Tijd geleden dat ik witbier op heb. Eigenlijk best lekker in de zomer. Kamille in de geur, koriander in de smaak. Mag van mij altijd meer de citrus kant op, maar kamille is een aardig alternatief

Tap at the St Bernardus bar Tokyo. Cloudy blond colour, white fluffy head. Aroma coriander, cream, wheat, sweetness. Taste not bad, sweet triple like characteristics, and some wheat. Candy like sweetness rises further down, cherry-like. Some caramel sweetness. Quite unusual, bit caught between two styles, but nice enough.

Corked bottle. Golden color. Floral, spicy aroma. Malty sweetish, slightly perfumed flavor. Floral, citrus, lychee. Coreander. Dryish finish. Well brewed but not really my taste.

Bottle maybe a little past it's prime. Some wheat in the aroma. Flavor is dry mostly, malt, light hops but a sweet wheat character also.

28th May 2017: 75cl bottle from Mat, shared at the Burning Soul Brewery tasting session. Never thought I would ever see this beer from one of my favourite breweries. Weak white topping on the hazy golden body. Yeasty, bready and light citrusy aroma, taste similar with a sweeter nature than I was expected from the nose: liked it.

Bottle at Burning Soul tasting night; hazy yellow pour with a thin white head, aroma has bready you malts, taste has bready malts, light citrus, wild carbs.

One-off by Sint-Bernardus made exactly four years ago for the opening of their Tokyo brasserie, which highlights Belgian beer culture. Vintage 75 cl bottle with both English and Japanese text, bought from a private collector. Bottle opens under a lot of pressure but no gushing. Moussy, regular, crackling, egg-white head, still quite stable in spite of the beer’s age, yet eventually dissolving almost completely; warm lightly orangey peach blonde colour, equally hazy from the start, looking more and more cloudy in the end with chunks of dark, dead yeast at the bottom of the bottle, forming a grainy sediment in the end. Aroma expectedly has unmistakable ’rusty’ malt oxidation but not (yet) too overpowering; other impressions include ripe pear, straw, orange peel, old cake, iron, apple sauce, powder sugar, baked banana and banana bread, gooseberry, field flowers, wet cardboard, soapy wheat, cooked sweet potato, damp leaves, bread dough, old white pepper, a faint hint of candied lemon and perhaps a subtle touch of coriander; adding more of the deposit renders the nose more bready and yeasty, with a touch of fried egg. Fruity onset, sweet apple, gooseberry and some banana countered by a very soft sourishness, soft carbo tingling on the tongue very gently (in fact too gently - undercarbonated, but this is probably due to its age), lean and supple mouthfeel, very soft, bready and lightly biscuity malt sweetness with indeed some soapy and very lightly sourish wheat, a bit more obvious in the finish, where the soapiness is accentuated further by the coriander, though in all this feature does remain fairly subtle. Hops are nothing more than an invisible background structure but hardly provide any bitterness at all; very ’Belgian’ yeasty phenols retronasally, clove-like, as well as a faint floral hop suggestion. Finish ends yeasty, a bit powdery even, with juicy malt sweetness continuing along with the sourish wheat and lingering sweet ester effects (sweet apple and banana). This probably wasn’t worth either the search or the price, but I’m glad I tasted it nevertheless: it is a bit different from the Hoegaarden witbier standard, more a classic ’tarwedubbel’ in fact, with a bit more body (though starting to get a bit thinned out by age again), less emphasis on coriander and curaçao, a soft and ’fluffy’ mouthfeel due to the use of malted wheat rather than raw wheat; yet after precisely four years of cellaring, it is clearly past its prime and has most likely lost some of the refreshing features typically associated with the style. Far from my favorite Sint-Bernardus beer, was probably better when fresh from tap, but it would never have been my favorite from this brewery anyway, I suspect: too sweet and one-sided. Not intended for ageing, clearly, but it did get notably better deeper into the bottle.

KRS 280315. Deep golden colour with an off-white head. Aroma is sugar, fruit, toffee, malt, banana. Flavour is sugar, malt, wheat, honey, flower, yeast, fruit, toffee, banana. Nice beer.

Bottle, 75cl corked. Almost clear in the glass, golden in color and with a small, dense, white head. The aroma is quite sweetish and sugary, fruity and with some toffee-ish hints. It’s quite nicely carbonated, full to medium bodied and semi-dry. Fruity and malty flavor with banana hints, a generic fruityness, toffee, honey, flowery notes and some bitterness. Lasting finish with fruityness, some white sugar and toffee notes. Quite nice and tasteful this one, although a bit sweetish. 150328