5.5

Appearance - 4 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 2 | Overall - 5

Tripel made for a local division of the Chiro (a youth organisation), namely the Saleghem division of Meerdonk, a small village just a couple of miles from my home village; the name Saleghem refers to the Saleghem creeks, a string of creeks and swamps that meanders through this northeastern corner of the Eastern Flanders province - with a few of them located around my home village as well. Both the current junior brewer of Paenhuys and his mentor confirmed to me independently from each other that this is made to an original recipe so not an alias of an existing beer. Probably a one-off, at the time I’m giving in this rating, it is not yet certain that it will be repeated. Lots of pressure is released upon opening and there is a certain amount of slow gushing, but nothing dramatic. Coarse, irregular, frothy, egg-white head builds up quickly and leaves some cobweb lacing on the wall of the glass; it retains quite well, remaining closed for a while, but does break open here and there after some minutes; initially almost clear peach blonde colour with a pale orangey hue, hazed a bit by a translucent, thin suspension of yeast but turning into an equally, peachy orange with sediment. Somewhat weird, notably spicy and phenolic aroma of banana-flavored bubblegum, sweet cherry tomatoes, cloves, liquorish candy, dried calamus root, meadowsweet, peanut butter, lots of unsugared orange juice mixed through the whole, candied apricot, soap, caramel, orange blossom, hints of marmelade, freshly cut turnips, stewed rhubarb, dusty old dried flowers, brown paper. Very crisp, lively onset suffering hugely from overcarbonation, numbing the tongue completely in an obnoxious, almost painful way and covering the sweetish banana, peach and gooseberry notes underneath; it accentuates a deeper, more substantial, very vivid citrus fruit-like sourness with a sweeter edge, reminiscent of grapefruit and orange juice mixed together. Bready and lightly caramelly malt sweet underground, yeasty notes becoming stronger and explicitly phenolic in the end, very clove-like retronasally, but meanwhile this citrus juice ’sharpness’ keeps filling the mouth, with sweet-and-sour effects, eventually turning bitter in a very grapefruity way - much more grapefruity than actual grapefruity hops in fact, making me believe that some or other form or real citrus fruit went in here. An earthy hoppiness lags behind as well as bready, eventually almost starchy yeasty notes and lingering phenols, while the severe overcarbonation keeps disturbing the real flavors. Sugary sweetness (as in white sugar) accompanies the whole palate and even cloys a bit - an aspect which, in combination with this very convincing citrus presence, lends the overall beer a lemonade-like profile, a ’lemonade tripel’ so to speak. This is in any case a weird concoction, a tripel alright but certainly no alias of Schapenkop (the brewery’s house tripel), clearly something went in here and very generously so - my bet is firmly on some or other form of citrus fruit. This beer tastes almost Radler-like, a Radler at tripel ABV level one might argue but in this case still with more beer than lemonade appeal, bringing me to the tentative conclusion that it must contain orange juice or, perhaps, (artisanal?) citrus-based lemonade, both of which might account for the slightly higher ABV and the strong overcarbonation as well. Strange beer, not sure what to think of it, it does not really fit my personal taste, too phenolic, a bit ’dirty’ and most definitely way too overcarbonated for its own good, but if this is a ’fruit’ beer made with orange juice, then I must admit that it has achieved what it set out to do, not unlike e.g. Bertinchamps’s Pamplemousse, but in a more ’natural’ way. Puzzling - and at this ABV, perhaps not too well fit for the Chiro children, who may be tempted by its almost lemonade-like general profile - in that sense, it may have been wiser to opt for a ’real’ Radler... I can, however, imagine this having the potential to become a hit among more classically oriented Belgian beer drinkers, if it were to be produced on a much larger scale than the apparently only hundreds - but not thousands - of bottles that were only made now. I classified it as a tripel here because that is clearly still the ’beery’ basis, but I’ll ask the brewer what they threw into this and who knows, if this is Schapenkop mixed with orange juice as I suspect it is, it might have to be reclassified as a super strong Radler...?