Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 7 | Overall - 8.5

Pours black. Stable, light colored head. Scent is malty, mild Belgian yeast. Taste is malty (pale malts, yes) with a relatively sweet base-taste. Belgian yeast is recognizable, but in balance. Hops are low, as is to style in a Belgian Blonde. SO, what's special than?

Appart from the nice style-technical aroma and taste, as well as balanced character, this Belgian Blonde is, well... Black. Its blackened not by malts, but by the addition of coconut shells which have been burned to a kind of Charcoal (called 'active coal' in Dutch, not sure if that translates the same in English). It colors the beer, but contributes little to none to the flavor. It's ment to be this way, since 'Verduyn Bier' wants to fool you.
As a contribution to his color blinded sons, Brewer Henk Verduyn wants to surprise your scenses, create an expectation upon the given color, and than make you taste something completely different.
Making all of us who are not colorblind, experience the weird feeling of not being able to rely upon color-based-expectations. I cheer to that, not only for the meaningfull story, but also since - being a bartender - i'm so sick of people thinking 'blonde' equals a flavor. Or the 'I don't like brown beer' folks.

Appart from all this, it's worth noting the color is indeed a gimmick. But even without the gimmick, only describing the taste and scent, as well as body, this is a style-technical very correct Belgian Blonde.

Good start for this company, who happens to have the same last name as I personally do (I am in no way connected to the brewery though) . I'll sure follow them and can't wait to see which mindboggling color VS taste beer they'll come up with next.