Desideer Donker

Donker roodbruin bier met weinig schuim. Smaak is bitterzoet en krachtig met iets van chocolade, wat noten en karamel. Heel goed.

(sample, bottle) Hazy brown color. Spicy, fruity, sweet, caramel, brown malt, molasses. Good.

Towering amber-cream head over ruby-shot dark brown beer; some lace. Caramel syrup, liquorice, plywood. Sweet, I jap /I, liquorice, sweet chocolate, Nesquick, dry wood. Quite well-bodied, slick, chewy to oily; well-carbonated, some alcoholwarming. Come on! This is something belonging to the very beginning of beerrevival. Today we can do better, no? Txs to Stef!

Sampled @ Zythos Beer Festival 2022. A clear orange brown beer with a beige head. Aroma of red fruits and caramel. Taste of strong dark roasted malt, red fruits, caramel, berries.

On tap at the 14th Brugs Bier Festival, Brugge, Belgium. A very dark brown coloured pour with a healthy beige head on top. Roasty, malty, chocolate, caramel. Fine but too much happening here.

Bottle as a Christmas present - thanks, Elke! Hazy dark brown, stable, tan head. Aroma of toffee, burnt caramel, prune, raisin, dried orange peel, date jam, syrup. Taste has very sweet prune, raisin & date over caramelly malts, bit syrupy and spicy-phenolic. Herbal hoppy finish, hint of sweet-spicy liquorice, more dried fruits and syrup as well as warming liqueur-like alcohol. Medium body, syrupy texture, average carbonation. Not as elegant as the Stoutilicious BA, but well-made, more of a classic 'Belgian Dark' indeed - surpassing the industrial examples.

Spiced strong dark beer in the De Bock range, developed in Beveren, which my home village is part of; founder Pieter De Bock (who has worked for Affligem and Anders and now for Musketeers) already named his first beer (Rémi) after his grandfather, so now the honour goes to the grandfather of his business partner Jordi Bruynseels, whose grandfather was named Desideer Bruynseels. Developed for the Chinese market, this new De Bock beer also appears in specialized beer shops in Belgium; I got mine from Fontana, now taken over by Dullaert, in Sint-Niklaas. Towering high, foamy, thickly plaster-like lacing, dense, pale beige, rocky, stable head on a misty deep chestnut brown beer with ruddy cinnamon-coloured edges. Aroma initially a bit muffled by the huge head but slowly releasing impressions of freshly baked brown bread, old gingerbread, dried prunes, coriander seed, coffee grounds, ruby port, caramel to even burnt sugar, dried thyme, clove, medlar, nutmeg, 'oude graanjenever', old raisins, sawdust, straw. Sweet onset but not in a cloying way, dried prunes and raisins returning, hint of pear perhaps, medium carbonation, full but supple body; some candi sugar travels on but thinly so, over a rounded, caramelly and notably brown-bready maltiness with walnutty edges, leading to a warming, spicy finish, where the malts even turn lightly roasty (coffee), matching well with a soft herbal hoppiness, spiciness of both phenolic (clove, nutmeg) and 'real' (coriander) nature and, tying it all together, a soothing glow of armagnac-like alcohol - which nevertheless refrains from becoming too obvious. This brewery has only pleasantly surprised me so far - its founder is clearly a very accomplished brewer from a technical point of view, his experience as the Anders head brewer clearly shows: even if these beers reiterate old Belgian formulas, apart from that wine-barrel aged stout which was downright amazing, all of them are technically remarkably well executed. This one feels like a spicy Belgian style Christmas ale, a Scotch in disguise in fact, which is all I could have wished for on a gloomy and dreary November night. But I am sure the Chinese will like it too...