6.2

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

'Ambrée' by this young (2015) but still very little known microbrewery in the Hainaut province of the French-speaking part of Belgium, from a 'modern' longneck bottle - in combination with the colourful label, likely aimed at a relatively young audience. Thick and frothy, yellowish egg-white, pillowy, densely closed and very stable head resting atop a misty, warm and pure orange-hued amber beer. Aroma of quite outspoken diacetyl (buttermilk), honey, fried sweet apple, old apple cake, pear juice, dried apricot, caramel candy, rusk, chewing gum, hint of 'jenever', clove-like and eventually (warming up) somewhat 'clinical' phenols, rosewater, cashew nuts, even a touch of liquorice. Sweetish onset, candy apple, banana peel and a touch of strawberry somewhere, sharpish and stinging (over)carbonation adding a lot of minerality too, supple body; hard-caramelly and sweet-bready maltiness with indeed a very flowery aspect of the honey rising up retronasally, alongside clove-like phenols and lingering fruity esters. Some diacetyl (buttermilk) is clearly present at the edges. Floral hop bitterness, initially quite mild, slowly gains more momentum in the finish, becoming leafy and lingering on the root of the tongue (in a well-behaved manner), eventually being accentuated by a 'jenever'-like wryness of the alcohol, which should not be this obvious at less than 8% ABV. Leafy, fruity, spicy and yeasty ending with an underlying nutty aspect of the malts coming through - but all these 'ending flavours' are not very well connected to each other. Bit unbalanced and overly phenolic, but drinkable still, if you can take this amount of diacetyl, that is; my main issue with this beer, however, is that it hides its alcohol very badly, something I consider to be a serious flaw. Style-wise a Belgian honey beer based on classic Walloon 'ambrée' - one in need of a bit of finetuning, but I had worse from all these new Belgian microbreweries.