8

Ruikt naar kaneel, roosterig. Smaakt roosterig, een beetje drop, chocolade, cacao. Ik vreesde dat dit pastry achtig was en dat valt mee. Voor 15% drinkt ie wel eenvoudig weg.

7.4

Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 7.5

Can picked up from Belgiuminabox webshop, Antwerp, Belgium and consumed at home Friday 15th January 2021 watching Blade Runner 2049 or whatever it’s called on Netflix. We had Lamb Keema Saag Balti, from the Curry Guy cookbook, with a Dhal. Pours black with a tan head, thick oily mouthfeel, coffee (creamy), roasty and also a little bit of spice, nutmeg or cinnamon perhaps. Trying again, I get a little dark fruit; but bitter cocoa and a creamy nuttiness. This is nice, I had two cans of it.

7.8

Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 9 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 8

6/IX/20 - 33cl can from Geers (Oostakker), shared @ Brouwbar (Gent), BB: 7/III/23 (2020-874)

Clear dark brown to black beer, small creamy beige to brown head, unstable, non adhesive. Aroma: very alcoholic, nice roast, some coffee. MF: ok carbon, medium body. Taste: nice roast, sweet, malty, bit of a chemical bitterness, lots of alcohol, caramel, gingerbread, some cardamom. Aftertaste: sweet, lots of alcohol, nice roast, malty, sugary, hint of coconut, pretty bitter, some dark chocolate, sugary, spicy cake.

7.8

Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 7.5 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 7.5

Slowly building small tan-olive head over virtually black beer. Chocolate dominating, alcohol & fusels, hints at cacaopowder, vanilla, cocos and weirdly enough, rainwater. Relatively speaking faint roast, arriving later, and rust. Sweetish and roast, the latter evolving bitterness into metaloxide. Cacao, vanilla, rumbeans, finishing in bitter chocolate with some dark fruity notes. Cinnamon only appears as the bitterness from the raw product. Very full-bodied, alcoholheat; viscous to chewy; medium carbonation. Quite serious R.I.S. Highlighting its positive side: despite the liberal fashionable additives, those flavours are kept in check. But somehow, I keep having trouble pouring a massive Imperial Stout from a tin can... Age, probably, being on Tram Zes myself.

8.4

Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 9 | Flavor - 9 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 7.5

Can from Geers. Pours cloudy black with an unstable, thin, dark beige head. Aroma of vanilla custard, chocolate praliné, brownie dough, rum-soaked raisin, prune, candied fig, biscuit, dark toffee, coffee liqueur, cinnamon, faint varnish. Taste has (heavy) sweet ripe plume, prune & fig, wrapped in a thick toffee- & chocolate-like profile, almost 'saucy' in a way, biscuity accent pairing well with underlying cinnamon. Toasty & smoky backbone with a vague leathery umami accent. Dry, toasty, earthy hoppy finish, retronasal vanilla, still rather sweet & chocolatey with warming 'Irish coffee' alcohol, well hidden at this ABV. Full body, creamy texture, soft carbonation. Flamboyant flavoured Stout but balanced. Impressive.

7

Kawa i kakao dominuja, dajac takie troche suche odczucie, moze cynamon zreszta tez, acz nieprzegiety. Waniliibym nie zgadl. Sporo ciala. Kawowo-owocowo-kwaskowate posmaki. Dobre+, ale bez przesady, srednia z kosmosu jakas. Albo pechowa puszka

7.3

Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 7

330 ml. can. Black oil, lacing small mocha head. Nose is soy sauce oily syrup with cardamom and black tea, soy sauce oil dominates. Very thick oily body very thick soy sauce sludge with low molasses and bit of ashtray, all of the added stuff is either not noticeable here or barely a suggestion like the coffee, cacao & vanilla,… Crude heave soy sauce oil syrup with touch of cardamom, not bad, some promise but a heavy drink, very oily and little past the soy sauce syrup & touch of molasses and no balance, fair enough.

8.4

Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 9 | Flavor - 9 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 8.5

Galea's brewer Giovanni Christis celebrating his thirtieth birthday with this very strong and flavoured imperial stout with a name in Antwerp dialect, translating as on tram three, available in 33 cl cans. Medium thick, irregularly membrane-lacing, mocha-beige head, slowly showing gaps and thinning, until eventually almost completely dissolving; jet black robe with thin burgundy edges. Strong, expressive, desserty bouquet of fresh and hot espresso, Irish coffee, cinnamon powder, Belgian chocolates, fudge, 'moelleux au chocolat', whisky, whiff of vanilla, pipe tobacco, shoe polish, dry peat, cigar ashes, ground hazelnuts, black pepper, walnut poil, wet nutmeg, fig jam, candied cherries. Sweet, dense onset, sugared figs, blackberry jam and cnadied cherries, hints of blue plum and sweet red apple, quite lively carbonation but very 'refinedly' so and therefore pleasantly tingling, very full, oily, syrupy body. Thick, creamy maltiness, toffeeish, deeply (even milk-)chocolatey with a mild toasty edge, the 'chocolateness' enhanced by the added cocoa; coffee aromatizes the finish in a spicy, bit tangy way, adding some peppery bitterness (matching with the hops) on top of light roastedness with a vague ashy side to it. The alcohol, though strongly warming at this ABV, manages to remain supple and does not become unpleasantly wry anywhere, with a port- and whisky-like effect. Coffee lingers around retronasally, but so do the vanilla and the cinnamon, adding a 'desserty' feel to the whole. Sweetness prevails here, becoming a bit sticky even, but there is an ashy, bitter, spicy tail to this beer that keeps it from becoming overly fatiguing - this is exactly the way I like my pastry stouts. Intense, very thick, very demanding and decadent, this is a liquid dessert and among the best of these postmodern Scandinavian style pastry stouts brewed in Belgium that I had so far - not that there are many around, of course, but this one is remarkably well executed even in comparison with Scandinavian or American examples. I remain as impressed by this one as I was by Living In The Jar, another flavoured imperial stout they did with Polish Maltgarden recently. Clearly Galea has come a long way in their three years of 'official' existence, this kind of beers is clearly a step higher on the ladder than their already very satisfying Dark Nun of last year... One can wonder what kind of other beautiful stouts will come out of this evolution.

7.1

Appearance - 7 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 7

Pours black, medium to relatively large, tanned head with average and above stability. Scent is heavy roasted. Very mild touch of booze, but it doesnt tell the 15 ABV. Not much adjuncts.
Taste starts very roasty, tad ashy. Bitter, heavy on the black malts. Coffee. Fullbodied, mild 'je ne sais qua' caused by the adjuncts, but none of them are recognizable in it's specific character. Mildly sweet ending. Would have enjoyed the additives to be (way) more up front, as i'm not a big fan of 'ashy' stouts, I prefer the modern pastry styles ( I know, i'm a disgrace! )