Couck Tarwe Dubbel

Imported from my RateBeer account as Couck Tarwe Dubbel (by 't Paenhuys):
Aroma: 7/10, Appearance: 2/5, Taste: 6/10, Palate: 3/5, Overall: 11/20, MyTotalScore: 2.9/5

9/IV/18 - 33cl bottle from a trade @ home - BB: 11/VII/19, bottled: 11/VII/17 (2018-361) Thanks to Alengrin for the trade!

Clear blond beer, small aery creamy white head, unstable, non adhesive. Aroma: bit dirty, some rotten fruits, orange peels, bit funky, spicy, coriander, cabbages. MF: very lively carbon, medium to light body. Taste: bit sourish, lots and lots of oranges, orange peel, soft bitterness, bit sourish. Aftertaste: more oranges and orange peel, little funky, dirty touch, sourish, some cooked cabbages.

Paenhuys ’tarwedubbel’ commissioned by an aspiring new beer company referring to itself as both "brouwerij Coucke" and "brouwerij Straffe Couck" - now this is a bit confusing... Apparently located at Sint-Gillis-Waas, they have already developed this wit, a blond and a tripel, so not a very inspired assortment to say the least. Anyway: this one was a slow gusher, but nothing dramatic. Thick, frothy, very moussy, egg-white, typical ’witbier’ head remaining largely closed for most of the time, atop a misty yellow blonde beer with vaguely ochre-ish tinge, the mist being perturbed by fierce strings of fizz rising up from the bottom; turns a deeper, fully cloudy peach blonde with sediment. Aroma of banana, pear, old cheese, margarine, white pepper, coriander seed, old dried out lemon peel, soap, pineapple, dry breakfast cereals, wet cardboard, radish, dough, spicy phenols becoming a little bit medicinal after the sediment has been added, some very faint DMS. Vivid onset, very spritzy carbonation even for this intentionally refreshing beer style, very minerally and a bit numbing; sweetish (but not too exagerrated) banana ester mingles with impressions of raw unripe pineapple, green apple peel and gooseberry, more sourish than sweetish in all, but well balanced. A basic, soapy wheat sourishness continues this play of sourish and lightly sweetish fruitiness and blends in with a pleasantly bready barley malt flavor in the middle; a sharper grainy edge, paired with a soft, slightly creamy mouthfeel reminds of the fact that oats have also been applied, but the creaminess suffers a bit from the overcarbonation. Soapy coriander shows up in the end but not obnoxiously so - the soapiness of the whole, one factor that sometimes puts me off witbier a bit, therefore remains luckily limited, although it does necessarily linger a bit. Some vague zest-like ’old citrus peel’ flavors appear in the end as well, along with clove-like phenols, a deep, soft, earthy hop bitter touch, lingering minerals and breadiness from both barley and yeast. A faint but refreshing lemony sourish touch lurks in the tail after swallowing. The classic witbier spicing, though still obvious, has been kept relatively limited here compared with the old Hoegaarden standard and the oats and above average ABV (’tarwedubbel’ as 6-7% witbiers are sometimes called) lend this a bit more body as well. Not bad, actually, but I do hope these guys will come up with something at least a little bit more innovative than these very stereotypical Belgian cliché styles...