Dry Hop 2019 - Aloha Hops
Brasserie Lupulus in Gouvy, Luxembourg, Belgium 🇧🇪
Belgian Style - Tripel Regular Out of Production|
Score
6.55
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Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 4 | Flavor - 5 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 5
05/VI/21 - 150cl (Magnum) bottle from Geers (Oostakker), shared @ home, BBE: 2022, L1-2019 (2021-447)
Little cloudy orange beer, small creamy irregular white head, little stable, adhesive, leaving a nice lacing in the glass. Aroma: oregano, herbal, tomato, pizza crackers, very weird. MF: lively carbon, medium body. Taste: very floral, herbal, bit soapy, somewhat weird, spicy, oregano, bit piny. Aftertaste: gentle bitterness, bit spicy, piny, bit resinous.
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7.5
As in the previous years, Lupulus offers a specially hopped edition of their flagship beer this winter too, only available in magnum bottles; this time they refer to the combination of hops as Aloha, I assume to evoke a tropical atmosphere (indeed associated with certain new hop varieties) but it remains a secret which hops actually are behind this 'ad hoc' term. Thick and frothy, egg-white, cobweb-lacing head, pale but warm orange-tinged peach blonde robe, misty. Aroma of pineapple, ripe oranges, mandarin peel, dried out apple cake, ripe peach, young abbey cheese, fresh thyme, acacia honey. Fruity onset, sweetish with aspects of pineapple, ripe pear and tangerine, quite bright, with medium carbonation; soft bready malt body aromatized by a sweet, utterly citric and indeed (very) slightly tropical hop profile, adding mild but balancing spicy bitterness and retronasal impressions of blood orange, grapefruit and mandarin, while a thyme-like herbal aspect lurks behind the corner. The finish is highlighted by a soothing, well-positioned and nowhere obnoxious, gin-like alcohol glow, while bready and malty aspects remain. I already quite liked the previous specialty magnum bottles in this series, but this one beats its predecessors for me, in presenting more brightness, citrusy 'fraîcheur' and all-round elegance. Still very Belgian, but with a noteworthy modern-global twist to it and a suitable apéritif to a fabulous Christmas dinner with friends.