28/IX/22 - 33cl bottle from my cellar, shared @ home, BB: 26/IV/22, bottled: 26/IV/19, lot: 20180009, aged for 12M on a jenever barrel (2022-1331)

Clear dark brown to black beer, big aery irregular light beige to light brown head, falls down rather quickly, a bit adhesive. Aroma: lots of CO2, dark roast, soy sauce, pretty oxidized, lots of alcohol, sourish impression, malty, phenols, overripe banana, dried fruits, chocolate notes, raisins, a bit earthy, pretty nice actually. I knew it was a good move to age this alcoholic bastard for a while. MF: soft carbon, medium body. Taste: sweet and rather sugary start, lots of caramel, some dark chocolate, very gentle roast, alcohol, some bitter, cocoa powder, a bit sourish, more alcohol, caramel, phenols, overripe banana, sweet touch. Aftertaste: some hop bitterness (yes, still!), gentle roast, cocoa powder, dried fruits, caramel, yeasty, a bit oxidized, still very boozy, some chocolate, not bad, but a bit too boozy and maybe a tad too sweet. More of a boozy quad with a hint of stout, than a true BA RIS, but definitely not a bad attempt!

Mareklop's marshmallow stout aged on barrels for twelve months; the label fails to mention which barrels, so I assume it is this 'jenever' version I have in front of me. Slow gusher, but with careful opening, it is possible to avoid loss. Medium thick, initially audibly crackling, mousy, hardly lacing, greyish beige head quickly 'breaking' in the middle but retaining well around the edge; black robe with initially clear, deep burgundy-red edge of only a few millimeters. Strong aroma of 'fondant' chocolate, grey rye bread, coffee cream, hot chocolate sauce, candied fig, indeed 'oude jenever' but also calvados, toffee or even some fudge (the marshmallow aspect, perhaps), wet old oak wood, wood varnish, wet clay, 'koetjesreep', pear, hints of liquorice, cooked meat, dried porcini 'jus', old walnuts, kahlua, beef stock, tawny port and - alas - solventy and phenolic effects of shoe polish, methylated spirits and even some very faint hospital. Sweetish onset but not too cloying, candied fig, some vague banana and medlar, blackberry coulis; fizzy carbonation with 'stinging' minerally effects (a bit much so for this style), still full and oily body. Deep toffeeish and caramelly, brown-bready maltiness with deeper black-chocolatey underbuild, but before one is allowed to enjoy this thick black malt profile, it gets thinned and marred by a strong 'jenever' effect, manifesting itself as rather prominent booziness before its time and a liquor-like, heating, peppery, eventually astringent finish, which indeed pours a lot of 'jenever' into an otherwise fine, malty beer. Spicy clove-like effects and tannic, drying woodiness accompany this final stage, with elements of bayleaf and salmiak lurking at the back; a dash of spicy hops is there, but the 'jenever' effect tastes as if the beer is gradually being replaced by actual jenever in the end, even though a lot of lovely coffee, bitter chocolate and roasted nut impressions remain intact. I hate jenever of any kind, and believe me, I had many; it will take a much 'bigger' beer than this one to convince me that ageing anything on any jenever barrel is ever a good thing. The jenever effect is so strong here that I have the feeling that the regular Nonnebil has been ruined by someone having poured a shot of jenever in it - Belgian consumers will recognize this principle as a duikboot, often applied to Duvel and the like. I cannot imagine many drinks more vile than a perfectly good beer with a shot of jenever in it - I did like the regular Nonnebil, quite a lot even, but this one clearly is less for me. It takes over all of that astringent spiciness and wry booziness I hate in actual jenever and does this in a much too explicit way - I think these Mareklop people need to keep in mind that a barrel, whether it contains any liquor or not, is an extra ingredient in beer and therefore to be treated with caution and elegance. This one is rather crude, overly boozy and earthy in its tail - Mareklop still has a long journey ahead if they want to seriously join the old family tree of barrel-aged strong stouts sprouting from Goose Island's first experiments with the now famous BCBS back in the nineties. Aside from all this criticism, however, I can appreciate the fact that they at least had the guts to create a 'marshmallow stout' (sounds like a pre-pastry stout in Belgian context) and then age it on barrels that once contained a native liquor that literally precedes English gin; this is at least an intense brew, to be consumed with care, and in a land still flooded with run-of-the-mill blondes and tripels, this deserves respect (and an extra point here in my humble opinion). The problem here is that there was still too much liquor left in the barrels they used, making the jenever too dominant in the end... If only some or other Belgian craft brewer could master the art of barrel ageing stouts - and I am ignoring some of the most internationally oriented now - and give jenever a boost along the way... I still have another jenever barrel-aged beer from Koelschip in Ostend now somewhere in my stash, but I think I'll save that one for another occasion.

Bottle. Dark brown pour. Aroma of oak, red grape, malt, burned caramel, chocolate, licorice and yeast. Taste has sweet burned caramel, creamy marshmallows, oak, vineus red grape, some bitter juniper chocolate, licorice, malt and fruity yeast esters. It's a bit in between a quad and a stout. Bit too much carbonation. Not bad at all.

Black with fizzy head. Aroma and flavour have loads of dark, bitter roasted malts. Some sweet coffee too. Too fizzy.