de Hoppeschuur Café Noir
Microbrouwerij Urthel (Brouwerij De Leyerth) in Knesselare, East Flanders, Belgium 🇧🇪
Stout - Foreign / Extra Regular|
Score
6.75
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Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 5 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 5.5
Malziger, eher dünner Antrunk. Wässrig, leicht herb, geringe Hopfigkeit. Kaffee. Okay. 10/8/9/8//8
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 8
Happy to have found this at my local Delhaize. Been searching for a beer by this brewery for a while now, and I can’t seem to get to their location. So this is a nice surprise ! Pours dark brown, ok white head. Smell is weak, bit sweet, somewhat roasty. Taste is bit bitter, mild coffee undertone. Rather weak in body and intensity. nice carbo. Not a beer i’d go wild over, but OK .
Appearance - 4 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7
F: average, pale brown, not long lasting. C: dark but not as dark as it should be in this style, reddish tones against the light. A: roasted malt, coffee, cocoa, caramel, pine nuts, light peppery, herbal. T: malty, coffee, chocolate, cocoa, earthy bitterness, dark fruits, light cherries, woody, medium body, low to medium carbonated, not bad, 0,75l bottle from Delhaize in Brussels.
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7
Bouteille 75. Brune foncée-cuivrée, col épais crémeux blanc-cassé. Arôme offre un bouquet malté grillé, fin torréfié qui offre des relents de caramel virant sur le mélanoµîde en rétro. Petite touche chocolatée accompagnée par une balance minime des houblons nobles. Palais est malté, grillé, fin torréfié, le tout reste très belge dans l’approche belge dans la levure, une version qui n’est pas en nitro, café perce sur la fin e reste accompagné d’un léger houblonné noble conférant un fini finement amer et fleuri. Le tout est poussiéreux - orienté grains.
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7
To my knowledge, this is the first of Hildegard van Ostaden’s creations at Hoppeschuur commercialized outside the premises of the brewpub; apparently the Delhaize supermarket chain has now decided to literally make very small Belgian brewers’ faces more familiar to the larger beer drinking audience, a fact I can only meet with enthusiasm - I hope many more micro brewers get the chance to present their work to the public this way (so I would even call upon the population to buy these beers, so that it stays interesting for Delhaize to maintain this project). Medium thick, pale greyish beige, moussy head leaving appealing ’paper’ lacing on the edge of the glass; colour deep burgundy brown with ruby hue, hazy and very dark but still completely translucent, so by no means looking like a ’true’ stout. Aroma of roasted pine nuts, dry walnut even, bitter cocoa dust, a lot of caramel, dried autumn leaves, ’old’ coffee grounds, soap, fig, medlar, ’natural’ iron, white pepper, pear, elderberry, dry bark, liquorice candy and, alas, a (fortunately) faint hint of cooked red cabbage (DMS - possibly implying production had to move fast in order to get all these bottles onto the market). Restrainedly sweetish onset of dried fig, dried banana and raisin with a deep, basic blackberry sourishness stronger than the sweetness, very light meaty umami accents increasing in the course of the palate, and fairly sharp carbonation distracting a bit from the actual flavour, but not really overcarbonated. Smooth, ’full’ malt backbone, caramelly and nutty but primarily toasted bitterish, evolving from subduedly sweetish to dryingly bitter, aided by peppery, spicy, leafy hop bitterness ensuring a dry finish of medium to fairly long duration; alcohol remains completely hidden. Bitter roasted malts rule the final impression. Dry stout the Belgian way, perhaps the name ’café’ (coffee) would imply an even stronger roasted bitterness, but the hops help to prolong the dry bitter aftertaste; still it has some ’Belgian yeast esters’ which have no relevance in this particular type of beer. In all, a very decent beer for sure, aptly illustrating the point Delhaize is trying to make here; I guess this kind of publicity may draw more people to - in this case - the Hoppeschuur, where it would prove interesting to compare this with the nitro tap version served at their premises. Note to self: have a draught Café Noir when I make it to Knesselaere... In this form: quite alright and a bit ’different’ from what the average Belgian beer consumer can find in Delhaize, that by itself is important enough, but in all honesty, I did expect more ’coffeeness’ from this and it could do with a bit more body and complexity. In terms of style, however, this is not really a foreign stout, rather a ’Belgian compromise’ between abbey dubbel and dry stout.
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 8
750 ml. bottle @ home. Last rating from 2015. Blackish very dark brown, big light beige head. Nose is thin powdery chicory, thin herbal, malts, powder, hay, light roast,… Taste is coffee but very much in a chicory fashion, chocolate as well but thin & herbal, leaves, herbal, instant coffee, powdery, cacao powder, light roast, faint vegetable notes,… Body is lightly powdery, huge chicory coffee. Acceptable, good when compared to Guinness but nothing compared to a good stout. Still nothing bad here, it drank decently enough, stouts like this just seem a big pointless for, I would prefer either a mild or RIS depending on the desired ABV over this.
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7
Draught @ Hoppeschuur. Dark brown color with a nice red hue, medium sized a bit fizzy beige head. Smell and taste malts, coffee, roasty, dark malts, decently bitter. Thin texture, too thin imo, average body, decent carbonation.
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 7
Typical Guinness-like head, same colour, as the beer is the colour of the famous black cow’s milk. Chocolate, roasted dark malts, but all in all, rather demure. Hint at hops, however. Tastes as a Guinness-clone, with a more intriguing coffee-chocolate-sweetish flavourcombination, especially in the finish; whilst retronasal, more classical ashy flavours appear retronasal. Medium bodied, outspoken gristslickness; chocolate flavour keeps longgoing in the aftertaste. Strong Guinness-likliness, despite the stronger ABV compared to the draught, or weaker towards the VSES.
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7.5
Imported from my RateBeer account as Microbrouwerij Urthel/de Hoppeschuur Café Noir (by Microbrouwerij Urthel):
Aroma: 7/10, Appearance: 4/5, Taste: 7/10, Palate: 3/5, Overall: 15/20, MyTotalScore: 3.6/5
17/III/13 - on nitro tap @ De Hoppeschuur - BB: n/a (2013-248)
Very dark brown to black beer, no light comes through. Solid creamy beige to brown head, pretty solid, non adhesive. Aroma: caramel, bit sugary, mocha, coffee. I have the feeling that the nitro prevents a lot of aroma coming out of the beer. MF: soft to no carbon, medium body. Taste: lots of mocha, bitter chocolate, roasted malts, some lactose sugar, little bitter. Aftertaste: cocoa powder, bit woody, caramel, coffee and mocha, more chocolate.