Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 6

The (for now) other 1B2T beer, also brewed at Jandrain-Jandrenouille by 1B2T, a new contract brewer from Schaarbeek near Brussels; apparently a spiced amber ale making use of - I assume - Indian spices. Thinnish but firmly edge-retaining, lightly lacing, snow white, bit milky, moussy head over warm and beautifully deep pure orangey amber robe, lightly hazed. Aroma of indeed very strong ethereal sweet spiciness (anything but subtle, contrary to what the label says), patchouli- and pot pourri-like with notes of cinnamon, black cardamom, cloves, ginger and coriander seed, general impressions of pumpkin pie, peanuts, peach, rusk, banana, jute, straw, dried clover, red apple, soap, damp earth and something iron-like. Sweetish onset, red apple, some banana, apricot and pumpkin, fizzy carbonation adding minerally, bit stinging effects, slick and supple, slightly oily body; dry-bready, rusk- and peanut-like maltiness, gently toasted bitterish, with the bitterness eventually accentuated by a spicy, leafy hop dosage stretching into the back of the mouth, bit peppery, but the pepperiness is of course also due to the added spices, which add a lot of ethereal, primarily cardamom-, clove- and ginger-like aromatics retronasally as well as a deep, slightly wry but in all quite palatable spiciness; the nutty maltiness lingers too. I generally dislike overly spiced ales and this is certainly one of those - it's as if the spices need to mask certain minor brewing flaws - but admittedly I had way worse in this segment, as in this case the spiciness, however dominant in the nose, remains relatively softish in the taste, in the sense that it does not add the strong, unpleasant astringency one often sees in spiced beers. It still remains an overly spiced beer, though admittedly technically better executed than its wheat beer sister.