Bottle 0,33ltr: Hazy brown coloured with dry bitter taste. Hints of caramel and nuts, also carbonation with each zip.

Bottle. Amber color. Caramel and soft spicy notes in the aroma. Malty caramelly sweet, spicy flavor. Hint of licorice. Maroones. Herbal bitter. Acceptable.

Roodbruin bier zonder schuim. Smaak is licht bitter hoppig en licht zuur met iets van siroop en nootachtigs. Verder een kruidige bijsmaak die best aangenaam is. Apart bier.

Corbonation is going nuts. Chestnuts. Bitter hops and some wood and overal some sweetness. Backlog from 2014/06/03.

330 ml. bottle sampled @ Drinkers Pub. Lightly hazy amber, patchy head. Nose is overly oily with some Coca-Cola, syrupy, herbal, very oily,…. Taste is very sweet oil, candy, sugar, weird oily nuts, hugely sweet & oily, some oxidation-like notes even (the chestnuts I assume), leaves,… Lower carbonation. Weird, not a big fan.

Bottle at arends nest... Dark brown... Sweet toffee fruit.. Soft malts.. Soft sweet toffee bready fruits

Chestnut ale (literally) from one of these young Dutch micro breweries, made with actual chestnuts and maple syrup and hopped for 120 minutes on end (where have I heard this before...). Named after the nutcracker, a very rare bird in the Low Countries. Heavy gusher: the bottle had already begun to leak during transport and when opening, almost exploded. Since I was prepared for this, not having too much trust in the recipe, I managed to capture most of the beer in my tasting glass, presenting itself with a completely cloudy, warm brownish burgundy robe and a sticky, cobweb-lacing, off-white, regularly shaped ad very frothy but quite coarse head. Earthy aroma of overripe banana, maple syrup, butterscotch, hazelnut paste, cashew nuts or indeed chestnuts, raw red cabbage, cooked mushrooms with brown sugar the way my dad used to eat them decades ago, a refined fragrance of honey liqueur, sweet chestnut, pear, white pepper, dried ginger, marmelade, dried flowers, some hints of male aftershave and varnish (in other words: a lot of phenols!). Crisp onset of fruity esters but less strong than expected, hints of dried red berries, dried banana and apricot, restrainedly sweetish and dito sourish, suffering from overcarbonation, numbing the tongue and distracting from the actual flavour. Middle phase is pleasant, though still overcarbonated; I get a caramelly and very nutty maltiness first, toasted with spicy yeasty notes above and a clear chestnut ’dry sweetness’ intermingled, of the kind I remember from when I was a child; finishes with a continuing maltiness but also in a fairly powerful hop bitterness providing balance against the initial sweetness and showing a peppery, earthy, ’noble’ character. Alcohol remains hidden and a nutty maltiness remains, well-balanced with spicy hops. The chestnuts are noticeable here, more so than in the few other examples of this particular ’fruit’ beer style I had - and in this case, they work very well together with the nutty malt character of the basic beer. The hops provide enough balance against the sweetness, or even a bit too much: I wonder if this beer would benefit from a tad less hop bitterness. Too bad for the gushing, which is always a bit of a disappointment, but otherwise, this is interesting, more refreshing than expected and quite fulfilling, making me curious to find out more about this Ramses range (also because of the - usually - zoological themes on their labels, a weakness of mine). Still lacks refinement, though: strong gushing is often paired with an overdosis of phenols, and that is no different in this case.

330ml Bottle - Dark brown with a foamy head. Raisins, marzipan and nuts in the aroma. Nutty and slightly sweet taste with nuts, raisins, caramel and maple syrup.

Bottled. Hazy orangeish pale brown colour with a big off-white head, that leaves some lace, and sticks for quite a while. Aroma is fruity, some spicy, syrupy and mild toffeeish notes. Flavour is rather sweet malts, some spices and mild yeasty and ripe fruity notes to it. A bit on the sweet side of things, but still somewhat wellbalanced.

bottle at home, gusher. pours hazy brown, nose is malty toffee, taste is dry, sweet toffee, herbal, fizzy.