Tap. Opaque dark brown color with beige head. Aroma is herbal, chocolate, fudge. Taste is herbal, chocolate, fudge, prunes. Oily mouthfeel with medium carbonation. Quite weird.

Bottle @ home. Dark brown colour, thin layer of beige foam. Sweet notes of caramel, dark fruit, plums, some vanilla. Taste is sweet, bit spicy, light notes of banana and dried fruit. Nice one.

Dunkler, fein malziger Beginn. Wenig Vanille, vergoren fruchtig, rund. Süffig würzig-bitter, Schokolade, mittellanger Nachhall. Gut. 10/9/10/9//10

Bottle picked up from Bierhalle Deconinck, Vichte, West Flanders, Belgium. Had this Sunday 29th April 2018 whilst cooking Chicken with Thyme and Lemon and Smashed Garlic Potatoes. Pours a dark brown colour with a mid sized tan head.Fruity on the nose and in the mouth, though a combination of dried water fruit, banana and sweet orange. Nice beer. A7 A4 T7 P3 Ov15 3.6

F: big, pale tanned, good retention. C: dark, opaque. A: chocolate, bit coffee, caramel, cocoa, bit dark fruits, banana. T: malty, dark fruits, plums, cocoa, bit banana, mellow fruity, if you are really search for vanilla you find some traces, bit herbal, not bad, enjoyed, dry on the palate, medium to full body, medium carbonation, 33cl bottle from Bierwinkel De Hopduvel in Gent.

The quadrupel in this series of new Siphon beers, from a 75 cl bottle; apparently spiced with orange zest and vanilla beans. Medium thick, very moussy, creamy, pale yellowish beige, regular head, slowly dissipating in the middle but well-retaining on the edges, over an initially clear, deep bronze-brown beer with bright ruby red hue. Aroma of overripe brown bananas, candied figs, dried orange peel indeed, stewed plums, molten candi sugar, caramel, lots of almost ’medicinal’ phenols, Li�ge pear syrup, soaking wet brown bread, rainwater, some ’wet dog’, damp straw, damp tree leaves, old cookies, ginger powder, vague hints of almond flour bread, nutmeg, pear juice, young ’jenever’, stewed apple, prepared saddle of hare, hazelnuts gathered from a moist forest floor, sweat, very old beef stock and - all the way at the back - a faint touch of vanilla beans, but so faint that if I tasted this in a less concentrated way, it would have simply escaped me altogether. Sweetish onset, some candied dates, ripe banana and ripe pear, hints of peach and blue plum, accentuated by lingering - but not cloying - candi sugar but also balanced by a basic, generic sourishness; carbonation is soft within the properties of the style, mouthfeel remains slick, full and a bit ’fatty’. Some thin meaty umami accents (almost venison gravy- or rather: saddle of hare-like) linger onwards over a sweet, toffeeish and (brown) bready malt phase with an old-fashioned, exagerratedly treacle-like residual candi ’sugarness’ on top, dried fruits and some banana as well, with a sourishness on the edges of the tongue preventing the whole from becoming unpleasantly sweet. Finish adds a slight dried orange peel flavour but as is the case with the nose, vanilla beans remain all but absent, unfortunately so, as they could have lent the beer a refreshing, uplifting quality. Some herbal, earthy, almost soggy tea bag-like hops provide a very soft background bitterishness while the sweetness, a combination of (most of all) unfermented dark sugars, toffeeish maltiness and a trace of banana ester remains dominant; the alcohol adds a certain ’afterwarmth’ but as such does not become too explicit at any point. The vanilla intention becomes more clear after swallowing, when on top of this lingering maltiness and alcohol warmth, a certain, unmistakable but still very subtle vanilla flavour indeed shows up - when the show is already over. I like this brewery for its international approach, trying to motivate the average Belgian consumer to sample some of the international taste aspects, but technically they are still falling a bit short; I get the idea of ’pimping’ an old school Belgian quad with orange zest and vanilla beans, but then at least make it a bit cleaner and less phenolic and apply those vanilla beans to such an extent that they become unignorable, as is the case in so many vanilla-flavoured American stouts, for example. This beer suffers from exagerrated phenols and something overly ’animalistic’ (wet dog, sweat) as well as something damp straw-like which is neither all too flattering, nor - I assume - intended. Clean this recipe up, make it technically more refined and you may be on to a really great quad here, guys! As for now: benefit of the doubt, the intentions are good and all things considered, this is enjoyable enough as a rather traditional Belgian ’massieve’ ale.

Dark brown. Aroma and flavour have plenty of very sweet dark malts. Light vanilla. A bit thin and gassy