Maîtresse With Maple Syrup And Chilipepper
Gruut Gentse Stadsbrouwerij in Ghent, East Flanders, Belgium 🇧🇪
Belgian Style - Quadrupel / Dark Strong Regular|
Score
6.57
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Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 5 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 5
15/VIII/20 - 75cl bottle from Delhaize Ledeberg (?) @ Belgian Beer Geek Gathering Summer 2020, BB: n/a, prod: XII/2019 (2020-772) Thanks to Erwin for sharing the bottle!
Clear red to red brown beer, small creamy beige head, unstable, non adhesive. Aroma: sweet, lots of caramel malts. MF: ok carbon, medium body. Taste: sweet, very malty, grains, cow fodder, bit sourish, diacetyl, meh. Aftertaste: sweet, malty, very yeasty, bit sourish, dirty, yeasty, meh.
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7
Gruut, Ghent’s self-proclaimed ‘city brewery’, has apparently been making one-offs under the Maîtresse brand since last year, but apparently no publicity is made for this project (nor is it mentioned on their website), so I stumbled upon it by coincidence in visiting the brewery’s new premises at the Dodoensdreef in Ghent. Every month a totally different beer is made under the name Maîtresse so it is a surprise each time – I wonder how many Ghentian ticks I missed due to this series being underexposed, maybe I should visit the brewery’s tasting room every month from now on… This month’s edition (January 2019) is a winter ale with cocoa nibs and coffee. Tasted from tap at – obviously – Gruut’s tasting room. Medium thick but quickly thinning and eventually all but disappearing, initially mousy, pale greyish beige head, lightly hazy deep burgundy-brown robe with deep purplish hue. Aroma of hard caramel candy, coffee grounds and even a whiff of actual coffee beans, ground pecan nuts, pear, bubblegum, nutmeg, dried thyme, soaking wet chocolate bars, green banana. Restrainedly estery onset, clear bubblegum effect though, apple peel, dried fig and banana notes, sourish undertone accentuated by a very sharp, painfully numbing overcarbonation; smooth-edged, bit resinous caramelly malt body with very nutty character hidden within, developing a bitterish toasty edge in the end, blending with the bitterness of the cocoa (a somewhat crude bitterness rather than actual chocolate flavour) and of the coffee, though the latter admittedly produces a pleasant and convincing retronasal coffee aroma. Rounded off with lingering coffee, toast and herbal hop bitterishness. Among the better Gruut beers – which I am not a big fan of – so far, with the coffee having been well-applied in the aromatic way it should be applied, though the cocoa is less obvious and provides more basic bitterness than aroma or delicate flavour. Quite nice and easily drinkable, in all, but the overly herbal and bubblegummy character that typifies most Gruut brews is still a tad bothersome for me. Curious what they will come up with for February now, though…