Suske le Millionnaire

5 July 2019. At Dok Brewing Festival. Cheers to Anke & Ghent beer crew! Hazy yellow with a lasting, small, unstable, frothy, off-white head. Aroma of ripe peach, papaya, carambola, yellow nectarine, dough, white pepper, onion. Taste is medium fruity sweet, very juicy, lots of orange, peach & papaya, nicely pairing with bitter orange peel, pine & pepper, supported by delicate doughy malts & constant sourish passionfruit undertone. Dryish, floral & peppery hoppy finish, lingering yellow fruit, grapefruit, dough & passionfruit. Some alcohol too, hinting at triple sec. Medium body, creamy texture, fizzy carbonation. Excellent in all aspects, remarkable balance.

02/06/2019 @home - 33cl bottle from the brewery. Hazy orange, nice white head. Nose lots of fruits, hops. Taste is lots of tropical fruits, bit malts, bit caramel, bit bitterness. Damn nice beer!

Imported from my RateBeer account as L'Ermitage Suske le Millionnaire (by Nanobrasserie de l'Ermitage):
Aroma: 9/10, Appearance: 4/5, Taste: 9/10, Palate: 4/5, Overall: 19/20, MyTotalScore: 4.5/5

18/V/19 - on tap @ SWAFFF (Brussels), BB: n/a - (2019-735) Thanks to the Belgian Ratebeer crew and the Antwerp beer geeks for sharing today's beers!
Pretty cloudy beige blond beer, creamy irregular white head, pretty stable, bit adhesive. Aroma: lovely, super juicy, fruity, sweet, mango, pineapple, papaya, lovely dank hops. MF: ok carbon, medium body. Taste: lots of passion fruits, dank hops, bit resinous, lovely stuff, more citrus, super furity, passion fruit, mango, tropical fruits, bubble gum, soft acidity. Aftertaste: nice bitterness, quite some grapefruit, lovely stuff!

Passion fruit IPA, one of Ermitage's newer ones, hopped with Mosaic, Ekuanot and Citra in cryo form. Longneck bottle from Être Gourmet. Thick and very fluffy-pillowy, egg-white, robust head, sticking tightly to the edge of the glass and slowly losing volume, eventually breaking and reduced to an irregular ring around the edge; very cloudy, if not murky ochre-tinged orangey-peach blonde robe - not unlike passionfruit juice, indeed. Very tropical aroma in a fresh, remarkably and interestingly spicy, sweet and alluring way: a whole wave of passionfruit pulp (passionfruit sorbet even), yellow grapefruit, raw chervil, even raw leek, fresh green tree leaves, dried mango, spice bread dough, raw ginger root, lime sorbet, hints of straw and sweat. Brisk, extremely colourful onset, brimming with passionfruit but with notes of sugared lime, mango, guava and ripe pineapple as well, sweet with a souring edge, lively carbonation while still not too sharp - though palpable enough to elegantly accentuate how utterly refreshing this beer begins; a soft, doughy, fluffy malt sweetness fills the middle, completely soaked in juiciness of both passionfruit - which clearly has been applied very generously here - and tropical, highly aromatic, almost 'minty' hoppiness, of a brightness I have rarely encountered. Passionfruit - both real and suggested by the hops - mingles with mango, orange, guava and rambutan aspects, while a pungent spicy note of ground pink pepper pierces through and adds a certain 'punch' in the end, even if the whole does not become very bitter and retains its lovely juiciness. Still, a 'powdery', drying hop bitter note does linger in the end, highlighted by otherwise very well-hidden alcohol, remotely reminding me a bit of Passoa in combination with all that passionfruit. I must say that fruited IPAs are not the first subcategory that springs to (my) mind if I am asked what my favorite beer style is, but every now and then, I come across one like these and I realise again how great this combo can be - if executed correctly, which very obviously is the case here. Granted, I got this one fresh, likely more fresh than most other (Scandinavian, U.S., Dutch and so on) fruit IPAs I have encountered and that certainly is a great advantage in this case, but it cannot be denied that the passionfruit portion here is both very generous and thick, and yet refined enough not to overpower the hops' own tropical fruitiness. There is not a single flaw to be found here - not even the 'rotting' fruit smell I often get in this kind of 'elaborated' New England style IPAs - and that alone deserves praise. I have stated before that Ermitage is probably - at least to me - the best of this 'Nouvelle Vague' of hipster microbrewers in Brussels and this can only strengthen me in my opinion, with all due respect for the others. This is simply delicious, get it as fresh as possible if you can.

Bouteille 33cl, BB 30/09/2019. Dorée trouble, col blanc crémeux. Arôme offre un bouquet fruité tropical généreux mettant bien en avant les effluves de fruit de la passion, en retrait je note un léger apport de pin et qcq agrumes, malt est en retrait. Palais sur une base malt pâle, cara, caractère fort dominé par les houblons avec un petit effet de poudre d'oignon et une tonne de fruit de la passion qui apporte douceur et profile un peu aigrelet de ce fruit. Je note aussi un apport plaisant de pin.

Tap. Murky yellow color with white head. Aroma is passion fruit, fresh juicy hops, a touch yeasty. Taste is passion fruit, freshly squeezed, a touch sweaty. Thick juicy mouthfeel with low carbonation. ABV hidden very well. This is really as good as it gets for fruity IPAs!