White Oak IPA
Brasserie 28 (previously Caulier Developpement: La Maison Caulier) in Ghislenghien, Hainaut, Belgium 🇧🇪
IPA Regular|
Score
6.68
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Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7
Good white head, lots of lace over fully hazy yellow beer. Spicy, wheat, green herbs and good hops. Esters, oak, but no vanilla, wheat without the acidity. Gin and lemon. Light body, wheatslick, and well-carbonated. Misses a bit from what the blurb promises, but not bad.
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 5 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 5.5
Bottled@PBF XI. Yellow colour, small white head. Aroma is citrus, some spices, earth, herbs and mild wooden notes. Flavour is fruity, citrusy, toffeeish and mild wooden notes. Also mild metallic notes to the flavour as it’ been in the glass for a while.
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 8
Hazy yellow colour with thick fluffy head. The aroma does have a bit of wood. Flavour is very citrusy and fresh. Full flavoured and easy to drink.
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7
33cl bottle @PBF XI. Poured pale golden color with a thin white head. Perfumy, spicy floral aroma. Some lemony notes. Flavor has citrus, perfumy and spicy notes. Good drinkability. Apricotty. Light and refreshing.
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 6.5
From tap. Pours hazy yellow with a small white head. Aroma is fruity, speachy and slight citrusy. Mello fruity, peachy and slight citrusy. Crisp hoppy finish.
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 8
Sampled at BAB 2016. Thnx for sharing, everyone ! Pours unclear yellow, small white head. Smell is citrussy, sweat, taste is sharp, bitter, orange/citrussy. OK.
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 8
06/02/2016 sample @ BAB shared with tderoeck, 77ships, kradel, ... Hazy blonde, white head. Nose is wheat, lemonny. Taste is fruit, especially lemon, light herbal and some sour notes. Weird but interesting. Just a bit wattery
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7.5
Had this from tap at the Brugge Bierfestival in 2015, was pleasantly surprised by it and since it is apparently widely available now in the Delhaize supermarket chain, I decided to re-rate it from a bottle. Strangely advertized as a ’white IPA’ though the label says "100% barley malt" without mentioning any wheat. Moussy, irregularly lacing, snow white, fairly stable head over a straw blonde, cloudy beer with greenish hue. Aroma of green apple peel, moldy lemon, stinging nettle juice, fermenting garden weeds, goat cheese, green banana, unripe gooseberry and a lot of it, soap (wheat!), limoncello, cucumber, raw pineapple, some urine and wet leather (Brett), chalk, pear juice, raw rhubarb, shrub celery, unripe green plum, subtle soaked wood, lime-scented air freshener, starfruit, green tea, sourdough, freshly grated horseradish or even a weak whiff of wasabi somewhere. Lively onset, estery with lots of green apple acetaldehyde along with unripe stonefruit and dito gooseberries, sourish starfruit and green kiwi, more sour than sweet, with a lime-like touch to it; minerally carbonation, medium and fitting in quite well, smooth mouthfeel. Grainy middle with soft soapy wheat, almost witbier-like and this was apparently the intention, a tad doughy, with minerally hints and ongoing fruity esters. Finishes in a very mild but aromatic hoppiness, not thoroughly bittering at all, soft and floral, but with an unmistakable New World touch to it (sour passionfruit, very faint grapefruit) without delivering the lush fruitiness one normally expects from a beer hopped with Galaxy. The Brettanomyces adds a certain ’animalistic’ accent, a tad hayish and even a little bit leathery, without deeply penetrating the basic hoppy witbier; finishes dry due to lingering wheat sourishness with a lemony touch from the Galaxy, including a mildly earthy, lightly spicy and even somewhat woody bitterness; something chalky also remains. The oak factor remains limited to some tannins drying the backside here and there but I do not get a deeply wood-infused flavor - and neither did I get this from tap, so this oak thing is probably limited to a superficial oak chip treatment rather than barrel ageing. A sourish lime juice-like flavor, enhanced by the wheat, lingers in the aftertaste. Clearly very wheaty - the brewers call it a witbier, but in all, this is very close to an Anglo-Saxon wheat ale, closer than any other Belgian-made beer I ever had. The Brett and the (I suspect) oak chips add an ’old’ and wild accent, but I’m not quite sure if these additions fit in well; it seems natural that a brewery striving for a very low sugar amount resorts to Brettanomyces (which, contrary to Saccharomyces, leaves no sugar intact after it has slowly made its way through the beer), but I have the feeling that very different beer style concepts have been haphazardly mixed together here, and it just does not achieve the harmony I like to expect from an experimental beer like this. I was fascinated when I first tried this last year and honestly the difference between the draught version back then and this bottled version is not that big; it does, however, shows both the elegance and the slick ’soapiness’ of a Belgian witbier. Quite puzzling in terms of style and in that sense interesting (especially in the old Belgian context), quenching as well and demonstrating a certain amount of complexity, I’ll give this the benefit of the doubt. In its deepest bowels, this is still a Belgian witbier though, adorned with a couple of random new craft beer features.