Bottle at Locus Publicus, Rotterdam. Pours hazy dark golden with a medium off white head. Aroma of yeast, toffee, malt, caramel and a touch of light fruit. Flavour is over moderate sweet and moderate bitter. Medium bodied with light carbonation.

Pours a slightly hazy golden, topped with a fairly big, frothy off-white head. Aroma is mostly yeasty, some fruity and spicy notes can be picked up. Taste starts sweet, bread and yeasty body, some spices in the finish. Presence of alcohol can be easily noted.

Lukt: Frukter, plommer og pærer.
Utseende: Dunkel gulbrun farge.
Skum/kullsyre: Tykt skum, heng langs kant.
Smak: Frukter, plommer, pærer og en anelse karamell.
Hvor: Kjøpt@Butikk, Nederland, Nydt@Tasting med Ingve.
Medium: Flaske@300ml, ABV@8,5%, Når@27.06.2015

0,33L bottle (from Wine of Galilee), BB 03.07.15. Pours hazy golden-amber with off-white head. The head stays for a moment. Aroma is sweet, bready, spices, caramel, alcohol. Flavor is sweet, bready, caramel, fruits, spices, malt. Finish is dry bitter and somewhat watery. Alcohol is noticeable, but not distracting. Overall: maybe not very typical as far as tripels go, but I quite like it.

25 cL bottle. Unclear blond body with not much head, no lacing. The aroma is yeasty and a bit hoppy. The taste is dry, with a smooth, well balanced palate. A bit boring and disappointing.

Bottle. Pours cloudy amber with airy white head. Clear aroma of malt and fruit, with notes of yeast and touches of hops. Sweetish, malty and fruity flavour, with notes of yeast and banana, only slightly complemented by the hoppy bitterness. Rough, bananalike and estery aftertaste with some bitter notes. Honestly, it is a Tripel but somehow it is uncannily reminiscent of a German Hefeweizen. Easy to drink and unpretentious, though.

Alright, let’s give this a try, despite my aversion against the Leffe brand... Medium thick, lacing, pale yellowish white, moussy head, colour light peach blonde, hazy with tiny bits of black (dead) yeast floating around. Nose is quite distinctive and gets a kind of fruity sweetness and tartness with impressions of passion fruit, poultry stock or chicken soup, mango, corn, cider, tomato concentrate, lemon zest, fresh orange, biscuit, sweet tobacco, honey, cinnamon, dry white wine, cake, faint lavender. Taste is sweetish and soft, rounded, with passion fruit and peach at the onset, a bit sugary, honeyish, slick and on the thin side for the style, a bit bready, with a slight sourishness accompanying the palate, clearly from wheat; finish is a bit dry, with a slight toasted accent as in an amber ale, accompanied by some herbal hops and a somewhat wry alcohol effect, a bit chemical and artificial as well, but still a lot more honest and true to Belgian beer traditions than the other Leffes. I’d consider this among the better ones of the Leffe brand because it’s bottle refermented (and brewed elsewhere than the rest), but it still has a long way to go to become the best tripel - in fact, I find this amongst the lesser of tripels in Belgium. Still, I managed to kind of enjoy this - to a very limited amount. In all: okay for the sweet-toothed masses who expect a tripel to be heavy and sweet, but useless if you’re out there to find the best example of this noble - but all too often compromized - Belgian beer style. I had this after Gouden Carolus Tripel and Sint-Bernardus Tripel, so it didn’t stand much of a chance in this tasting session anyway...