Bottle @ fonefan tasting. Hazy golden with a white head. Aroma is sweet, malty, spicy and yeasty. Flavor is quite sweet and moderate bitter. Dry and moderate bitter finish. High carbonation. 290917

Bottle @ fonefan tasting. Nice head with good duration. Color is golden. Aroma and taste are grass, straw, yeast, fruits and hops. Sweet and grassy finish.

Bottle @ home. Lightly unclear yellow golden color, huge fizzy bubble white head that diminishes fast. Smell and taste malts, wheat, a hint of vomit, lightly bitter, old hops, dustya and something weird, reminds me of plastic. Average to decent body. Meh, not very good to say the least.

After recreating an old tripel, d’Oude Caert now has this ’tripel hop’ version, following a trend of hop-forward tripels in Belgium. Thickly ’papery’ lacing, creamy, egg-white, stable head, lightly hazy deep golden blonde colour with slightly greenish hue and quiet sparkling. Aroma of banana, even slight bubblegum isoamylacetate, grass, nettles, peach, pineapple slices in syrup, ripe gooseberry, powder sugar, white pepper, aged abbey cheese, coriander seed, old ’jenever’, butter, apple peel, field flowers, yellow plums. Fruity, spritzy onset, banana, apple and gooseberry flavors, sweetish with some traces of white candi sugar but not overly so, minerally accents, medium carbo, supple body. Banana ester carries on over the middle, consisting of a lightly bready and honeyish malt sweet backbone, while spicy phenols show up and the ’tripel hop’ character emerges in the form of a grassy, floral, peppery, thoroughly European bitterness, drying the finish a bit without becoming IPA-like - and this probably wasn’t the intention to begin with, so in all, just a little bit hoppier than the regular tripel. The mildly spicy and floral hop bitterness does linger a bit as the beer goes down, while a warming, unmistakable, ’jenever’-like alcohol glow appears as well; residual white candi sugar sweetishness and some soapy coriander are the last things I taste after swallowing, more so than hop bitterness even. Tripel alright, in all senses and certainly not a bad one at that... As for the ’hop’ part in the name: granted that this is a bit hoppier than the regular tripel, and even though the (marketing-forwarded) Belgian family brewers’ concept of ’tripel hop’ refers to a tripel that has undergone some of the international hop forward-craze without being IPA, I still feel that this could do with even more hop generosity - or, why not, some New World hop variety for more hop aroma. In this form, this is very safe and remaining too close to its predecessor in being a ’stereotypical Belgian tripel’. Still a technically well-executed and perfectly fine Belgian, though - at least in the shape in which I had it, as later batches seem to be of inferior quality if I see many other ratings from experienced tasters here...

33cl bottle shared with Kermis. GUSHER!. Thick creamy white head. Cloudy blond pour. A slighly hoppy triple. I marked it down a point because of the gushing

Bottle shared, gusher alert! Near clear golden with a big white head. Aroma of citrus, yeast, herbs, coriander, light malt and caramel. Flavour is moderate sweet and bitter. Medium bodied with light carbonation (at least after the lively start). Points marked down due to the bad gushing. [13-07-2016]

Blond colour with big soapy head. Lots of yeast in the aroma. Fairly light and clean although there’s a strong bitterness coming through in the finish. Not particularly hoppy though.

Bottle. Pours bit unclear, blonde with a big, yet unstable white head. Smell is bit bitter, some sweet aspects as well. Clearly still has malts and even fruity yeastnotes, so not as hopped as expected. Taste is mostly yeasty, overipe fruits in its own typical way. On top of that some bitterness ( yeast as well as hops ) Clear grainy notes. Some green ( EU ) hoppyness, no real hoparoma though. Not bad, but do we really need a ’tripel hop’ ( this name is soo stereotypically Belgian, so duvel-tripel-hop-inspired and has become such a hollow name) especially that if you use HOP in the name, people will expect to taste it (more than they do now) .