Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 5.5

The brown one in this small series of coastal beers by Huisbier in beautiful De Haan, and apparently the only one not containing a 'maritime' ingredient (as the blonde one contains sea salt and the tripel contains seaweed), so one can wonder what the point of this beer is... Anyway, bottle from a butchery in De Haan, Le Coq, which sells all the Huisbier products apart from fine meat products. Thick and frothy, intricately 'Brugse kant'-like lacing, pale yellowish beige, very mousy and stable head on an initially near clear, deep bronze-brown beer with copper to even ruby red hue, turning misty with a more amberish tinge with sediment. Aroma of crumbled dry cookies, hard caramel, coriander powder, old raisins, dried apple peel, nutmeg, clove, Ersatz chocolate ('koetjesreep'), brown bread crust, zwetschge prunes, toasted pecan nuts, vague hints of iron and dry earth. Fruity onset but less sweet than expected, quite on the dry side for this style in fact, hinting at dried dates and old raisins with a faint dash of apple peel, lively carbonated with minerally effects, slick mouthfeel, a tad resinous perhaps. Rounded caramelly but again not very sweet maltiness, brown bread crust and ground pecan nuts, developing quite some toasty bitterness as it progresses, while phenolic effects of clove and nutmeg are added; something metallic lurks on its edges as well, just a little bit too much so for me. Ends with ongoing caramel-without-sweetness-maltiness, toastedness and dried-fruitiness, while coriander seed provides a soft spicy aspect and hops provide lingering tree-leafy bitterness, more so than is usually the case in a dubbel, at least the more 'macro-brewed' ones. A vague hint of bitter and herbal bayleaf is discernable as well. Bit too metallic for its own good, clearly, but otherwise just a simply decent Belgian 'bruin', with well-measured spiciness, subdued fruitiness and full-fledged dryish maltiness, almost (Dutch) bokbier-like.