La Franchefleur de Franchimont
Brasserie Grain d'Orge in Hombourg, Liège, Belgium 🇧🇪
Belgian Style - Blonde / Pale / Amber Regular|
Score
6.57
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La FrancheFleur is a blond beer with high fermentation, hoppy, unsweetened, floral and refreshing.
Each year, several hundred kilos of flowers are harvested and drowned in apple wine. From there comes our delicious Fleur de Franchimont!
After a maceration of several months, the flowers are removed. They are then used as raw material to make La FrancheFleur, and give it its character! The use of elderflower gives a dimension and a unique and very appreciable palate.
Each year, several hundred kilos of flowers are harvested and drowned in apple wine. From there comes our delicious Fleur de Franchimont!
After a maceration of several months, the flowers are removed. They are then used as raw material to make La FrancheFleur, and give it its character! The use of elderflower gives a dimension and a unique and very appreciable palate.
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6.2/10
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Appearance 6
Aroma 7
Flavor 7
Texture 4
Overall 6
Elderblossom-flavoured blonde ale brewed by Grain d'Orge for the Walloon company Vins & Elixirs de Franchimont, a company that has been commercialising regional 'Franchimont products' for twenty years now; this is the only beer in their portfolio (the rest of their range consists of a mead, a liquor and some fruit wines), so I would not consider them to be a brewery, not even a bierfirma, contrary to what this site apparently states. Anyway: very thick and frothy, rather irregular but very stable, closed, sparsely lacing, eggshell-white head resting heavily on a near-clear, warm and pure 'old gold' coloured beer with fierce sparkling, disrupting a suspension of translucent 'dust' that may well represent elderblossom particles in this case; shifts to a nicely misty apricot gold with the sediment added, with still visible swirls of sparkling raging through the mist. Aroma of indeed 'real' and flowery to even slightly perfumey elderblossom but without that 'meaty' effect it often has in beer, next to halfripe banana, sugar loaf, white soap, old potatoes, stewed turnip, iron (head stabiliser, as confirmed by the 'hand test'), breakfast cereals, apple peel, hard green pear, plaster, mustard seed, coriander, yarrow (but that's probably just the elderblossom again), damp earth note. Sweetish, fruity onset, quite pronounced banana ester mingled with pear and apricot notes, sourish undertone accentuated by the fizzy carbonation (though, thanks to small sized bubbles, less harsh than expected), rounded and fluffy, but also very soapy and somewhat metallic body. Indeed the iron effect from the nose subtly lingers somewhere at the back of a white bread-pulp-like, wheaty core, aromatized by the elderblossom in a slightly perfumey, bit honeyish, eventually even bath foam-like way, when that strong annoying soapiness (a combo of wheat and coriander seed enhanced by the elderblossom, I reckon) gets blended in the mix. Some superficial, light-hearted floral hop bitterness shows up at the back and it seems the elderblossom adds a bit of extra wryness to it, but the sweet banana ester, sweet maltiness and - above all - the soapiness prevail. Too soapy to be pleasant for me, and that iron aspect does not help either; I have seen Grain d'Orge perform a lot better in the past eighteen years of their existence, but the elderblossom as such does add a certain elegance and flair to what would have been a very bland Belgian standard blonde otherwise, even if it feels less 'natural' than in many other artisanal elderblossom-flavoured beers I had (even excluding the elderblossom lambics, such as Lindemans' Blossom Gueuze).
Tried
on 15 May 2020
at 21:55
6/10
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Appearance 6
Aroma 5
Flavor 6
Texture 6
Overall 7
At Borefts 2016. thnx for sharing,everyone ! Pours clear blonde, good white head. Smell is spice ( dry spice ) Taste is rather intense, bit bitter, dry spice again. Pretty sure about the elderfloer which is really intense, not very blended in though. Its like eating elderflower-powder really.
Tried
on 03 Oct 2016
at 00:26
7/10
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Appearance 6
Aroma 7
Flavor 7
Texture 8
Overall 7
F: big, not very long lasting, white. C: gold, hazy. A: malty, light citrus, floral, dusty, yeasty, hint of fruity, bread. T: malt, citrus, elder-flower, orange, spicy, coriander, medium body, over-carbonated, good balanced interesting beer, 0,33l bottle from Delhaize in Eupen.
Tried
from Bottle
on 18 Jul 2016
at 13:10
6.1/10
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Appearance 6
Aroma 6
Flavor 6
Texture 6
Overall 6.5
330ml bottle from Auchan. Pours hazy pale gold, white head. Aroma is bready, lemon citrus, herbs. Taste is floral, herbal, yeasty, good elderflower echoes.. sweetness does grow a little with some sherbet notes. Not bad really.
Tried
from Bottle
on 04 May 2016
at 15:21
6.5/10
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Appearance 8
Aroma 7
Flavor 6
Texture 8
Overall 5
Many thanks to ThirstyBird. The beer starts fresh and smooth, slightly bitter, nice yeasty. Slightly sweetish, slightly bitter, smooth, nice typical sweetish. The aftertaste is smooth-sweetish, slightly bitter and nice yeasty.
Interesting and nice. Probably a bit too dry for the sweetish yeastiness. 11/11/10/10
Interesting and nice. Probably a bit too dry for the sweetish yeastiness. 11/11/10/10
Tried
on 10 Nov 2014
at 11:28