Bottle. Pours hazy amber with stable off-white head. Clear aroma of smoke and peat, with touches of malt, yeast and fruit. Smoky flavour with bitter, hoppy touches and sweetidh notes of fruit, yeast and caramel malt. Peaty and estery aftertaste. A nice one. Quite well-balanced and not aggressive.

Towering, ultra-dense head, cream coloured, over pale copper, clear-metallic beer. Phenolic, almost molten rubber, peated as hell. Nearly - no, really a bit overdone. Phenolic, again vulcanized rubber, with a boozy alcoholic sweetness behind. Serious alcoholsweetness, -burn, and a bit of -thinning. Well-carbonated. Peat all the way into the aftertaste. The first of the Indulgence series that I really like. Thanks to Stef!

75cl bottle from Colruyt Avenue de Roodebeek in Brussels. F: huge, bit tan, very lowly collapsing. C: dark amber, hazy. A: a lot of smoked tones, smoked woody, bit smoked meat, peat, bit spicy, caramel. T: medium to full body, smoked tones, bit caramel, peat, bit mellow fruity, ash touch, honey touch, nice harmonic bitterness, medium carbonation, quite nice balanced for the style, enjoyed.

Very nice smooth beginning. Hints of roast, the peated malts get more intense in the end. Nice malty and slightly woody body, nice and deep with a dry malty and smokey finish.

This year's edition of Gouden Carolus Indulgence is apparently intended by Het Anker as a kind of preview of a peated variant of their whisky that will appear in 2021; this is basically Gouden Carolus Tripel with a portion of the malts having been replaced by the peated malt that will be used for said whisky. From the usual 75 cl luxury bottle, shared with Craftmember. Creamy, egg-white, uneven-bubbled, plaster-like lacing, thick and stable head on an initially clear amber-tinged orange blonde beer, misty with sediment, showing refined sparkling. Very distinct and unexpectedly daring aroma: actual dry peat, wet sculpting clay and baking ceramist's clay, cigarette tobacco, dried peach, bread crust, bonfire or even burnt paper, cloves, thyme, old 'jenever', bubblegum, red apple, rosehips. Fruity, sweetish onset, rounded peach, red apple and slight banana impressions, fizzily carbonated in an elegantly refreshing way; slick, somewhat thinnish, bit resinous mouthfeel, bread-crusty and hard-caramelly base with a bubblegummy edge, yet remaining remarkably low in sweetness, with the peated malt taking over quickly and thoroughly, effectuating a drying, spicy and clay-like effect with a retronasal wave of real peat, wet clay and cigarette shag. The bubblegum effect remains while hops provide mild bitterness; some clove- and thyme-like notes too, but peat remains omnipresent till the last drop - exhausting the taste buds a bit, so I remain unconvinced that I could finish an entire bottle on my own. By far the weirdest Indulgence so far: a bubblegummy, slick, boozy tripel where most of the sweetness has been replaced by dry peatiness, which in this case takes on a baking clay-like form, along with the actual 'raw' peat aspect. I miss the delicious smoked bacon or smoked ham aromas present in true German-style Rauchbier and in that sense, I would not call this a complete success in its style, but then I am aware that Bamberg Rauchbier uses beechwood-smoked malt instead of peat-smoked malt so I probably should not have been expecting that anyway. Apart from that, I have to admit that this is indeed a very curious and distinct beer - so have a point for audacity, there are not nearly enough smoked beers in Belgium so far, if you ask me. Interesting one, I wonder how the traditional Gouden Carolus drinker, probably not normally accustomed to smoked elements in beer, will react...

Oj, mycket rökigare än väntat!

Bottle. Color: Clearorange amber, big off-white head. Very nice lacing. Aroma: Malty, a lot of smoke, some smoked meat and peat. Taste: Malty, wheat malt, some grain, quite strong smoke although not that extreme, subtle peaty notes. Yeasty hints. Moderate to over moderate sweet, moderate bitterness. Medium body, average carbonation. Quite smooth mouthfeel. Long lasting smoky wheat finish wih dry-ish mouthfeel. Getting a little more sweetish and a little less smoky when standing longer. Nice Belgian Ale - Rauchbier hybrid. Pretty daring of Het Anker to release a beer in this style, compliments for that.

Erhöhte Karbonisierung. Süßlich rauchiger Beginn, milde Herbe, dunkler werdend. Torfig, eher trocken, alkoholische Tendenzen, etwas hefig. Nicht ganz harmonisch, man merkt, dass Rauchbiere nicht die Spezialität der Brauerei sind, so wirken einige Aromen eher neben- als miteinander. Dennoch gelungen. 10/9/9/9/12/9

75cl bottle. A clear dark golden beer with a beige head. Aroma of peated malt, plastic, whiskey. Taste of strong peated malt, plastic, whiskey, wood.