Tight white head on hazy pale lemon coloured body. Grain & citrus aroma. Medium bodied, bubbly over the tongue with a cloying back. Bitter, lemon, grain, cereal & yeasty tastes. Quite refreshing.

New specialty version of the classic Cristal Alken, one of Belgium’s first pale lagers, brewed with not just barley, but wheat and rye as well. Can from a local Delhaize supermarket but sold in bottles as well, and apparently comes with its own, unusual, lowball-like glass. Thick, pillowy, stable, cobweb-lacing, snow white head, slowly breaking over a hazy (!) straw blonde beer with somewhat greenish tinge and disparate sparkling– looking more like a witbier than anything Pilsener-derived. Aroma of sourish white bread dough and clear wheat, flour, plaster, raw potato, vague notes of dried lemonbalm, chamomile and DMS (overcooked white cabbage). Crisp onset, some very light apple peel and green banana fruitiness (in any case more so than in a standard pale lager), sharp and rather numbing carbonation; clear wheat sourishness and soapiness, rye much less obvious apart from a very dim grainy spiciness perhaps but I would never have guessed it had I not known in advance. White-bready, slender barley ‘core’ and mild yeast breadiness in the finish, mixed with a medium hop bitterishness, floral and very mildly spicy, but stronger than in the standard Cristal Alken (though I have not had it in ages). A multi-grain ‘pilsje’ of sorts – not a bad idea, this is very drinkable for a ‘macro lager’, if still bland and boring; tastes like a crossover between Hoegaarden Witbier and regular pale lager. Quite original, and possibly an argument that the Cristal range as a whole is still on a somewhat higher level of quality than other mass-produced pale lager brands in Belgium.