Escort Deluxe 2017 (Naked)

Sampled at Billie's 2018. Hazy blond with soapy head. Aroma and flavour have obvious sweet pear and sweet malts.

6 October 2018. At Modeste Bierfestival, Antwerp. Cheers to Anke & Elke!
Clear dark orange with a lasting, thin, off-white head; little lacing. Inviting aroma of peach jam, apricot, ripe pear, white pepper, yellow apple, dough, 'woody vanilla,' some honey. Taste is medium to heavy fruity sweet, lots of peach, vanilla & ripe pear; possible cloying countered by a medium herbal bitterness, a bit peppery & grassy, sourish touch of green apple. Dryish, peppery & floral hoppy finish, a tad phenolic, vanilla again, warming fruit liqueur alcohol. Full body, slick, almost syrupy texture, fizzy carbonation. Good stuff, my expectations are high for the BA version.

Bottle. Deep golden color dense white head with good retention and lacing. Aroma has a light edge of booze. Taste is sweet vinous caramel.

Last year's edition of Escort Deluxe, the luxury beers Cabardouche changes every year, steini bottle from The Beer Shop. Belgian barleywine "with pear", label does not state the "naked" specification and this doesn't seem all too necessary to add either, as the barrel aged variant - which I have waiting in my cellar - explicitly mention the barrels and has a different coloured label. Anyway, this "naked" one shows a tightly membranously lacing, medium thick, creamy, dense, largely stable, egg-white head and initially cristal clear, warm amberish orange blonde robe, turning misty and deeper amber, if not coppery, with sediment. Aroma of fried pear and pear brandy indeed, embedded in impressions of freshly baked white bread, nectarine, banana, soap, straw, dried apple peel, orange zest, old 'jenever', vaguer hints of cigarette tobacco, fried tomato, cumin seed, wet cloth, white pepper, old dried ginger roots and - alas - a faint but unmistakable whiff of DMS (extensively cooked, sulfuric cauliflower) which, as is too often the case in Belgian ales, decreases the enjoyment. Sweet, fruity onset, pear-like I suppose but not too explicitly so, flanked with banana-, apricot- and green apple-like notes, very dimly sourish around the edges, well-carbonated but still with a resinous, vinous mouthfeel. Smooth caramelly malt sweet basis, very lightly bready and honeyish due to residual sugars, but with a very soft and mild toasty bitterish accent as well. Ends primarily sweet, a tad cloying even, but at the same time dried by a strong, heating, calvados- or (autosuggestion at work) Poire William-like alcohol effect, a bit spirit-like even, yet somehow managing to refrain from unpleasant wryness; white wine-, peach- and phenolic clove-like flavours add a certain amount of complexity, as does a late but undeniable, rooty, spicy, even a bit wormwood-like hop bitter accent which tenaciously clings to the root of the tongue after swallowing. Something very thinly metallic seems to linger as well. The pear (juice, I suppose) adds subtle sweetness and aroma, sure, but if an Anglo-Saxon (or in this case: English) style barleywine was the aim, I don't think it was a very useful addition and keeps it a bit too "Belgian". I suspect a Belgian yeast strain was used too, seen the estery and phenolic aspects of this beer, which, and I love to place beers into stylistic perspective, makes this qualify as an old school Belgian style barleywine. The term itself has hardly (if at all) been used by Belgian brewers in the traditional sense even in its Dutch translation 'gerstewijn', but things like Bush Ambrée or Stille Nacht (and their respective variants) do qualify for me as a kind of old school Belgian interpretation of English style barleywine, even if both these beers evolved independently from each other and share no common ancestor. This one fits neatly into that category - but style issues aside, this is a highly profiled Belgian luxury beer for sure, just too bad for the DMS, although in this case it remains so limited that even I, being highly sensitive to this substance, am not bothered by it too much. Very boozy, sweet and 'amplified tripel'-like, not entirely the thick yet clean vinous sipping ale I expect when I see 'barleywine' on a label, but a Belgian of relatively high class for sure. Looking forward to try the barrel aged variant, if this has been done right, something really remarkable may come out of it...

Bottle before the release @ Beerlovers Bar. Pours a bit amber, small white head. Smell is medium malty, thick sweetness, breadcrust, very caramelly. Decent bitterness. Taste is medium-high bitterness. Very caramelly, complex malts, lasting bitterness, as well as some caramel. Nice Barleywine.

Sampled @ Billie's Craft Beer Fest 2017. A clear dark golden beer with a small white head. Aroma of strong riped fruits, belgian yeast. Taste of strong sweet malt, ripe banana, belgian yeast.

(Thank you!) Sampled 330 ml. bottle @ Billie's Craft Beer Fest 2017. Orange golden. Nose is bit thin, some fish guts, too BE with esters. Taste is basic sweet, bit thin with BE esters, low fish guts, caramel, sugar, syrup. Bit too BE in profile & touch thin, not bad but I liked the BA a lot more where the BE flourishes which don’t fit this style for me were obscured. Still nice beer.