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

Blonde ale created for the company Pattyn Packing Lines (which has nothing to do with beer) and intended for their business contacts. The label does not mention an actual brewery, but since the other Haeckse beers are brewed at Gulden Spoor, I assume this is no different for this one. Medium thick, snow white, mousy, slightly irregular head, gradually opening but leaving a mousy ring and a few flat 'islands' in the middle; initially clear, warm but 'metallic' old gold robe with very vaguely ochre-ish tinge and some enthusiastic strings of visible sparkling, misty with sediment. Unassuming aroma of halfripe banana, chewing gum, sugared white bread, the obligatory coriander seed, pear, unripe apricot, hints of plaster, vague sourish green apple note (acetaldehyde?), sweetclover, old sandwiches, soaking wet white paper or even wet cardboard, potato peel, iceberg lettuce leaves. Crisp, restrainedly fruity onset but still with very obvious isoamylacetate (banana ester, the bubblegummy way in this case), hints of freshly cut apple, green pear and unripe peach, very fizzy carbonation adding minerally and sourish effects; slick, smooth, bit glueish body, slenderly cereally with light and clean white-bready impression, sweetish but not covered in residual 'honey-like' sugars as is all too often the case in this genre, with a very light metallic edge and lingering coriander seed soapiness in the end, before a very mild, floral hop bitterishness shows up hardly trying to lend body, dryness and complexity to the finish - so that everything remains primarily reminiscent of coriander, pear and a dash of banana. Luckily not too sweet contrary to so many other Belgian blondes, but dramatically lacking in personality - even if this had been made thirty years ago, it would already have been obsolete. The company Pattyn clearly has no clue about beer history - but it should be mentioned that, as usual with Gulden Spoor, the task has been technically well executed. This is as cliché for Belgian blonde ale as it gets - a 'pilsvervanger' without any knowledge of, or ambition to, higher gastronomical beer levels. I guess the description starting with blonde allemansvriend should have rung some bells, but this kind of boring stereotypes certainly are not my friend... One of the most unnecessary beers I had in quite a while now.