Here is one I had to taste: earlier this year, Amazon Prime created a television show about home brewing, which was sold abroad and which ran for five episodes; it was presented by famed singer James Blunt and brewer and beer sommelier Jaega Wise and basically was a home brewing contest in which the contestants, recruited from different European countries, had to brew several beer styles, with the prize being that the winning beer would be brewed and sold commercially. The Belgian contestants were, unsurprisingly perhaps as I have been following brewing activities in Belgium closely for years, not unknown to me: Hallelujah Brewery, a young 'bierfirma' in the city of Sint-Niklaas, the Eastern Flemish city where I was born many a moon ago. Their beers are developed at home but normally commercially brewed at Paenhuys - this one, however, won the contest and was subsequently made in larger volumes at Camden, an AB InBev brewery in London. I am not chauvinistic at all, but I cannot deny having felt a certain amount of pride when these sympathetic guys won - so I contacted them and they referred me to the HOPT website, where I bought a bottle of this winner. Produces a thick, foamy, creamy, membrane-lacing, yellowish pale beige head upon pouring, crowning a clear (filtered), dark coffee-mahogany brown beer with somewhat purplish tinge. Aroma of brown bread crust, dried prunes, croissants baked for too long, slightly burnt raisins, old dusty bags of grandma's brown sugar, nutmeg, hard caramel, sugared tea, hints of dried fig, dry autumn leaves, wet earth, gin. Sweetish onset, noticeable dark candi sugariness but nowhere cloying or outspokenly sugary so kept well in check, with some restrained banana-, pear- and fig-like fruitiness; lively carbonated but in a refined way, with smooth, rounded body. Brown-bready and hard-caramelly maltiness with vague cookie-like core, sweetish but again in a somewhat restrained way, even quickly shifting to a more coffee-like toasted bitterness which gets to dominate the end, especially when a leafy hop bitter element and, eventually, some lightly astringent 'jenever'-like alcohol come into play. The sweet part lingers a bit as well, with a retronasal impression of figs sprinkled with brown sugar and lingering caramelly maltiness, but the bitter part is well-developed and maintains balance in the overall flavour profile. In fact, this may be labelled a barleywine probably because that sounds relatively familiar to the mostly British audience of the show, but with the dark maltiness, brown sugar element and strong toasty-bitter portion, it comes much closer to a Scotch (wee heavy) in my book, as is the case with many other Belgian strong dark ales. Certainly not "Europe's next great beer" as the show wants us to believe, but not a bad beer by any means, enjoyable as a rich, hearty and toasty winter warmer, even if adding absolutely nothing to the 20th-century Belgian strong ale idiom. Too bad Camden found it necessary to filter it: making this bottle-conditioned would have retained so much more finesse and flavour... I congratulate Sven and Nicholas with their victory in the contest, but I also seize the opportunity to recommend them to take this recipe in their own hands and make a bottle-conditioned version of it for the local market in and around Sint-Niklaas. And when they do, I will make sure to return to my birthplace and get a few bottles, because the recipe is clearly a solid one. Cheers guys - I think there could not have been a more gratifying form of advertising than winning a television contest, use it to your advantage, I would say.

Rocky off white head left a spotty cover on a dark brown body. Malt, stewed fruit & sweet berry aroma. Medium to full bodied, velvety & soft with a clean back. Bitter, stewed fruit, jam, & lightly hopped tastes with a tangy finish. Nice.

Appearance- very dark brown, with a small foamy beige head. Aroma- caramel malt, biscuity hints, trace of raisin and dark fruit. Taste is sugary dark fruit, brown bread, sticky malt, caramel. Fizzy mouthfeel, short finish.

330ml bottle from Beer Hawk - Deep mahogany body, little short lasting head. Nose of stewed prunes and figs, lots of dark fruits. Taste of Christmas figs and dates, mellow dark cake fruit finish. It won that thing with James Blunt. Nice enough.