4.2

Appearance - 2 | Aroma - 5 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 2

The witbier in this young Ostend microbrewery's range, spiced with the obligatory curaçao and coriander; 75 cl bottle with crown cap and hangtag mentioning all their beers - and used for all of them, so the only way to distinguish this one from other Koelschip bottles is the grey cap with a "W" written on it. Bought at the brewery and opened one day later, this must be one of the worst cases of gushing I've ever seen: upon lifting the edge of the crown cap for probably even less than a millimeter, a stormy and huge amount of foam formed underneath it, with gas shooting upwards from the bottom of the bottle - carrying along unpleasant chunks of protein all the way to the top. Not very promising of course, and even after waiting for fifteen minutes and carefully removing the cap, I could not avoid losing more than 2/3 of the bottle to my girlfriend's lawn. After all the gas had escaped, the foam was extremely unstable: a thick but very loosely knit, snow white head was gone in seconds, never to return. The result: a 'beer' looking like the content of a mud pool, no head at all, and murky ochre-ish, sand-coloured beige in appearance - I've rarely seen a beer looking this unattractive. The aroma wasn't a lot more promising: mud, wet old bread, raw dough, lemon juice, spoiled ginger juice, dishwater and rotting potatoes pushing away subtler and probably more intentional hints of apple, coriander seed, pear and orange peel. Clearly infected, the first sip was marred by an unpleasant, 'dirty' sourishness, lemony at its edges and clearly much more sour than any true witbier could ever have been intended; sweetish peach, pear and apricot notes underneath, with still finely tingling carbonation and a soapy, but unsurprisingly very powdery mouthfeel. Soggy bread-like malts, some coriander soapiness and citric sharpness mixing with the infectious acidity with a hugely dirty yeast effect, something rotting retronasally and lots of out-of-place, band aid-like phenols... Phew, this is obviously a gigantic failure of a beer, the basic recipe may have been quite alright for a witbier but it is rare to see a commercially sold beer in this awful condition. A pity, but this brew is so flawed and unpleasant that I couldn't even finish a single tasting glass. I must have stumbled upon a failed bottle, or at least I hope not all of them - including other bottles I bought there - suffer from the same issues as this poor thing. My first beer from this brewery was teeming with diacetyl - I still vividly remember it - and this, to put it carefully, is not very inviting either to further explore their range. It seems they are unable to control even the most basic technical issues and I am definitely not looking forward to opening the other bottles of their beers that I bought there...