Imported from untappd on 02-05-2020

Van de tap in Craft & Draft op Koningsdag. Helder gouden kleur met roomwit schuim, verdwijnt wel snel. Lekker blond biertje, maar niet heel speciaal.

At Taverne De Grenssteen, Vaals. Shared with Anke.
Pours clear dark golden with a lasting, foamy, white head; some lacing. The aroma contains sweet malt, grain (the kind you find in Pale Lagers), some spices, hint of banana, hops, cooked vegetable too. It tastes light to medium hoppy bitter and light malty sweet; bit dry in the short finish. Medium body, slick texture, soft carbonation. A failed Dutch interpretation of a 'Belgian Abbey Ale', too bad.

The blond one in this series of semi-industrial Dutch abbey beers, bottle from a supermarket in Hulst in the southern Netherlands. Frothy, egg-white, ’papery’ lacing, very stable head, slowly thinning, over a cristal clear ’old gold’ coloured beer with warmer orangey tinge. Aroma dominated by the ’cooked’ smell of extensive pasteurisation, damp kitchen cloth, soggy chicken corn that has been soaking in rainy weather for days, sweetened cider, iron, melting powder sugar, industrial honey, canned peach, plastic, wet white paper, natural rubber, plaster. Sweet onset, lots of residual ’white’ sugars but no living yeast fruitiness whatsoever, very lager-like and neutral apart from that sweetness, which becomes a tad cloying in the end; some dull, basic sourishness underneath. Slick mouthfeel, medium carbonated; caramelly, bit resiny but thin-bodied middle, clearly maltose- or otherwise sugar-enhanced, very slick with a clear metallic edge. Finish sadly adds just about nothing and reinforces that sugary peachy sweetness without providing any hop bitterness worth mentioning, apart from a weak grassy note at the back. Powder sugar-like, bit honeyish sweetness sticks in the end while that off-putting pasteurization effect resonates in the nose retronasally. I know that Gulpener has recently joined the league of Dutch craft brewers but, like Samuel Adams in the U.S., it remains a doubtful case; this beer very clearly makes an abominable statement for that. This is a sweet, childishly simple, straightforward, probably bottom-fermented blonde abbey beer, the likes of which are Leffe Blonde or Grimbergen Blond in Belgium, nothing more, nothing less. This type of products should not be made anymore in the 21st century, especially not by a brewery that had a certain significance in Dutch beer history but has been vastly surpassed by hundreds of others meanwhile. More than anything, I sincerely hate the fact that an old, established brewery is trying to sell a ’pimped’ and heavily sweetened, strongish lager to me and expects me to believe it is a top-fermented abbey ale. I am looking forward to the day that beers like this go extinct.