Fast gone white head over veiled orangey-golden beer. Oxydized, old hops; sugared citrus, amandine. Same in the flavour, sweetish rosewater, amandine. Sweetcorn, lime flavoured soft drink. Light body, medium to good carbonation, slick. @ De Proef (label declaring) one ought to be able to use unoxydized hops. Purchased @ Dranken Goegebuer, Knesselare

Bottle @ home. Unclear golden body under a white head. A bit weak in aroma considering it’s dry hopped. Mostly malty with a hint of citric fruit and some Belgium yeast. Tast is dominated by pale malt as well, but the fruity hops are more prominent in taste. Some citric fruit with moderate bitterness and hint of spicy yeast. Medium body and average aftertaste. Not bad at all, quite refreshing in taste without being outstanding in any direction, taste like something between a Belgium blond and a hoppy saison.

Belgian blonde with IPA ambitions, developed by a hobby brewer in Eeklo and commercially executed at BeerSelect, close to where I live in Ghent. The name refers to an eighteenth century legend explaining the phrase halve gare in Flemish Dutch, meaning madman - I will not go into that here, so foreign-language raters can copy and paste the text above and process it through Google Translate if they insist on knowing where the phrase comes from. Frothy, thick, egg-white, creamy, small-bubbled, stable and regular head over a misty apricot blonde beer with deeper orangey tinge and slender strings of relatively quiet sparkling here and there. Aroma of dried orange peel, old white bread, an obnoxious and very persistent whiff of manure (E. coli?), rotting onions, unripe peach, jute rope, old apple peel, dandelion leaves, clove, old dusty 'herbes de Provençe', apricot, damp straw. Fruity onset, some light banana mingled with hints of apricot, pineapple and pear, fizzy carbonation but not overly sharp, slick and supple body; sweetish pale maltiness, bready and very slightly caramelly, under a growing hoppiness manifesting itself in a herbal way (dried thyme and lemonbalm) rather than the bright citrusiness I was hoping for, though a certain dried mandarin peel effect is still there. The hops also effectuate a relatively long-lasting, spicy, bit leafy and resinous bitterness, while bready yeast aspects and phenolic spiciness (4-vinyl-guaiacol, a.k.a. clove) persist too. Hop bitter in the very end, with some lingering minerally effects and bready maltiness. I do not know who this brewer is and what his intentions are other than to compete with Eeklo's own Herbakkersbier, also referring to the abovementioned legend, but brewers in this country - from the most humble hobby brewer to the biggest industrial macrobrewery - need to understand that dryhopping or bitter-hopping a blonde or tripel does not automatically make said blonde or tripel an IPA. I must admit that I do have a kind of weak spot for the compromise between Belgian blonde ales on the one hand and IPAs on the other hand, though: if done with care, passion and knowledge, this often leads to very pleasant bitter Belgian style ales, like the Hommelbier Fresh Harvest series, Plukker's All Inclusive IPA series, De Ranke's Hop Harvest series and so on, but this halve gare indeed feels only half-baked - and that persistent manure aroma did not help. Needs finetuning, which I am sure the qualified brewers at BeerSelect are capable of.