7.6

Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7.5

Brunn's own contribution to the series of five beers commissioned by the municipality of Beveren to commemorate the historical figure of Judocus Vijd, the guy who paid for the famous Lam Gods painting by Van Eyck. The most potent beer of them all, a strong 'black' beer flavoured with yarrow, locally harvested meadowsweet, woodruff, angelica and dates. Thick, dense and creamy, pale yellow-beige, slowly opening head on a very dark chestnut brown beer, indeed as good as black but still with mahogany glow throughout. Aroma of cocoa dust, burnt toast, hard caramel, bitter chocolate, coffee filters, toasted walnuts, liquorice, dry clay, black tea, dried woodruff, dates, wet leather, green kitchen herbs and dried flowers but nothing that overpowers the rest. Dried dates and raisins in the onset, baked banana sweetness, softish carb with supple, full, oily mouthfeel; caramelly, walnutty, bitter-chocolatey and brown-bready malt core flavoured with lots of herbal effects, liquorice-like even if no liquorice was used (could be the woodruff in combination with the roasted malts), aniseed-like (probably the angelica) and tea-like (the meadowsweet), all carried onwards by a firm, toasted coffeeish bitter tail, gently heated by whisky-like alcohol. Stout-ish, rather an imperial porter perhaps, but what the heck: something altogether different from the sweet pastry stouts and porters you see passing by these days and in that sense an interesting product that manages to combine an idiosyncratic character with outspoken but well-managed herbalness as well as high technical quality. By far the best one of all these Vijd beers for me. Cheers Bruno!