13/10/2018 - small tasting glass shared with rubin77 and some friends @Bles Bierhappening, Zottegem. Dark brown with bit tanned head. Nose is dark malts, dark fruits, chocolate; Taste is dark malts, dark fruits, chocolate, nice oily feel. Nice but the hops are obscure.

F: big, pale tanned, good retention. C: dark brown, hazy. A: malty, grassy, herbal, bit chocolate, fruity, yeasty touch. T: dark malts, chocolate, cocoa, light sour fruity, spicy, medium body and bit higher carbonation, good balanced and enjoyable beer yet my expectations were higher here, sample from bottle shared with Bierridder_S and his friends @ 25th Bierhappening on Saturday 13/10/2018 in Zottegem.

The latest, fourth installment in this Gouden Carolus Indulgence series, a dark hoppy ale (no less than five hop varieties used) celebrating the tenth anniversary of one of their greatest hits, Gouden Carolus Hopsinjoor, so essentially a dark version of an originally blonde "Belgian IPA" or hop-forward Belgian ale style beer. From the trusted 75 cl bottle with posh, gilded label, cork and muselet, the name of the beer this time shown over a grass green background. Very intricately 'Brugse kant'-like lacing, pale yellowish beige, very moussy, frothy head, showing several gaps after a while but otherwise well-retaining; initially almost clear, dark bronze robe with bright ruby hue, translucent. Aroma of dried apple peel, cloves, deep-fried parsley, wet toasted brown bread, dried prunes, banana-flavoured chewing gum, strong additional iron (confirmed by the famous 'hand test'), walnut shell, tea, coriander and fennel seed, subtler notes of salmiak, exotic rosewood, cream corn, calvados and dry earth. Fruity onset, the typical 'cleanish' Belgian esteriness one expects from a Gouden Carolus nowadays (I miss the old days sometimes), quite prominent banana ester but acceptable for a Belgian ale style beer, notes of dried plums and unripe pear, restrained in sweetness with a dim sourish edge accentuated by very sharp, numbing and minerally carbonation; slick, resinous body, very caramelly in the 'hard' and not overly sweet kind of way but with quite a strong corn-like slickness to it as well, next to bread crust and toasted brown bread aspects, the latter supporting an earthy, quite long-stretched but altogether (to modern standards) soft hop bitterness, leafy and rooty in nature with floral aspect retronasally, but clearly not aromatic in the way New World hops can achieve - and in the way I was silently hoping for. Ends bitter and a tad metallic (fortunately less so than feared based on aroma), with a combination of soft and mlild toastiness with more pronounced hoppiness, but the caramelly juiciness and banana esteriness survive the finish as well, all warmed up by a brandy-ish alcohol effect. Leafy, herbal, mildly estery dark Belgian ale, very Belgian in its general make-up but at the same time an interesting case: I notice it has been classified as a black IPA here, but this is only true if you consider Gouden Carolus Hopsinjoor to be an IPA - which it is not. Hopsinjoor is basically a hop-forward tripel - admittedly among the first on the domestic market to present itself that way - and in that sense, a tripel with IPA influences; if that statement holds true, this new Indulgence is nothing more than the 'dark side' of Hopsinjoor, making use of a dark malt bill to achieve a similar effect based on 'massieve ale' but trying to convey Hopsinjoor's character. Technically speaking, this worked out relatively well, offering quite a lot of Hopsinjoor's hop bitterness in the context of a dark Belgian. Interpreting it as a black IPA, however, is a bridge too far for me: if anything, I'd rather see this as a Belgian dubbel heavily tilted towards the hop forward trend, a trend which so far has mainly reached blonde beers in Belgium - with the exceptions being situated within the young, modern, Anglo-Saxon-inspired, innovative end of the Belgian breweries' range. If one must consider this a BIPA - which I explicitly do not - then it must be the first one in Belgium issued by an old family brewery and aimed at a larger audience. I am looking forward to hearing the reactions to this beer from that larger Belgian audience. But whatever the result may be: this is very 'Gouden Carolus' in the modern, cleaned up sense of the word, for sure.