Out of date 33cl bottle in Cafe Botteltje, Ostend on 10th November 2025. Not aged well in the bottle unfortunately, which I found as a surprise. Pity because I bet it was lovely when first bottled. This was a dark bodied, and a slightly off black cherry mess, it was 'on the turn'. Scored objectively.

Mørk gylden brun med beige skum. Lukter rosiner og lys karamell. Søt. Smaker karamell, rosiner og noe eddik. Kort.

Among my many cherished beer memories is an evening with the great and always entertaining Tim Webb at the Kulminator in Antwerp, where he treated a friend and me to a 75 cl bottle of Het Kapittel Prior, aged in Kulminator's 'catacombs' for about a decade; the beer had softened, maderised and matured wonderfully, as Mr. Webb also suggests in his Pocket Beer Book (co-authored with Stephen Beaumont). When I came across this deliberately aged beer - matured in kegs for 30 months - this precious memory immediately came back to me, and I wondered whether the brewery may have taken note of Mr. Webb's suggestion... Time to find out if a similar effect has been achieved here. Thick and creamy, dense, regularly shaped, yellowish beige, fluffy head sitting firmly on a clear, very dark maroon brown beer with copper red glow and whirlwinds of fine-bubbled, very active sparkling. Aroma of ruby port, panettone, blue plums, raisins and 'kramiek', sirop de Liège, dates, black cherries, dry old chocolate cake, red wine, artisanal cola, dust, blood, jute. Very sweet onset, black cherries again along with ripe blue plum and sweet pear, over a thin sourish but 'cheerful' and fruity undertone of ripe blackberries, adding a certain 'fraîcheur' and balancing out the candied fruit-like sweetness; fine-bubbled, lightly minerally carbonation through a sweet, rounded, caramelly, Christmas cake- and date-nut bread-like dark maltiness in which the sourish fruity flavours of cherries and blackberries persist. A layer of dark candi sugar keeps things firmly in the sweet department, but the ageing has indeed worked well, with notably port-like effects in the finish, hardly (if at all) mitigated by hop bitterness. Some soft spicy notes pop up (clove, very vague cinnamon) but port, cooked dark fruits, raisins and candi sugar remain the final impressions, with still that refined sourishness running underneath. Very sweet and 'candied' even for a dubbel, as if actual sweet cherry beer was added (which is indeed plausible), but it cannot be denied that creating a dark ale and age it for thirty months before bottling has worked out well; this is elegant, layered, port- and dark fruit-like sweetness, rather than the crude and monotonous sweetness one finds in more macro-oriented dubbels. Quite lovely - and I maintain that we may have Tim Webb to thank for this beer at least partially...

1 September 2022. At Waterhuis aan de Bierkant. Cheers, Maarten & Eduard!

Hazy dark brown-red, small, foamy, tan head. Aroma of raisin, old red grape, cherry, wood, pistachio, red apple. Taste has sweet red apple, cherry & raisin, sourish brambleberry note over nutty, gently toasty maltiness with a hint of spicy clove. Herbal hoppy finish, lingering dried fruits, soft woody tannins and some warming brandy-like alcohol. Medium body, creamy texture, soft carbonation. Enjoyable fruity sipper.

23/XI/21 - 33cl bottle, shared @ HoReCa Expo (Gent), BB: n/a (2021-1468) Thanks to the Ghent beer posse for sharing today’s beers!

Clear deep brown beer, big creamy beige head, stable, bit adhesive. Aroma: paint, pretty chemical, very yeasty, spicy, caramel touch, malty, some cherries. MF: ok carbon, medium body. Taste: bit sweet, some cherries, sugary, bit malty, some caramel, soft acidity. Aftertaste: sweet, sugary, cherry, candy, soft acidity, tastes like a weird blend of probably Cuvée Watou Rouge and Kapittel Prior or something… Not bad, not great either.