Bottle 0,5ltr: Hazy orange colored brew with an slightly sweet bitter taste, hints of speculaas, ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg. Very good winter beer but i drunk it on an sunny May day.

Creamy white good mostly lasting head. Yellow colour. Light malty and moderate hoppy and light yeasty aroma. Moderate bitter flavor. Average moderate bitter finish. Oily palate.

A really nice winter ale. Fine spiced profile Clear deep golden pour and a fine head Good intensity in the aroma Balanced sweetness and a fine carbonation level Malty, bready, mild yeast and fine spiced profile in the flavor [Bottle at Le Poechenellekelder in Brussels, Belgium] Brewery #2580

Bottled. Hazy goldeny orange colour with a small white head. Aroma is fruity, some spicy and mild yeasty notes. Flavour is yeasty, spicy, some mild fruity and alcoholic tones. Warming, but not all too burning alcoholic.

Huge orangeish tinted head, dense & stable over well-carbonated, cold hazed orange-golden beer. Heavily spice nose with clove, allspice, lavender, almost camphor-like. Bitter-spicy. Gives a slight smoked impression. Again clove & lavender, orangepeel, but also pine & resin, lending a woody bitterness, as biting in pine needles. Rather well-bodied, gristslick, good carbonation. Spice flavours keep going on for long. I definitely don't like the nose, the problem being overspicing - or nearly so. Des Guten zuviel - almost.

Bottle from Del Haize. Copper with a frothy head. Aroma of cinnamon and spice. Flavour is yeast malt, spiced on a decent hop base.

Bouteille 50cl de Delhaize, BB 16/12/2018. Ambre sur léger orange, col blanc épais. Arôme au bouquet levure, épicé, herbacé, impression de coriandre, léger fruité pomme et ester, très belge. Palais est malté, pâle et pils, épicé sur touche de coriandre, effervescence moyenne, houblonné noble, effet de grains ponctué encore par l’ajout d’épices. Retrouve encore un léger fini de pomme/ester venant de la levure typiquement belge. Râpeux sur la fin avec une amertume des houblons qui reste marquée.

The winter beer from this young Wallonian microbrewer, from a 50 cl bottle (typical for this brewery) bought at the Carrefour hypermarket in Oostakker. Tightly ’membranous’ lacing, egg-white, dense and frothy, stable head remaining practically closed for quite a while, crowning a warm, deep orange blonde beer with amberish hue (not dark brown as expected), clear initially but turning hazy (with darker bits of dead yeast) after adding the sediment. Aroma of cinnamon bread, star aniseed, coriander (soap!), dried ginger root, melting powder sugar, hints of toast, hazelnuts, medlar, ripe pear, warm apple cake, white cardamom, calvados, yellow raisins, clove-like phenols, dried banana, almond, straw. Fruity onset, bit estery, hints of banana, pineapple, pear and peach, sweet with a slight redcurrant-like sourish touch, minerally carbonation, bit souring, full and lean body. Soft caramelly malt sweetness in the middle with a sharper grainy edge down below, as well as more ’fluffy’ breadiness; meanwhile the banana and other esters are carried along and spicy phenols grow considerably, but not to the point where they reach a medicinal level: instead they are silenced by the actually applied spices - apparently six of them, with the drying, almost bittering cinnamon, aromatic cardamom, spicy ginger and - as always - very soapy coriander being the most notable ones (in descending order of importance); I am left wondering which are the two other ones, but I’m randomly guessing seeds of paradise and star aniseed could be involved. This - even in the traditionally Indian sense of the word - ’warming’ and soft but emphatic spiciness links this beer with Belgian Christmas ale traditions, but also lends it a somewhat exotic aspect, in the ’old’ 20th-century way. They work well together, representing a kind of ’Old World’, almost medieval spiciness, and overseeing a malty, soft finish in which they seem to add more ’herbal’ bitterness than the hops do, as the latter are limited to an earthy, only ’generically’ spicy bitter touch deep down in the tail. Alcohol, not insignificant at 8%, effectuates a warming glow afterwards, carrying down both the aromatic spiciness and the soft, sweet maltiness; the array of spices does get the last word, though, with a resinous, drying, somewhat wry effect even more so than the alcohol (though there certainly is a light amount of alcohol astringency). As a whole, this beer is almost like liquid gingerbread, reminiscent of things like Ultra Blonde de Noël or Toetëlèr Speculaas - in other words, this particular combination is actually quite ’speculoos’-like in combining lots of unfermented sugars with lots of resinous spices - yet probably a bit less so than both aforementioned examples. Spice beers are usually not my cup of tea (at all) and in this case, they are a bit too pronounced, interfering too much with the ’natural’ play of malts, hops and esters, although there is even worse further up this slippery road. The intention here was clearly to make a heart-warming, old school sweet spice beer and since I cannot detect any serious - technical - flaws apart from the spice rack having been applied a bit too generously to my very personal preference, I cannot but conclude that they achieved this goal quite well. Not my beer, sure, but interesting enough, also because they opted for an amber ale rather than the usual Scotch-based dark brown recipe, which would have made this a lot more cliché than it is now.

Bottled 500ml (Beergium)
Slightly hazy amber color, good off-white head and lace. Sweetish berryish malty aroma has hints of Christmas spices. Medium-bodied. Caramalt, some alcohol, clove and cardamon. Quite traditional Christmas beer. Ok brew but these spice mixes are not so exiciting.