Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 5 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 4 | Overall - 6.5

Bottle from Stacks.
A: clear dark golden, stable, foamy, off-white head.
A: overripe plum & apricot, old bread, clove, vague plastic.
T: sweetish ripe apple & plum, bitter herbs, yeast, clove-like phenols.
F: herbal hops, bit harshly bitter of phenols, plastic and warming vodka-like alcohol.
P: medium body, slick texture, fizzy carbonation.
'Stereotripical' as I like to call it, and not even technically flawless.

#golden #strong

Imported from untappd on 02-05-2020

Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 5 | Texture - 4 | Overall - 4.5

Bottle @ home. Hazy orange colour with a large white head. Smells sweet, malts, some herbs, slightly (overripe) fruits. Tastes sweet, herbs, yeasty. A bit dry, way to much carbo, unbalanced.

Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7

Towering, dense, light-yellowish head, leaving lace over fully hazy yellow-orange beer. Creamy nose, gassy, bit oppressive. Pale malts dominate, some herbal hops. Pale malts, sweetish, bit burning MF, CO² acidity. Petit Beurrre cookies, herbal again. Alcohol not completely hidden, yeast-filled, creamy feel from the stable head; bit viscous. Average. If this is the Grand Cru version, I'm not really curious about the standard version. If that exists. 6/4/6/3/13

Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7

F: huge, bit tan, good retention. C: dark amber to brown, hazy. A: malty, fruity, strawberries, red berries, banana, sweet apricot, toffee, bit apple. T: malty, fruity, coriander, red fruits, banana, spicy, bit grassy, dry on the palate, well attenuated but feels more on the sweet side yet somehow it works, enjoyed, medium to full body, high carbonation, but 6€ for small bottle bit too much, 33cl bottle from Prik&Tik Kampenhout near Leuven.

Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 5 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 3

Bottle from LDW, Eke. Hazy yellow colour, creamy white foam. Nose of citrus, peach. Taste is very weak, watery and dull. Bitter and grassy. But the price! €5,5 for such a mediocre beer is a shame.

Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 4 | Overall - 7

New Belgian ale commissioned by (and named after François Huysmans from Foodtaster.be in collaboration with journalist Patrick Van Gompel and the well-known brewer Marc Knops. Received quite a lot of attention due to the fact that one of the commissioners is a familiar face on television and claims to be "unique" due to the use of four hop varieties and four different yeast strains (one of which I strongly suspect to be a champagne yeast) - of which the latter is indeed uncommon in Belgium, though I hesitate to literally call it unique. Anyway, comes from a quite luxuriously looking, skittle-shaped bottle with golden print (much the same look as that new Galea also from the Antwerp region - in fact I first thought it was a bottle of Galea when I spotted it in the local Prik & Tik where I bought it), with the name printed on the crown cap - clearly the commissioners mean business with this one, and put cost and effort at least in design. Let’s hope the same expensive approach is reflected in the beer. Medium thick, regular, off-white head leaving behind flat islands of foam in the middle and a steady rim on the edge, on top of a hazy ’old gold’ coloured beer with warm orangey tinge. Malty and phenolic aroma of fried apples, banana but no overt bubblegum, ripe pear, camomile, dried apricot, bread crust, cloves, minerals, cooked parsnip, ’oude jenever’, soapy coriander seed, soggy white bread, dried orange peel, fainter hints of cumin cheese, raw rhubarb, pineapple slices, powder sugar, straw, turnip. Fruity, crisp onset, banana ester mingled with hints of pear, unripe nectarine and gooseberry, sweetish with a nicely souring edge but numbed by very strong, fizzy overcarbonation, which adds a certain amount of sourishness and coarsens the mouthfeel, which is otherwise ’full’ and supple, yet soapy as well. Carbonation keeps stinging the sides and surface of the tongue as a bready, very lightly caramelly and even somewhat nutty malt sweetishness develops in the middle paired with a considerable amount of wheat soapiness (wheat malt effectively having been used here), with the fruity esters moving backwards. Spicy phenols (cloves, vague cumin seed or even aniseed) quite strongly develop in the end, alongside the eternal soapy coriander and floral, slightly hayish hoppiness, remaining ’dim’ in retronasal aroma but providing some elementary earthy bitterness below, the earthiness being reinforced by yeasty effects. Malt sweetness and banana ester keep prevailing even when a significant amount of warming, ’jenever’-like alcohol comes to the foreground - yet it somehow manages to stay in place and avoid unpleasant astringency. Classically coriandered, candi syrup-boosted, banana-estery and malt sweet Belgian tripel, with the natural soapiness of the coriander accentuated by the presence of wheat malt. I did not have too high hopes for this - the name alone is as obsoletely Belgian as it gets - and they prove right, this beer, in spite of its fancy bottle, does not add anything significant to the Belgian beer map. Far from a bad tripel, don’t get me wrong, I just do not think it deserves this amount of attention compared with many others that receive less publicity. The first batch of 8000 bottles seems to be sold out already in a short amount of time, but the project will be continued, I heard.