Bottle at home. Nice dark red colored beer with an average sized off-white head. Aroma is odd, tart, sour red fruits. Flavor also has a tart hint, but also a sweetish slightly sugary note, spices, malts and some distant bitterness with a little bit of red fruit in the mix as well. Odd. Not my thing.

330 ml bottle, from Det Bette Ølhus, Ålbæk. ABV is 5.8%, 35 EBU. Hazy and deep reddish brown colour, moderate off-white head. Nice aroma of mild cookie spices (including cinnamon) and malts. The flavour is also malty with mild but distinct spices, but not too sweet. Moderate hops in the finish. Decent Christmas beer.

Bottle from Dranken Geers, Oostakker. Shared with Anke.
Pours hazy dark red/amber with a small, foamy, off-white head. The aroma contains caramel, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, cookie dough, red berries and red apple. It tastes medium sugary sweet but immediately backed up by a spicy bitterness. Drying, spicy and hoppy in the shortish finish; a bit metallic with lingering sugar. Medium body, slick/creamy texture, soft carbonation. A bitter Christmas ale, not that bad but a bit messy.

The fifth one in this Homo Beerectus series, twenty-five more to go... Spiced 'dubbel' of sorts referring to the 'Sinterklaas' (Saint Nicholas) tradition of December 6th but advertized as a Christmas beer, probably because Sinterklaas lasts only one day and no one outside of the Low Countries and parts of northern France celebrates it. Medium thick, moussy, pale yellowish beige head, dissolving in the middle but relatively well-retaining around the edge; lightly hazy, attractively and unusually vermillion reed-hued copper-amber coloured beer with enthusiastic sparkling - but turning into a more mundane, copper-hued, cloudy brownish bronze when the sediment is poured in. Aroma of sourish dried redcurrant berries and other astringent red berries (weirdly so - infection?), dried orange peel, nutmeg and raw bitter cinnamon, coriander seed, red apple peel, moldy hazelnuts, 'speculoos', old dry raisin bread, red cabbage stewed with brown sugar, vague background hint of 'putjeslucht' (rotting egg) but fortunately faint and covered by the strong spicing. Some dried apricot-like sweetness in the onset but sourish, sorb apple-like edges as well, actually a lot less sweet than usual for a Belgian Christmas beer; spicing is evident from the start and develops further over a relatively softly carbonated, slick, bit thinnish and 'empty', caramel- and lightly toasted bread crust-flavoured malt body, providing soapy and resiny effects in terms of mouthfeel and a lot of ethereal sweet-and-bitter aromatics retronasally. Cinnamon is often associated with sweet desserts, cookies and the like, at least in our western culture, but it has serious bittering powers and that becomes very clear in this ale; apart from evident cinnamon presence, I get coriander seed and nutmeg as well. Ends bitter, due to the cinnamon but also due to a dash of spicy, leafy hops, but with caramelly malt sweetness lingering as well as some underlying, very subtle but noticeable sourishness which I suspect is the result of an infection already beginning to develop. Very spicy as advertized, less strong and less sweet than the classic Belgian Christmas ale and in that sense a bit of an oddity - so definitely not lacking in personality. I am not the greatest fan of heavily spiced ales but this is different and not unpleasant, but the very faint H2S aspect in the nose and equally faint background sourishness in the mouth clearly point at onsetting infection - so drink your bottles now, as this will only get worse over time. Apart from that, this ale could do with a bit more body as well, as apart from the spices and in spite of the pleasant malt profile, it feels a bit on the thin side even at less than 6% ABV. Interesting and better than expected for me personally (based on below ratings), but so far nothing in this weird series beats the technical elegance and refinement that was Hop Hanker Sorachi Ace (n° 3).

04/02/2018 - small glass shared with tderoeck, 77ships and rubin77 @BAB, Bruges. Coppery, small lacing. Nose is wet grains, cowfodder (had expected more with this description which was promising). Taste is caramel, overripe fruits, some spices, bitter ending.

F: thin, off-white, not long lasting. C: amber to coppery, hazy. A: caramel, mellow fruity, bit banana, orange, bit spicy. T: herbal, caramel, bit spicy, fruity, bit chocolate, yeast, medium body and carbonation, nothing very tasty. Sample shared with tderoeck and Bierridder_S @ Bruges Beer Festival 2018.

Tasting glass draft @ Billie’s Bier Kafétaria. Red amber hay, big creamy tanned, light tanned head. Nose is iron sweet sticky painfully metallic, malt syrup, cheap & poor strawberry jam. Taste is unpleasantly metallic, syrup, weeds, spoiled fruit, way too soap, chemical, thin unpleasantly metallic, really got worse the more I drank of it, sounded fair on paper but the spoiled, empty metallic sweetness of it was a real mess.

Bottle from Deconinck, Vichte. Beautiful orange/brown colour, brown/orange foam. Nose of spices (cinnamon, cloves, cardamom). Taste is light sweet, some caramel, spicy and very dry bitter. Bit unbalanced.