5.6

Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 5 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 5.5

Bottle at home. Aroma is mostly pale malt with some light floral and fruity touches and a hint of yeast. Flavour is light sweet and bitter. Body is medium. Very restrained aroma and way too filtered.

4.5

Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 3 | Flavor - 4 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 5

Bottle 0,33ltr: Clear golden colored brew with an dry bitter taste with some sweetness. Lacks the traditional peppery hints, so this beer is an copy of Leffe Blond and such.
Earlier Rating: 4/8/2016 Total Score: 2.3
Bottle 0,33ltr: Clear golden colored brew with an dry bitter taste with some sweetness. Lacks the traditional peppery hints, so this beer is an copy of Leffe Blond and such.

6.5

Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 6

Bottle. Blonde. Hints of citrus and white berries. Soft floral notes in the aroma. Malty citric dry flavor with hints of berries. Not a lot of character, but perfectly Drinkable.

6

Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 6

Fles 30cl thuis. Fruittonen, malttonen, zoetig. (9-2016).------------------.

6

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5.1

Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 5 | Texture - 4 | Overall - 4.5

Tegenvallend saison biertje. Ik vond er niets bijzonders aan. Jammer, want Brand heeft andere stijlen die zeker wel de moeite waard zijn, gezien de prijs kwaliteit verhouding.

4.9

Appearance - 4 | Aroma - 5 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 4 | Overall - 4.5

The product of the winner of Brand’s brewing contest 2015, automatically making it into mainstream distribution - under the all-seeing eye of Heineken. Bottle from a Jumbo supermarket in the southern Netherlands. Medium thick, lightly lacing, off-white head, settling into a loosely structured, somewhat irregular moussy rim and some small islands of ’flat foam’ in the middle but otherwise rather unstable, atop a cristal clear, pure straw blonde beer with warmer golden hue and some ’lost’ bubbles rising up here and there. Aroma is more strong pale lager-like than anything saison-like, with hints of rubber, warm popcorn, dead-cooked turnips, green apple peel, damp kitchen towels, industrial honey trying to guise as the field flower-like qualities of a true saison, ripe Conférence pear, soggy grains, sweetened dough, unripe nectarine, melting plastic, iron, warm and freshly ironed bed sheets, some freshly cut grass, minerals. Some fruitiness in the onset, hinting at red apple, ripe pear, raw pineapple and a touch of banana, sweet with a thin souring edge, minerally due to fizzy carbonation, accentuating the sourish factor a bit but the sweetness nevertheless keeps prevailing. Overcarbonated (artificially) even for this style, which is known for its effervescence; in this particular case, the carbonation feels rather coarse, whereas in a ’real’ saison (whatever that may be) it probably would be equally fizzy, but in a more ’refined’ kind of way. Cereally, rounded malt sweet middle, corny as well (popcorn-ish), with the residual white sugar sweetness on top, a bit cloying even, though refraining from becoming too explicitly sweet. Something inexplicably glue-ish manifests itself in the middle and accompanies the finish, where the bad qualities from the nose return, in the form of plastic, popcorn and cooked turnip - unfortunately without the earthiness I tend to associate with turnips. Ends sweet with a dryish touch, more glueish than anything hoppy though some floral notes are present, while that awful ’cooked’ and even ’ironed cloth’-like pasteurization thing keeps terrorizing the whole; after this passes by, I even get a quite severe ’afterburn’ of gin-like alcohol, which could never have been intended in a beer of only 6.5% ABV. Heineken, owner of the ’Brand brand’ since (already) 1989, very clearly has no clue as to what a saison is - but I cannot blame them for that, as many brewers seem to have the same problem these days. I can only hope that the homebrewer’s version of this abomination is something totally different - otherwise I’d consider this an insult. This is as far removed from anything saison-like as an imperial stout is from a dubbel; in fact I even have a strong suspicion that this isn’t even top-fermented but just another strong Euro lager trying to disguise as a ’saison’ just because it is fashionable these days. Shame on Brand, and shame on Heineken for marketing this heavily pasteurized lager as a saison - heck, I can even present this to adepts of Leffe Blonde, also a strong blonde, sweet, extremely pasteurized, disgusting lager in disguise, and they’ll never be able to tell the difference. Beers like this should not exist.

5.9

Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 5 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 6.5

Off white bubbly head soon left a cover on a translucent, highly effervescent, light golden body. Fresh aroma of citrus, lemon, zest & spices. Medium bodied, sharp, clean but a bit thin on the back. Fruity citrus, lemon, spices, peppery & a long tangy finish.