Bouteille 33cl de et partagée avec Tderoeck. Fin orangé, col blanc. Arôme est fruité modéré, agrumes, note de pamplemousse et !une once de tropical avec cet accompagnement levure belge qui empêche les effluves de vraiment convaincre. Le bouquet grains reste assez neutre mais typique de ce que l’on retrouve en quantité en Belgique. Palais offre un côté basique belge, épicé, fruité& avec ce léger rappel que l’on est bien face une IPA. Note de pamplemousse, alcool perce bien avec toujours ce profil belge. L’idée est bonne tout autant que cela ne soit pas contrecarré par une nécessité bien de chez nous à submerger la bière dans cette signature toute belge. Retrouver autant de fois le ’mot’ belge dans une notation n’est pas forcément une bonne chose, surtout lorsque l’on joue avec le style IPA.

First beer from a Waasmunster-based hobby brewery now commercialized through Boelens and for sale in two pubs in the village of Waasmunster, many thanks to my colleague Lieve for fetching me a bottle in one of those. Thinnish but moussy and stable, yellowish white head leaving a steady rim around the glass and a snowy veil over the liquid; completely clouded robe from the start, peach blonde with ochre hue which becomes increasingly brownish (and, honestly speaking, increasingly less attractive) as more of the bottle is poured into the glass. Aroma of (initially quite strong but quickly fading) blood orange, light spruce, pink grapefruit, lemon zest, artisanal honey, kiwi, straw, gooseberries, some sourdough and peach, but also a certain ureum-like odour, almost like stale pee, disturbing a bit but fortunately not enough to totally ruin the nose; this is probably mildly infected, perhaps due to bottling issues? Fruity, estery ’Belgian yeast’ onset, some banana, peach, lots of gooseberry and starfruit, with medium carbonation, sweetish and lightly sourish with a citrussy edge; lean and supple mouthfeel, notably bready malt sweetishness in the middle, gradually increasing hop character ending in a finish of lingering fruity yeastiness and persisting ’breadiness’ under a spicy, lightly citrussy and even somewhat piney, earthy hop bitterness drying the back of the mouth, but perhaps in a less powerful manner than I had hoped for, lingering only gently, but for quite a while. Not flawless, the American-style hop bouquet is nice but could have been stronger for me, I’d prefer this with a tad more bittering hops as well, and there is something clearly ’off’ in the nose, something vaguely urine-like which kept bothering me all the way through, maybe the onset of a bacterial infection. This impairs the looks as well: there should be sediment at the bottom of the glass, not a fully cloudy appearance throughout. That being said, I do applaud the fact that this new contract brewer at least had the guts to opt for an IPA-style beer instead of exhausting himself in producing yet another tripel, dubbel or blonde. I hope the technical flaws will be improved, and then we will end up with an interesting addition to the genre of ’Belgian IPA’, which I still think should be recognized here as a separate style, like our colleagues at Beeradvocate do. P.S.: re-tasted this afterwards in a pub in Waasmunster and this second bottle did not have the urine-like quality I encountered in the first one; with this flaw being gone, it proved truly interesting, even the non-beery ladies at the table seemed to enjoy the aroma, which was a lot more attractive without that urine smell. My rating here, as a consequence, is to be considered an average of both tasting sessions, as the second bottle clearly deserved a much higher rating!

Bottle 33 cl. Pours a murky, opaque olive amber with hardly any head. Decent, fresh hop aroma with some yeast. Medium body, fruit - and then an ocean of horrible phenols. A piece of humble advice: if you’re going through the effort of getting good hops, do NOT drown them in phenols. Dammit Belgian yeast, utterly useless for hoppy beers. Find a more neutral one please. 030915