Bottle 33cl. poured into a tumbler. Sourish nose. Opaque ruby brown colour, good creamy tan head, good retention, fair lacing. Rich aroma roasted malt, dark and red fruits, some oak, cocoa, coffee, molasses. Taste medium sweet and bitter with light acidic notes, malty, chocolate, coffee, dark fruits, ashy notes. Medium body, oily texture, average carbonation, lingering dry roasted bittersweet aftertaste, earthy and ashy notes, coffee groundings, very stout-like, very good.

Boon's participation in this ambitious series of collaborational brews, executed at and on the initiative of d'Oude Maalderij; after a similar series of collabs with 'true' craft brewers (Mash of the Titans), Jef Pirens considered it a good idea to put some of the more traditionally oriented Belgian breweries in the spotlights, whilst trying to draw them a bit "out of their comfort zone". So far I have not really encountered anything in this series that would make the participating brewery truly uncomfortable, but a porter brewed by (I assume Karel) Boon is something different, and conceptually speaking the most appealing beer in this series to me. Comes with a crown cap of Lupulus - apparently d'Oude Maalderij deliberately tried to mix all six breweries up by randomly capping the bottles, so that one bottle can have a crown cap of a totally different brewery, and so on - you get the idea. Thick and frothy, membrane-lacing, dense and firm, pale beige, creamy and stable head, misty dark chocolate brown robe - approaching black but not quite, with a reddish burgundy glow still visible around the edges. Aroma of coffee grounds, pine resin, burnt wood, roasted pecan nuts, dry leather, unsugared black chocolate, charred toast, cigar ashes, dried blackberries, dried thyme, salmiak, nutmeg, dry earth, spring water, black olive, autumn leaves, charcoal, green apple piercing through. Moderately fruity onset, sweetish but very restrainedly so and relatively 'clean', with only some faint hints of dried blackcurrant, green pear and dried apple peel, surrounded by a thin but meaningful, black olive-like layer of 'friendly' umami, fitting in well; active carbonation adding minerally effects, smooth hard-caramelly and brown-bready core losing all the sweetness if ever there was any, especially when a strong toastiness sets in, quickly moving into full-blown roasted chicory-like bitterness, with a sourish edge from roasted grains. This roasty bitterness fills the mouth, creating overall dryness, but a bit later, a strong, leafy, almost piney and wormwoody hop bitterness invades, strongly amplifying the roasted bitter component (which at this point has acquired near-ashy side impressions). A very long, dry, thoroughly bitter finish ensues, with both the roastiness and the hoppiness remaining strong, overpowering mildly earthy yeasty elements and whatever 'dark' fruitiness was left at this point. Very powerful, packed with dryness, bitterness, roastiness and maltiness, with an unusually high hop dosage for a porter: if the hops were any more aromatic and New World-oriented, this would easily have qualified as a black IPA rather than a porter. Hoppy porter - or dry stout if you will, because at this point there really is no difference, and no point arguing about it either - unless you draw the old history card, of course. I expected something milder and more 'rounded' from a beer labelled as a porter - call this a stout and you will be fine, but as I have said hundreds of times before in all those years of beer reviewing, porter and stout really are a continuum so it makes little sense discussing this at all. Whether porter, stout or even 'European style' black IPA: this is one feisty little beer, packing a lot of flavour at its ABV, but I expect the 'die hard' beer geeks to find it too earthy and ashy. As an elderly beer lover and missing these old school stouts and porters from time to time, I must admit that I liked it quite a lot, so far this is decidedly the best of these Mash of the Classics for me - and a compliment to Boon for, as it were, translating the power of lambic into a beer they themselves would never even consider to make. I do not expect Boon to set up a line of top-fermented porters or stouts any time soon, but one thing is for certain: the most anticipated beer of this pack (for me) does not disappoint.