75cl bottle from Carrefour Market Cours St. Michel in Brussels. F: big, white, long lasting. C: gold, hazy. A: banana, pears, bit champagne, mellow fruity, red apples peels, bit spicy. T: full malty base, banana, pears, coriander, bit bready, red apples, clove touch, champagne touch, bit warming alcohol, high carbonation, quite nice, enjoyed for sure.

Koperen Markies Tripel refermented with champagne yeast, hence ‘Brut’, in the footsteps of pioneers Malheur Brut and dEUS; 75 cl bottle with cork, muselet and informative hangtag, bought at the Delhaize Zwijnaarde. Thick, egg-white, plaster-like lacing, irregularly edged but dense and stable head, misty apricot blonde robe with pale ochre-ish tinge. Aroma of ripe apricot, banana, glazed pear, coriander powder, cake dough, meringue, prosecco (dry) more than actual champagne (brut), dry cookies, dried orange peel, wodka, clove-like phenols, freshly cut apple, some vague DMS and damp earth notes. Crisp, fruity onset, ripe peach, pear and banana impressions, very sharp and stinging carbonation but this is to be expected from a ‘brut beer’, sweetish with light sourish undertone, full mouthfeel; pleasantly bread-crusty and cracker-like maltiness, growing spicy aspect from added coriander as well as phenols but not going into overdrive, while fruity notes linger. Finishes with indeed a pinch of that typical dry and powdery ‘champagne yeast flavour’, paired with a subtle floral hop bitterness and warming calvados-like alcohol, which perhaps becomes just a tad too obvious in the very end. Fruity, strongly effervescent, dryish and warming, this beer indeed has a certain sparkling wine-like character, but only subtly so – and therefore generally remains very ‘beery’ and tripel-like. I had less of a ‘brut’ association with this one than with the famed Malheur Brut, for instance, so it could certainly do with a more pronounced champagne character, but as a strong Belgian blonde it is certainly decent enough and likely the best Koperen Markies beer I had thus far.