One of apparently three house beers of Eremyten Hof, a guestroom in Evergem, just north of Ghent. As 20th-century Belgian beers laws prescribe, there has to be a blonde, a dubbel and a tripel, in this case distinguished only by the colour of the label (respectively grey, blue and beige). My rating here concerns the tripel version, from a 75 cl bottle I received from Jean and Ruth, thank you both! Cobweb-lacing, thick and foamy, egg-white, frothy head on a misty peach blonde beer with ochre-ish tinge. Aroma of fresh apple peel, white bread, halfripe banana, dried thyme, ‘oude jenever’, cava, honey, leftover dough, pear, clove, cooked turnip. Sweet onset, fruity with clear banana ester (stronger in taste even than in aroma), pear and pineapple notes amidst fiercely swirling carbonation; a layer of honey-like residual sweetness lingers over a white-bready pale malt core, fruitiness (apple, pear and banana) continues as spicy phenols (clove, thyme) come into play. Floral hop bitterish finish, adding some welcoming dryness and mild spiciness, late but effective and well-positioned, matching with some warming, gin-like alcohol and ongoing yellow fruit and honey elements. Well-structured, if utterly predictable, old-fashioned Belgian ‘edelbier’ of sorts – and without a shadow of a doubt an alias of Augustijn Grand Cru, because in spite of what both Van Steenberge (the greatest swindlers in creating ‘new’ beers out of nothing in the modern history of Belgian beer) and the commissioner want us to believe, there is no way that this beer was ‘developed at Eremyten Hof’ – apart from business talk, of course. I had to create this one as a new entry here for lack of hard evidence, but I will not leave it at this and contact these Eremyten people to find out the truth. And if my intuition does not fool me, I am willing to bet that the blonde version equals Sparta Pils and the dubbel version equals Bornem Dubbel…