17 August 2019. At Gents Bierfestival X. Cheers to Anke, Kevin & the crew! Hazy brown-amber with a lasting, frothy, off-white head. Aroma of brioche, cake, red apple, raisin, dried fig, plum, candied orange, sugared green tea. Taste is medium malty sweet, quite thick on caramel, cake, fruity notes of apple, plum & orange, only a tad spicy with a hint of bitter tea leaves, character is bready & brioche-like, as filled with chunks of sugar. Dryish, herbal hoppy finish, lingering candied fruits & cake with strong liqueur-like alcohol, 'thoroughly' the style of White Pony. Medium body, oily texture, fizzy carbonation. All in all enjoyable, but as is so often the case with White Pony the balance is lost. 2 February 2020. At Brugs Bierfestival. Cheers to Anke & Pieter! Lots of sweet dried apricot, banana, raisin & fig, thick biscuity & toffee character, bit herbal, bit spicy (phenolic), lots of expected herbal liqueur alcohol. No need to change my rating here.

Bottle. dark brown color. Maltaroma with hints of dried fruit and butter. Malty sweet, alcoholic flavor with raisin and dried fruit. Warming, pleasant but not abundant with flavors and aromas.

(Bottle) Dark brown colour with frothy, beige head. Malty, fruity nose with notes of chocolate, dried fruit, prunes, caramel, raisins, liquorice and tobacco. Malty, fruity, vinous taste with dried fruit, prunes, figs, chocolate, caramel, brown sugar, some wood, spicy yeast, anise and a sweet and warming finish with moderate bitterness. Full body, fairly sweet. Really tasty and well balanced, in between an English barley wine and Belgian quadrupel. Very nice.

Draught, taster. Sampled on the 17/03/2019 at Barcelona Beer Festival 2019, (L´Hospitalet, Spain). Clear amber. Sweet malts. Strong caramel and licorice. Sharp malty finish. Next one please!

I procured this fine product as a shelf turd at Firefly ages ago, and just finally got around to opening it. Medium amber-brown colour. Just the thinnest whisp of a head. Drops bright. The aroma has some richer dark sugars, a little bit of caramel, definitely some alcohol and phenol harshness, and some burnt fruits. It's smoother on the palate, with toffee and sultanas, and some decent sugary notes. The finish has a lot of alcoholic muscle, which provides nice dryness. Muscular, but not harsh, and the elements are quite well-balanced. Not the most refined or stylish barley wine I've ever had, but not half bad.

330ml bottle. Pours a murky ruby red-brown with a small, creamy, short lived beige head that laces. Sweet aroma of caramel malt, brown sugar, toffee, raisins, prunes and plums. Sweet flavour of caramel malt, brown sugar, dried fruit, plums, light yeast and a hint of chocolate with a dry, bitter, warming alcohol finish. Medium body with an oily texture and soft carbonation. Closer to a Quad than a Barley Wine, but still tasty. Has some complexity.

Vintage bottle of about two years old - still made at Gaverhopke, so I opened this carefully over the sink. I was initially relieved that it did not gush - but my relief was short-lived: one second later, foam came streaming out of the bottle neck. Sigh... Anyway: afterwards I got a fairly thinnish, regularly shaped, beige-ish off-white head, quickly reduced to a ring around the glass and a few dots in the middle, over a hazy chestnut brown beer with mahogany hue. Aroma of caramelized brown sugar, sweet sherry and a lot of ruby port linked to onsetting oxidation, honey, overripe banana and peach, cashew nuts, apple sauce, cake dough, earth, brown rum, blue plums, fresh paint- or varnish-like fusels, figs soaked in ’jenever’, raisin bread, ginger, orange liqueur, candied dates, baking powder, pear syrup, dust, brambleberry jam. Very sweet, even sticky onset, a whole lot of residual candi sugar cloyingness with estery hints of banana, overripe pear and fig, some thin grape-like sourishness underneath but not enough to counter the huge sweetness. Mouthfeel is thick and full with medium carbonation, but unfortunately not as vinous as I would have hoped from something called barleywine - this feels and tastes like a quad rather than any kind of barleywine, really. Some phenolic spicy notes here and there, along with the fruitiness and the strong sugary sweetness sitting on top of a soft, creamy, caramelly and bready, in the end vaguely chocolatey malt sweet body. The sweetness dominates till the end, but the finish adds some retronasal ’portorisation’ which befits this beer quite well, along with bready yeasty notes (a tad starchy in the end but not unpleasantly so), an earthy hop bitterish touch and, unsurprisingly, quite a lot of warming, rum- and sherry-like alcohol, providing ’heat’ and some lingering astringency on the root of the tongue. Not a bad attempt as such, but as said, much more a sweet quadrupel than a true barleywine; a bit crude, too straightforward and clearly a bit unsophisticated for the style, with way too much sticky sugar sweetness to work myself through a whole bottle, too much distracting yeast effects and not very well hidden alcohol, but a few years of aging did this beer good I think (never had it young), adding some complexity due to portorisation - the noblest form of oxidation. I can recommend this to people who like big, sweet quadrupels, but it does not compare with the legendary Belgian trappist standards in this style (like Rochefort 10, Westvleteren 12 or Chimay Bleu). I don’t know if this beer has been continued now that Roberto brews at Het Nest but if it is, I wouldn’t mind tasting it again. In all: one of the better White Pony products made at Gaverhopke, but lacking in refinement, also from a technical point of view.