Gouden Carolus Indulgence 2017 - Botanik

Bouteille 75cl. Dorée, paille, col blanc. Arôme est fruité avec un bouquet botanique très plaisant, note surtout le sureau et le romarin, le tout complète très bien une base plutôt belge de cette bière qui reste dans une lignée classique. Palais est malté, carapils, léger effet boisé, touche d'aiguille de pin, romarin, sureau plaisant, petite influence citrique des houblons et un couvert belge au niveau de la levure qui ajoute une dimension plutôt classique. Au final, un apport intéressant des 4 herbes, et un essai futur à refaire avec d'autres options botanique,

Bottle. Pours a hazy yellow color with a small white head. Has a fruity spicy yeasty herbal aroma. Fruity malty spicy yeasty herbal flavor. Has a fruity malty spicy yeasty herbal finish.

Bottle oro torbida schiuma abbondante piuttosto persistente erbacea floreale chiodo garofano buona secchezza luppolatura contenuta

Bottle picked up at Dranken Geers, Oostakker, nr Gent, Belgium, consumed at home Friday 8th December 2017 whilst cooking a Chicken Tikka Masala from the Curry Guy cookbook and Loz cooking Chicken in Red Wine for tomorrow's tea from an old River Café Cookbook Pours hazy warm gold with large typically Belgian large white head. Very soft mouthfeel, you can pick up the base beer easily enough but the mix of herby additions does not really improve and if anything gives this a minty edge. Clean and spicy the yeast noticeable but again I think the herbs do this no favours. It's ok. A6 A4 T7 P3 Ov13 3.4

75cl bottle at FOB, Rimini, Italy. Pours hazy pale gold with very irregular white foam. Aroma is grainy, spiced and balsamic. Body is medium-dense with medium-high carbonation. Taste is low in sweetness, some sourness. Finish is short enough.

F: huge, snow-white, long lasting. C: blonde, hazy, opaque. A: malty, grassy, spicy, fruity, bit herbal, peach, floral. T: malty, orange peels, spicy, grassy, floral, peach, juniper alcohol, refreshing with a lot of herbal aspects but this is unfortunately beer that I would not have again despite I like other beers from this brewery, medium body, soft carbonation, 75cl bottle from Prik & Tik Leuven.

Bottled:
Pours muddy yellow with a large and thick head. Spicy, floral, sourish aroma. Taste is dry, floral and spicy with notes of orange peels.
Really refreshing.

The third installment of this yearly series of special editions of Gouden Carolus in 75 cl luxury bottles with cork, muselet and classy, gold-lettered and informative label. The first two in this series, called Indulgence, contained respectively (their own) whisky and (Boon) lambic, this one is again very different in being basically Gouden Carolus Tripel spiced up with - according to the back label - elderblossom, angelica, cloves, and rosemary. Opens under a lot of pressure, but no gushing. Thick, elaborately cobweb-lacing, coarse and irregular, egg-white, slowly crumbling but generally very stable head over an immediately very misty, egg yolk-hued, ochre-ish peach blonde beer. Aroma immediately and very strongly dominated by the spicing, in a perfumey, almost bath foam-like way; all four of the spices are recognizable, I get a lot of (strangely fresh) rosemary, an equal amount of actual cloves (aided by light phenolic aspects, I suspect) and a more subtle amount of delicate, sweetish elderflower, but it is that anise-, cypress- and especially very fennel-like angelica, an odour I will never forget with my grandmother's inspiring and medicinally intended kitchen garden still living in my childhood memory, which tops them all; beneath all this dominating spiciness, the properties of the basic beer come through especially when warming up, albeit shyly and modestly: banana-flavoured bubblegum, soggy white bread, pineapple juice, powder sugar, orange zest, caramelized honey, camomile, honey, potato mash (especially as the sediment goes in), white pepper, young 'jenever'. Sweet onset, a lot of banana-bubblegum isoamylacetate, hints of peach and pineapple with a dash of pear thrown in, tempered by a basic, dull sourishness which is in turn accentuated by a sharp, minerally carbonation, somewhat hindering an otherwise supple, smooth mouthfeel. 'White' and cleanly bready malt sweetishness underneath, some lingering residual white sugariness, and quite pronounced soapy wheatiness - the soapiness of which only highlights the soapiness of the spicing, with again that fresh common fennel-like angelica coming to the foreground much more than the rest - though, as in the nose, the cloves and the rosemary are not far behind, with the delicate, 'pollen-like', vaguely honeyish elderblossom remaining fairly subtle. The spices basically overrule everything, traces of a kind of orange peel-like freshness live underneath it, as well as lingering bubblegum, some earthy yeastiness, wheaty soapiness and an afterglow of warming, gin-like alcohol, with its gin-like properties colorized by that overt spicing. A late but effective and eventually quite pronounced, leafy hop bitterness lingers after swallowing, but the bitterness may have to do at least to some degree with the alcohol as well. I have been keeping this brewery, Belgium's oldest, in high regard from before the advent of international craft beer in this country, and have enjoyed the first two Indulgences to a large extent, but this is clearly not my beer: I have generally come to dislike spiced Belgian ales a bit, some more than others, probably due to the overuse of coriander; this one only adds to the Belgian spice drama by burdening an otherwise fine tripel with a truckload of heavily perfumey spices. I suspect that gin hype, which has lead to a few other overspiced ales in the past years (I recall Palm's Hop(e)less Ginny and that Brugge Tripel Prestige reluctantly), is somewhere behind this one as well, at least conceptually. The spices overpower the nose with an agressive, non-beery 'perfuminess' and add needless and, frankly, somewhat unpleasant wryness to the finish. Granted, the basic beer is of relatively high quality so it does not completely collapse, but it is still reduced to a ruin of its former self. I'm sure some people will appreciate this but for me, it just doesn't work, this is not even a matter of 'old school Belgian balance' anymore, but a matter of overkill. Not undrinkable, in all, and technically well-executed, so I won't be too harsh on this one, but I sincerely wish Het Anker more inspiration than this for edition number four in this Indulgence series - if we are at all treated with another one next year, of course.