. Yeasty aroma with no particular hop presence. Sweet taste and thin body. This is certainly no IPA but a standard sweet Leffe beer with maybe a little bit dry-hopping.

Helder lichtgeel bier met wchuim. Smaak is hoppig bitter en licht zoet, grassig, hooi, en iets van ananas en abrikoos. Best een goed bier maar er zijn veel betere IPA bieren. Deze heeft absoluut niet de kenmerken van een IPA.

330ml bottle from Saveur-Biere.fr. Pours clear gold with medium white head. Aroma is creamy and citrussy. Taste bears the usual creamy Royale hallmarks with an added Cascade dimension. Interesting bitter floral elements. Clearly not an IPA but for what it is it’s quite nice.

PAle golden color with a frothy white head with good retention and medium lacework. Aroma has notes of light citrus with yeasty hints. Flavor is slightly bittery, medium bitterness with notes of floral hops and yeast hints. Light bitterness in the final with fruity mouthfeel.

0.75l bottle from casino geant in st louis. pours a clear golden with a small white head and little lacing. nose: apple cider, banana, corn, malts. sweet malty flavour, caramel, corn, bread. slightly bitter, artificial, alcoholic aftertaste. this is definitely not an ipa, maybe standard leffe with some distant aroma hops.

Bouteill e33cl, BB 16/01/2016. Dorée, col blanc épais crémeux. Arôme offre un bouquet restant très Leffe et belge surtout au niveau de la levure. Le ouquet Cacsade se montre quoique discrètement et donne un agréable bouquet agrumes-fruité. Palais au profil sec, houblonnage à cru qui ne permet tout de même pas au Cascade d’être à son meilleur. Pointe épicée, agrumes, note verte fraîche. Base maltée reste bcp trop belge et pas en ligne avec ce type de profil IPA recherché. Pâle et pilscara. Pointe huileuse et herbacée en fin de bouche. Reste un triste exemple du style avec un alcool trop en évidence mais rien de bien étonnant venant de ce type de brasserie qui ne semble toujours rien comprendre. Ok mais il faut un peu arrêter tout la baratin et l’histoire du brasseur qui court le monde pour trouver le St Graal du houblon, .... Cascade est conne partout dans le monde ou alors Leffe-InBev était vraiment dans une autre dimension depuis des années .... ce qui ne serait pas surprenant.

Huge, very fine & dense just yellowish head over clear golden beer. Bit dusty, quite spicy nose (dry exotic ground spices), yeast. Not much in the way of hops... Outspoken pharmaceutical flavour, coughsyrup (cherry laurelextract?) As to hops... Light body, lifeless beer, bit undercarbonated. I was prepared to give them the benefit of doubt. They’ve royally managed to ruin it. Oh dear....

Variation on the Leffe Royale theme, with which AB InBev sought to appeal to the growing ’hop forward’ trend in Belgium; now they are apparently pushing it a bit further by calling this variant "IPA". Cristal clear, deep golden blonde colour (’old gold’) with good fizz, supporting a lacing, cream white, irregular, medium thick head leaving thick lacing on the walls of the glass. Aroma is strong, but has no IPA features whatsoever; instead it has a sickly sweet perfume to it, with suggestions of honey, vanilla ice cream, sweet industrial apple cider, strawberry jam, artificial caramel, baked banana, candied orange, burning rubber, artificial floral perfume, lots of corn and lots and lots of iron, most likely head stabilizer, as a ’dead’ pasteurized beer also needs a head, of course. Sweet onset, sugary even to the point where it sticks a bit to the teeth, artificial and honeyish, low in terms of fruity yeastiness (if any), medium to relatively strong carbo, very smooth and slick body, corn as in a cheap pale lager, caramel touch and indeed some floral hops in the finish, but fading away quickly and not really providing any substantial bitterness whatsoever; the last thing I get here, is a dash of warming booze, creamy and gentle though, as in a banana liqueur or something like that. I find this a bit less disturbing than some other Leffes, notably that horrible Leffe des Vignes I had yesterday - I’d even recommend this over that annoyingly ubiquitous Leffe Blonde, but that’s about it: this is just another Leffe, with the same amount of sickly sweetness, the same cooked-to-death pasteurization effect and the same lack of ’real’ fruitiness, leading me to (strongly!) suspect it is in fact a strong lager instead of an ale. Not good at all, and what bothers me the most in this, is that this ’factory beer’ has nothing, but nothing at all to do with IPA. This is an IPA as much as Leffe Radieuse is an imperial stout. Even if they had taken Leffe Blonde and pumped a whole lot of hops in it, that would still not make it an IPA; this case is even worse, since there really aren’t that many hops in it. Agreed, there is a floral hop bouquet which is more outspoken perhaps than in the other Leffes, but that is where it stops, and there are litterally hundreds of Belgian ales with a floral hop bouquet which have nothing to do with IPA. I find it sincerely disgraceful that AB InBev opportunistically takes advantage of the IPA wave sweeping the world nowadays and misleads lesser educated consumers into thinking this is one; the fact that I have a strong suspicion that this is bottom-fermented, only makes it even worse. That by itself is enough reason for me to fiercely advise against buying this. I now had all Leffes which are brewed today, and I do hope this will be the last one!