Bottle shared. Light hazy orange with a small off white head. Aroma of fruity hops, citrus, yeast and light malt. Flavour is moderate sweet and bitter. Medium bodied with soft carbonation.

330 ml. bottle. Accepting this franchise deal just seemed desperate to me back when De Palm released this beer & now that they have been taken over by Bavaria, my impression has just been reinforced. BBF 28/04/18. Pours a bright hazy golden, very solid, creamy head, feels a bit tampered with but I might be way off here. Nose is massive industrial plastic ester & plastic banana nose, low yeast, chemicals. Taste is intense soap, chemical, sweet soap, esters, plastic banana, massive sweetness, white sugar, industrial honey. Thick oily, fizzy, low jenever alcohol. There is technically nothing wrong with this beer but this is massive unpleasant excessive esters, thick banana, industrial, unpleasant big plastic etc. classical excessive ester, jenever alcohol, soap Belgian. This is almost painful in its excessive industrial etc. Belgian qualities, like a bad blast from the past. Fitting for an ancient soap I assume which I admit to never watching, this is hopefully an indicative of the past looking at the recent decline of this brewery once from massive heights. I am definitely not wishing these guys anything bad but I do hope that beers like this will soon be part of the past.

Bottle. Creamy white good mostly lasting head, Dark yellow colour. Moderate malkty and hoppy and yeasty aroma. Light bitter flavor. Not many fruity esters. Average light bitter bfinish. Oily palate.

Quite good, dense & fine light yellow head, stable over quite lively carbonated clear copperish golden beer. Malty nose with white candi sugar, caramel, parsley and yeasttouches as fruity esters. Slightly toasted. Burning MF with a strange composite flavour that is bitterish, sweet-ish and toasted at the same time. Hints at mold, without being musty in character. Retronasal some human sweat. Bit agressive MF, aided by the very lively carbonation. Bit sticky, medium bodied. Generally lame... as befits Familie.

Pours copper/blonde with a fluffy white head that dissipates slowly. The aroma contains banana, apple, orange and citrus, some hops and candy. Tastes very sweet initially but a light hoppiness kicks in in the end. The alcohol overwhelms the flavour, whilst the carbonation remains too lively. Body is quite light. Not complex, nor rich. Too bad.

After the commercial success of Slurfke, a fictitious beer from a Flemish television soap series brought to real life by Van Honsebrouck, the competitive broadcasting company, a private television station, has decided to do exactly the same thing and bring a fictitious beer from their own soap series to real life; if I am to believe a female colleague who has a keen interest in Flemish soap series, contrary to myself, this beer is the first brew from a brewery owned by a man named Gust, who dies in the series after which a young enthusiast takes over the brewery... Anyway: I grow suspicious when I encounter pure marketing concepts like this, but let’s give it a shot. Bottle from a Delhaize supermarket, where this beer is currently tested marketing-wise. Initially very thick and fluffy, ’membranous’ lacing, off-white head, dissipating slowly and eventually leaving a moussy rim on the edge and an irregular greyish veil over the liquid, which in itself shows a warm peachy blonde colour, hazy from the first pour but ’equally’ so, like an industrial witbier, but more orangey. Aroma yields quite strong isoamylacetate (banana and banana-flavored bubblegum), next to green apple peel, unripe peach, coriander seed, industrial honey, freshly cut grass, white raisins, gin, dried orange peel and less inviting, quite obnoxious whiffs of iron, chalk, damp kitchen towel and even faint melting plastic - in all, coming across as very cliché ’middle of the road Belgian’ and somewhat industrial. Very spritzy onset, strong minerally carbonation distracting from the actual onsetting flavors, which involve the expected ’bubblegummy’ banana (strongly so), peach, red apple and sweet white grape, some basic sourishness lingering underneath but sweetness clearly dominates. Middle phase has ongoing banana and white candi sugar sweetness, smooth and full but suffering from the overcarbonation, over a caramelly and honeyish malt sweet basis. Finish is more of this sweet maltiness, retronasal banana ester and only a faint touch of grassy, superficial hops providing insufficient aroma and, even worse, insufficient bitterness to counter the sweetness. A glow of warming, ’young jenever’-like alcohol almost deafens the flavor in the very end: its tiring effect is clearly there, but fortunately not in an astringent way (though it is a close call). The white candi sugar sweetness unfortunately survives this alcohol effect and goes on and on, to the point of becoming truly aggravating (that hugely overrated, reprehensible Leffe Blond springs to mind). As said, I have no affinities with Flemish soap series whatsoever, but my gut feeling tells me this thing does not honor the mourned Gust: Palm, unconvincingly having proclaimed itself to be a ’craft brewery’ quite recently, has missed another chance to shine. If production of this beer remains relatively limited as Delhaize claims, then why not take the opportunity to create an old-fashioned ’artisanal’ Belgian ale which truly appeals to the craft beer lover? This thing adds literally nothing to the Belgian beer map, which is already overcrowded as it is, not in the least with completely unnecessary beers. Clearly the sweetness of this beer is aimed at the average Leffe Blond or Grimbergen Tripel drinker. Marketing is all that is going on here. Poor old Gust, he must be spinning in his grave now.

Pours bit unclear blonde, good white head. Smell is sweet, some malts, some yastnotes. Taste is very mildly bitter, fresh malty, sweet ( sugar ) light yeastnotes.

F: big, white, good retention. C: hazy, opaque, golden to orange. A: light citrus, orange peels, grassy hop, hint of spicy, yeast. T: very smooth mouthfeel, medium to full body, orange, dusty, malty, coriander, candy sugar, very subtle grassy bitterness, surprisingly well balanced for contracted beer brewed by Palm brewery for Medialaan, 0,33l bottle from Delhaize, “De kleur zit goed, het bier is fris en helder, heeft een mooie parel, een goeie volle geur”. In maart wordt Gust gelanceerd in de reeks en op hetzelfde moment zullen de flessen van 33cl en 75cl exclusief bij Delhaize te koop zijn. Gust is een bier van hoge gisting met een alcoholgehalte van 7,8%. De beste mout en zorgvuldig uitgekozen hopsoorten, geven het een heel eigen aroma.