On tap at source, courtesy of Jef. Pours deep amber to brown with medium beige head. Malty, caramel, sweet, light fruity notes, some sugar. Medium bodied.

Draft at the source courtesy of Jef, thank you sir! Hazy amber brown color, white head. Aroma of light roast. Taste has cocoa, caramel, light sweetness. Decent.

Bottle. Pours a dark amber color with a small off-white head. Has a fruity malty spicy caramel aroma. Fruity malty spicy caramel flavor. Has a fruity malty spicy caramel finish.

Big bottle, batch q017 (from belgiuminabox). Pours dark copper brown with beige head. Aroma is sweet, malty, caramel, some metallic notes. Flavor is sweet and bitter, caramel, malt, some booze, some fruits. Drinkability isn’t really good. Overall: drinkable.

750 at Rose Red in Brugge. Pours dark brown with a beige head. Aroma is darker fruit and smooth dark malt. Med body. Carbonation is sharp. Flavor is sort of sour brown. Otherwise as per aroma. Good beer.

The ’Q2015’ (last year’s) version, 75 cl bottle brewed at Gaverhopke, so the most recent embodiment of this beer. Strange it does not have a lot more ratings, I suspect many people mistook this one for the Gulden Spoor version of 2013? Anyway, reading the name ’Gaverhopke’ on the elaborately adorned paper wrap around the bottle prompted me to open this over the sink, and even that could not prevent my kitchen from being flooded: the beer literally spouted out of the bottle with a force I have seldom seen. I hate Gaverhopke: I cannot understand how they seem to be incapable of solving this problem, neither can I understand why Oude Maalderij turned to them for brewing this beer. The visual result is in line with the extreme gushing: first a towering, papery, inches thick, irregular, yellowish beige head collapsing in a short while and turning very irregular, with unequal patches of beige foam here and there and leaving irregular lacing; the beer itself is completely cloudy, like the content of a muddy pool after heavy rain, chocolate brown with an enormous amount of random yeast throughout, eventually sinking to the bottom of the glass and leaving a thick milky cloud there. The head completely vanishes after a while so that it looks as if I’m having a cold coffee with a bit of coffee cream in it. Aroma of butterscotch and a lot of caramel, milk chocolate, overripe pear, freshly fermented farmland and even slurry pit, strong paint- and shoe polish-like phenols, Irish coffee gone cold, hazelnut paste, banana, brown bread dough, grape peel, ’jenever’-like alcohol and a whiff of DMS (cooked Brussels sprouts) - in other words, good intentions ruined by a bunch of strong off-flavours. Spritzy onset, overcarbonated for the style but fortunately with ’small size bubbles’ like champagne so not too coarse in mouthfeel; estery fruitiness of peach, banana, blackberry and a hint of orange, brown candi sugar, sweet with a sourish edge, smooth and ’full’ malt sweetness, very caramelly, a tad nutty and a bit chocolatey, ’fluffy’ and somewhat honeyish as expected from the style; ends with ongoing malt sweetness overrun by a very powdery yeastiness, a dash of earthy hop bitterishness managing to balance out the sweetness quite well, (way too) strong retronasal phenols and warming, rum-like alcohol which could have been better hidden and even turns a bit wry on the root of the tongue. For as far as I remember, this seems a bit sweeter than the original, first version of itself made at Maenhout, but obviously the technical flaws make it hard to compare. The idea by itself is okay: a full, warming, sweet dubbel (or quadrupel, depending on how you look at it, since these two styles are essentially the same only differing in alcohol strength), made with genuine dark malts and with a correct basic flavour profile; but, as I have aptly described, it has been executed very badly by Gaverhopke, with refermentation gone completely berserk. The extremely violent gushing, the muddy look of the beer after that, the very strong phenols: all these things were absent in previous Qantelaar editions. A shame, that is very clear, and if I were in the Oude Maalderij guys’ place, I’d leave Gaverhopke behind as soon as possible, like White Pony did!

Bottle 750ml. @ home on the terrace. [ As d’Oude Maalderij Qantelaar ].[ Courtesy of JanO ]. Clear dark brown color with a average to large, frothy - creamy, good lacing, mostly to fully lasting, beige head. Aroma is moderate to heavy malty, dark malt, caramel, moderate to heavy yeasty, dried fruit, raisin, anis seed. Flavor is moderate to heavy sweet and moderate bitter with a long duration, anis seed, belgium yeast, dark fruit - dried fruit, dark malt. Body is medium to full, texture is oily, carbonation is soft. [20150706]