6.4

Appearance - 4 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 6.5

The ’brune’ in this series of new abbey beer-inspired ales, from a brand new micro brewery near Saint-Ghislain in Wallonia. Quite strong gusher, with the beer flowing out of the bottle neck upon opening. Medium thick, regularly shaped, off-white head quickly reduced to a steady, straight rim around the edge and a thin veil in the middle; deep bronze-ish chestnut brown robe with ochre-like hue on the edges, translucent but immediately cloudy, clearly related to the gushing effect and usually not a very good sign. Aroma of caramel candy, stewed pear, mushed banana, damp earth, raisins, cloves, melting brown sugar, medlar, soapy coriander seed, brown rum, candied figs, soggy brown bread, old milk chocolate, glue, liquorice candy somewhere, autumn leaves on a forest floor, hint of FFF (suggesting an infection with E. coli) but fading away after a while. Sweet, rounded onset, apple and pear along with some banana and slightly souring purple gooseberry, minerally carbo initially a bit strong for the style but calming down quickly, residual brown sugar sweetness but nothing cloying. Smooth, ’filling’ and somewhat ’fluffy’ mouthfeel, caramelly malt sweetishness with a slightly bittering nutty aspect to it as well as a deep, soft, soggy breadiness which is clearly enhanced by the yeast distributed all over the beer. Phenolic aspect in the finish, clove-like and not too medicinal fortunately, soapy and even somewhat ’glueish’ coriander, very earthy, ’deep’ and dim hop bitterness as well as equally (or more) earthy yeastiness, further increasing the bready effect; alcohol, in all, remains well hidden, though I do get a - pleasant - rum-like warmth in the end; drinkability remains high as a result of the cleverly hidden alcohol, I do not get the feeling I am drinking an 8% beer. Some basic sourishness lingers afterwards. Earthy, a bit dirty, needlessly coriandered (though not exaggeratedly so), gushing and too cloudy from the beginning: this is clearly a first, still somewhat amateuristic attempt at the classic dubbel style at an ABV which is above average for the style (making it a ’massieve ale’ intermediary between dubbel and quadrupel, simply said), but hiding its alcohol relatively well. Technically, there clearly is still some work afoot, this needs finetuning and cleaning up; in terms of style and concept, this is about as classically Belgian as it gets. Not that this is a bad thing per se, but I wonder how this can ever add something to a beer map already teeming with similar beers - heck, there are so many of these trappist- and abbey beer-inspired dubbels, tripels and quads already that the zenith of these traditional Belgian ale styles has long been reached and I think it would have been more advisable to produce new internationally oriented beer styles. Still, since this clearly was not the intention here and who am I to judge the stylistic choices this new brewery made: enjoyable and balanced in terms of pure flavor, but falling a bit short on basic technical levels. Glad I was able to taste this though, since distribution is still very limited. I wish monsieur Carpentier all the best with his new brewery.