A but muddled and odd astringency on the nose. Malt body is good, but it’s just a decent homebrew barely. Lelystad craft beer shop

*Rating overgezet 2018* Het is een roodbruin bier met een volle schuimkraag. Het aroma is zoet en chocolade achtig. De smaak is noot achtig, zoet met tonen van gedroogd fruit.

Dubbel made with caster sugar rather than the usual Belgian candi sugar, bottle shared by Craftmember, cheers! Tightly membrane-lacing, thick and frothy, yellowish pale beige head over a hazy dark mahogany brown beer with ruddy hue. Aroma of chocolate-coated peanuts, rich black cherries, gingerbread, candied fig, sweet sherry somewhere, Liège pear syrup, cooked apples, blackberries, ripe pear and a dash of cough syrup (or even Antwerp Wycam’s ‘borstbollen’). Sweet onset, not too cloying though, raisin, dried plum and fig, medium carb, full and soft, fluffy mouthfeel; caramelly, resinous malts with an emphatic toasty bitter edge (much more so than is traditionally the case in a Belgian dubbel) and adorned with effects from the caster sugar, which adds a certain ‘praline’-like, noble and aromatic sweet quality on top of the toasty and eventually softly hoppy bitterness. Original and very interesting to see how the caster sugar apparently adds a more outspoken, almost liqueurish sweet and aromatic quality here – but the toasty bitterness makes it deviate even more from classic dubbel, which justifies the ‘bastard’ part of the name just as well as the caster sugar does.

Vrij gebrand qua karamel, vrij hard ook. Had wat subtieler gekund, ook wel balans genaamd. Na een paar slokken went het wel