Brouwerij Varenbroek Sibyl

Sibyl

 

Brouwerij Varenbroek in Reet, Antwerp, Belgium 🇧🇪

Collab with: Brouwerij At Tack
  Belgian Style Regular Out of Production
Score
6.05
ABV: 4.5% IBU: 25 Ticks: 14
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7.5
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 8

Bottle from Delices, I think. Grainy, blond, bit of sweetness, lightly herbal. Tasty. Bit of cream. Saison like elements.

Tried from Bottle on 09 Sep 2019 at 16:05


4.6
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 3 | Texture - 4 | Overall - 4.5

@ Au Phare, Tongeren. Hazy amber colour, white foam. Medium carbonation. Metallic, soapy, hints of peach and stonefruit, oxidation. Not good.

Tried on 24 Jul 2018 at 11:21


4.5
Appearance - 4 | Aroma - 4 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 4 | Overall - 4

Bottle @ home. Clear golden color, small white head. Smell and taste malts, hayish / straw a bit, metallic, lightly grainy and a bit herbal-bitter. Iron / metallic aroma quite strongly which annoys me, quite off-putting tbh. Firm carbonation, average body. No, don't like it.

Tried from Bottle on 14 Oct 2017 at 08:47


6.5
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7

23/04/2016 sample glass shared with the BE RB crew @ZBF2016. Hazy blonde with nice white head. Nose is light citrus, a bit grains. Taste is bitter hops, some grains again, thin ending.

Tried on 11 May 2016 at 10:23


6.1
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 6.5

New: 3.1 - Golden colour with thin head. Aroma and flavour have light malts and a touch of vanilla sweetness. Old: 2.4 - Hazy yellow with soapy head. Texture is like soda water. Very high carbonation. A bit sharp. Some yeast and banana notes too.

Tried on 30 Apr 2016 at 09:12


6.2
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 6

Varenbroek beer apparently honoring Hildegard von Bingen, a crucial figure in medieval culture not just for mentioning hops as an essential ingredient in beer, but also for music, poetry, medieval philosophy (for what that is worth) and even botany - but maybe more importantly, an influential woman in an age otherwise dominated by men when it comes to historical figures. Expectations are high especially seen the hoppy aspect of this figure... Lot of pressure on the bottle but no gusher. Very thick and frothy, irregularly shaped, very stable, egg-white head leaving thick layers of ’paper’ lacing and residing over an immediately hazy straw blonde beer with ochre hue, with the haze ’disturbed’ by vivid sparkling. Aroma of green banana (isoamylacetate but not exaggeratedly so), dried pineapple, some dried lime peel too, dry grass, hay even, field flowers, moldy apricot, old dry ginger powder, red apple peel, baker’s yeast, white bread, chamomille, cooked sweet potato, dried leaves, powder sugar, Conférence pear, abbey cheese, bitter honey, soap, bitter orange and a hint of rancid butter. Crisp, very spritzy onset, lots of minerally and souring carbonation numbing the tongue and distracting from the actual fruitiness, which yields impressions of green kiwi, unripe peach and green banana, very faintly sweetish and more dominantly sourish but in all quite neutral; grainy middle phase, a tad bready perhaps, with light mouthfeel ’coarsened’ a bit by the overcarbonation, while the sourish fruit aspects continue; finishes earthy and grassy, hop bitterish for sure, but still juicy and grainy more than anything else; retronasally I get floral and grass aromas of Euro hops and the earthy bitterness does last for a while, as the fruitiness fades away into oblivion. Clearly overcarbonated and not ’fully’ malty enough (in other words: too neutral and insufficiently malt sweet) to justify this dosis of herbal, earthy, floral hoppiness. I get the idea of creating a light, hoppy, crisp beer (think session IPA but in a very traditionally European ’noble hops’ kind of way), but if you force this idea upon a thin, grainy blonde of 4.5% ABV, things quite simply get out of joint. That is exactly what happened here: Varenbroek tried to pump more hops in this beer than it can carry, resulting in an unbalanced beer which is actually quite hard to pour down even if it is below ’session’ level to Belgian standards. Could improve a lot with a bit more ’weight’ and caramelly sweetishness in the malt department. For now: interestingly hoppy in the nose (floral and mildly spicy, though disturbed by Belgian esters especially in the omnipresent banana form) but unbalanced in the mouth. Technically okay, but conceptually a bit flawed, let’s say.

Tried from Bottle on 29 Apr 2016 at 18:39


6.5
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 8

Sampled at Zythos 2016. Thnx for sharing, everyone ! Pours unclear yellow, small white head. Smell is sharp, bit bitter. Taste is sharp, very bitter, citrussy ( lemon ) high carbo. Ok !

Tried on 29 Apr 2016 at 08:13


4.5
Appearance - 4 | Aroma - 3 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 4

Hell herb bitterer Antrunk, unsüffig. Wenig malzig, plörrig trocken. Kaum vorhandener Nachgeschmack. 6/6/7/6//6

Tried on 27 Apr 2016 at 04:07


6
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 4 | Overall - 7

Sample @ Zythos’16, courtesy of and shared with the RB Belgian crew. Dorée, col fin blanc. Arôme au nez citronné, noble vert, rétro fleuri avec un relent de levure conférant un bouquet un peu ’off’. Palais offre une effervescence moyenne-haute, avec un profil fruité rappelant le kiwi, fruité vert pointe umami de champignons, note terreuse avec un houblon qui est là mais un peu trop en retrait.

Tried on 24 Apr 2016 at 15:56


4.8
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 4 | Flavor - 4 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 4

NOTE: More people should know about the amazing & incredibly talented Hildegard von Bingen. This beer does her a disservice, here is instead some of her music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SK1mLpRxO3M Sampled @ ZBF 2016 (Thank you for sharing RB people!) Hazy artificial looking citrus, little off-white head. Sweet chemical insecticide nose, industrial, bad yeast, fizzy. Taste is chemical, rubbish, fizzy green banana, yeast, soap. Fizzy & chemical body. Nope not a fan, pass.

Tried on 24 Apr 2016 at 08:30