Thank you Alengrin! 330 ml. bottle sampled @ “Belgian Ticks Tasting Ghent”. Only thing that distinguishes the label from the blond version is that the background here is beige / low mocha, yeah sure that is clear to everyone. BBF 2/4/14. Dark brown tanned head. Nose is liquorice, mocha, bark, overripe banana,… Taste is plastic, mocha, chocolate, clove ark, overripe banana, sweet, herbal, liquorice,… Body is cloves, overripe banana, BE,… Your average subpar dark Belgian but way better than the straight up unpleasant blond version.

Imported from my RateBeer account as De Hagewinde Krak (Bruin) (by De Proefbrouwerij):
Aroma: 7/10, Appearance: 4/5, Taste: 7/10, Palate: 4/5, Overall: 15/20, MyTotalScore: 3.7/5

21/VII/17 - 33cl bottle @ Belgian Ticks Tasting (home) - BB: 2/IV/14 (?) (2017-1104) Thanks to Alengrin for sharing the bottle!

Clear dark brown beer, big aery creamy beige head, pretty stable, adhesive, leaving some lacing in the glass. Aroma: sweet, caramel, bitter, soft roast, lots of milk chocolate, sugary, some vanilla. Aftertaste: little bitter, hoppy touch, caramel, sweet malts, more chocolate.

Pours very dark caramelly copperbrown. Small white head. Smell is burnt, some chocolate, bit dry. Taste is full, dark aromatic chocolate, roasty malts, very roasty. Mild bitterness. Bit dry.

The dark version of Krak, a local beer from Lokeren brewed by the ’Proef’brouwerij in nearby Lochristi for De Hagewinde, a local non-profit organisation concerned with children with mental and learning issues. Apparently this dark version, which I stumbled upon by coincidence at the Panos Corner linked to a Q8 gas station on the main road between Lokeren and Dendermonde, has been in existence since 2012, but I have never seen it before; the content of the label is exactly the same as that of the original blonde version, including the name, only the background colour is different. Slow gusher, foam trying to escape immediately after opening, but manageable. Thick and frothy but regularly shaped, lightly lacing, pale beige-ish (the colour already revealing that actual dark malts have been used), creamy head, slowly thinning in the middle, crowning a very dark - but translucent - chestnut brown beer with deep, reddish burgundy hue, misty. Pleasantly sweet ’bakery’ and utterly malty, almost Bock-like aroma of freshly baked brownies, cookie dough, toasted brown bread, old cocoa powder, toffee, ripe pear, gingerbread, candi sugar, raisins, cloves, fried banana, sweet potato, hints of damp earth, brown rum, dried fig, white pepper, cinnamon. Fruity onset but in a relatively clean way, no overwhelming amount of esters, rather a ’dried fruit’ sweetness with a dash of banana ester and some underlying, soft, very vaguely blueberry-ish sourishness; residual candi sugar sweetness as can be expected from a dubbel, but again in a clean and restrained, elegant way. Medium carbonation, a bit minerally with a slightly souring effect, supple and full, very smooth body maintaining a high degree of drinkability - rather insidiously so, because this does not quite feel like an 8% ABV. Caramelly and biscuity malt sweet middle with lightly metallic edges, ongoing dried fruits and subtle phenols (cloves) on top; gains a toasted, subtly bittering accent in the end, matching well with a leafy, earthy hop touch, effectuating a late but adequate bitterness. The alcohol does manifest itself in the tail, in a somewhat crude, ’jenever’-like way, balancing on the brink of astringency and wryness, but it is the malt sweetness (and light bitterness) that gets to wrap things up in the end. Vague and ’generic’ dried fruit flavors linger. I did not expect much of this, honestly, and conceptually this is clearly a very uninteresting beer with nothing more than local relevance - ignoring the fact that the revenue it generates, is put to good use by the organisation that commissions it, of course. Still, and this is Proef after all, it does not harbour any obvious flaws and has a pleasant ’warm toast’ and chocolate cookie-like quality to it, making it very enjoyable, and of somewhat more importance than so many other ’secondary’ dubbels which originated as a dark alternative to an original blonde beer but were made dark the cheap way (i.e. by adding syrups rather than brewing something new with actual dark malts). Have a point for not cheating on quality.