Bacchus Nitro Vlaams Oud Bruin - Flemish Old Brown
Brouwerij Vanhonsebrouck in Emelgem, West Flanders, Belgium 🇧🇪
Flemish Red / Bruin Regular|
Score
6.91
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Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 6.5 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 6.5
Can. Brown, the beige head is soon at the rim. Aroma of apples, some malt vinegar, bread. Has a bit of that nitro creaminess and that feels weird. Gently sour with kvas-like bread, vinegar touches, some autumnal fruit. Slight herbal notes at the end. Refreshing.
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 9 | Texture - 10 | Overall - 7.5
Nitro can from GBX. BB: 12/22, Eek! Shaken pint glass pour @home. Frothy, lathery but not explosive, Guinness pour, just as brown but maybe a hair more red in color. Difficult enough to get any nose from nitro, but this has a little leather, watery red wine, a twinge of vinegar & some soggy bread. Grape juice, lemon tea, mild wood pith & a very mellow brown ale. Maybe a twinge of oxidation. Creamy, sweet & acidic enough to sort of even things out. Simple enough to have three. Liked this a bunch.
Appearance - 7 | Aroma - 7.5 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7
Van Honsebrouck has recently been throwing nitro can versions of their classic beers onto the market and it remains to be seen how successful this will turn out to be in the long run. I leave it to the admins to decide whether the mere use of nitrogen warrants a separate entry or not, I was in doubt to I added this as a new beer (following Untappd). Medium thick, creamy, dense, pale yellowish-beige, stable 'nitro head' on an entirely clear (filtered) dark chocolate brown beer with burgundy red glow. Aroma of small sour apples, caramel, brown bread, blackberries, old hazelnuts, freshly whipped cream (the nitrogen effect I presume), medlar, hints of passionfruit, gingerbread, dust, old polyester rugs, deep-fried parsley and vague iron and bubblegum. Tart onset, even acidic and sharp at first, adding fruitiness to a basically sweet core, hinting at sour apple, blackberry and medlar but all in a relatively restrained kind of way - for this style at least; softish carbonation, creamy mouthfeel due to the nitrogen but inherently a bit on the thin side too. Caramelly and brown-bready maltiness with a toffeeish sweet core, dried by decreasinly sharp lactic acidity, which feels 'added' rather than coming from within; no woody aspects either, so I suspect lactic acid was simply poured in the beer to create sourness - I had beers in which this was the case, the long defunct Zulte would be a classic example, and this tastes about the same. Ends with a strange 'dustiness' (as in old synthetic rugs) retronasally, possibly due to age, and a somewhat blood-like metallic aspect; lactic sour-fruitiness fills the finish, with no hop or other bitterness in sight. Contrary to the fruit versions in this range, this basic 'oud bruin' is more or less like I remember it: a simpler, more industrial and in many ways 'easier' alternative to classic Rodenbach, probably produced with the bottle of lactic acid nearby rather than blending different batches of wood-aged beer. Comes eerily close to the Zulte I already mentioned, but the lactic acidity seems more outspoken here. Passes, as a mere, simple, old school, 'undecorated' introduction to 'oud bruin', nothing more - but a side-by-side comparison with the original bottled version could prove interesting.