6.2

Appearance - 4 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 6

The third beer from this new Wallonian micro brewery, intended as an IPA. Medium thick, egg-white, regularly shaped, creamy and dense head, quickly reduced to a steady moussy rim and some loose 'islands' in the middle, on top of a hazy orange-hued peach blonde beer with some visible fizz, turning more murky and ochre-tinged due to the yeast after adding the sediment. Aroma of chewing gum, sugared lemon juice, dried orange peel, soap, canned peaches, parsnip purée, plastic-like phenols but not too obnoxiously so, peppermint leaves, pineapple, cooked carrots, candied apple, powder sugar, sweetbread, peanuts, cloves, orange water, meadowsweet flowers, toasted almonds, unripe pear, dandelion juice, bitter honey, old straw. Sweetish onset, lots of peach, banana and pineapple, noteable pear accent, the sweetishness countered by an equally strong - or even stronger - 'basic' sourishness which is accentuated by rather sharp, minerally, slightly numbing carbonation which fortunately calms down quickly; otherwise supple, lean mouthfeel, a little bit oily perhaps. Lightly bready, subtly caramelly malt base with faint toasty bitterish edges, lingering fruitiness (including a hint of banana ester yet not too much), lots of phenols, ethereally spicy at first but descending into far less pleasant plastic-like sensations and interfering too much with the hops, which provide retronasal floral (dried meadowsweet, sweetclover and violets) and very faintly orange water-like effects yet lacking in the bright New World hoppiness I was hoping for when I bought this, as well as an earthy, spicy, bit leafy bitterness on the root of the tongue; malty and yeasty effects remain much more outspoken and survive well beyond the modest contribution from the hops, with those plastic-like and unpleasantly soapy phenols as well as the bubblegummy esteriness remaining much more explicit than I can find agreeable. Technically not really flawed, no deeply hindering off-flavours here, no gushing, no 'yeast soup', but in terms of recipe, this is far removed from anything IPA-like in the given global context. Granted, the brewer himself intended to keep it accessible to the average Belgian palate (for mere commercial reasons I suppose) and indeed explicitly intended to make it hoppy "without descending into excessive bitterness", but what he needs to learn, is that hops can be used not only for pure bitterness, but for aroma as well - and this beer could use a lot more hop aroma. This distinction between hopping for aroma purposes versus hopping for bittering purposes is not new at all, it existed way before the New World developed highly profiled, strongly expressive hop varieties, so he should have known better than to brew a mediocre, ester- and (especially) phenol-ridden Belgian blonde with just a tad more floral hoppiness than his blonde (he has one) probably carries and present it as an IPA. For me, this hardly even qualifies as a typical "Belgian IPA": if I had to taste this blind, I'd have classified it as an ordinary Belgian blonde with more floral hop aroma than average and that's it. If this is IPA, at this level of sweetness, 'phenolicness' and 'esteriness', then I am not much inclined to go hunting for his blonde one. Viewed by itself, i.e. completely ignoring the IPA debate, this is drinkable enough, but still too sweet and phenolically yeasty for me personally. Commercially though, I am sure many casual (read: undereducated) Belgian consumers will easily chug this down and ponder about how hoppy it is.