Bottle 330ml. @ home. [ As Grain d'Orge My Day ].Clear medium yellow colour with a average to large, frothy, good lacing, mostly lasting, off-white head. Aroma is moderate malty, pale malt, sweet malt, spicy, ginger, sweet sugary ginger, moderate yeasty, soapy, fruity yeast, sweet ginger. Flavor is moderate sweet with a average to long duration, sweet malt, sugary, ginger, spicy, fruity yeast - sweet yeast, sugary ginger, sweet ginger. Body is medium, texture is oily to watery, carbonation is soft to light lively. [20181101] 5-3-5-3-10

Caña en 2B en Brugge 11..09..2017 (r13). Color ambar dorado con espuma blanca. Aromas sabores suaves maltosos afrutados con suaves toques de gengibres frescos. Cuerpo ligero facil de beber y algo espumoso. Normal. Sin mucho que decir.

At Delaney’s, Bruges. On International Beer Day (August 4). In a nice glass, pours hazy ochre with a small, frothy, white head that leaves lacing. Fruity, spicy smell. The aroma contains ginger, spices, sugar, herbs, apples and pears. It tastes medium, almost heavy sweet and medium to light spicy bitter. Ironically, it’s ’well-balanced’ between bitter and nearly cloyingly sweet, but it’s a weird balance overall. Medium body, slick/sticky texture, lively carbonation; texture becomes soapy. An interesting brew, but a sample would have sufficed.

Vat het vat in Brasserie-Restaurant Haus Ternell. Lichtgeel troebel bier met schuim. Smaak is kruidig, zoet en licht bitter met iets van honing, kardemon en gember. Apart maar goed bier.

Belgian spice ale from Grain d’Orge - surprised this brewery still exists, the last beer I had from them must be ten years ago. ’Papery’ lacing, egg-white, dense, moussy, medium thick head over a hazy peach blonde beer with ’old gold’ tinge, teeming with dead yeast ’UFOs’ all around. Aroma of very strongly dominating gari (candied ginger) and indeed some freshly grated ’real’ ginger, lots of hand soap and obnoxious ’bath foam’, apricot, pear, breakfast cereals, white pepper, freshly cut grass somewhere in between, pancakes with powder sugar melting on them, overcooked carrots, hints of aniseed liqueur, chicken broth, sugared and deeply stewed rhubarb, stewed tomatoes somewhere, pumpkin soup, ripe nectarine, honey. Fruity onset, very estery with esters tasting like banana (but no bubblegum), peach, pineapple and ripe pear, sweet with a sourish edge (redcurrant) but thinly so, quite sharply carbonated and numbing, fizzy, minerally, coarsening an otherwise supple, yet very soapy, almost ’waxy’ mouthfeel. Deeper caramelly malt sweetness with a bready touch and lingering residual ’white’ sugary sweetness, notes of candied apricot and sweet red apple travelling along, spicy phenol touch in the end but no match for the soapy, resiny, ethereal, almost bath foam-like ’gingerness’: ginger overpowers everything in the end, though I suspect a generous dose of soapy coriander seed as well. Ends spicy, estery-fruity and malt sweet with that obnoxious spiciness asking for too much attention; a dash of earthy, mildly bittering hoppiness with a herbal touch to it tries to save the day, but that candied sweet ginger thing keeps moving deeply into the tail and long after swallowing the last drop, this beer keeps imposing sugary sweetness, though not overly cloying. I have tasted gazillions of overly sweet-and-spicy Belgian ales (many of them being intended as Christmas beers) and this really throws me back into the late 20th century - when especially Wallonian ales were drenched in heavy spicing. Apparently nothing has changed in Hombourg... Not my beer, but admittedly well-made from a technical point of view.

F: big, white, poor retention. C: gold, hazy. A: a lot of ginger, white sugar, candy, yeast, floral. T: a lot of ginger again, not as sweet as expected, herbal, honey, yeast, light soapy, medium body, medium carbonation, quite straight forward but enjoyed, 33cl bottle from Carrefour market – St. Michel @ Etterbeek, Brussels.