7.6

Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 7.5

The first beer by what appears to be a new microbrewery (founded 2022) in Leopoldsburg, Belgian Limburg; IPA brewed with 10% of the malt bill replaced by pasta, not a first even in Belgium (see Triporteur Basta) but still an unusual feature, so at least these guys are off on a creative start. Longneck bottle from Bierwebshop in Membruggen (some forty miles south of Leopoldsburg). Thick and frothy, busily plaster-lacing, snow white, creamy, irregular but firm and pillowy head on an initially clear, warm amberish-tinged orange blonde beer, turning misty amber with sediment. Aroma of grapefruit peel, orange pith, wormwood, rusk, old dry biscuit, pink peppercorns, toasted onion, hints of raw celery, persimmon, clove, dried thyme, peanut skins, vague diesel, armpit sweat (warming up) and brown soap. Clean, sleek onset, low in fruitiness, hinting at persimmon and grapefruit with perhaps a dash of unripe peach, quite softly carbonated with slick, oily mouthfeel; rusk- and bread crust-like, lightly caramelized malts with slight toasty edge, further bittered by a grapefruity, wormwoody and peppery, but altogether relatively mild hop bitterness, nevertheless lasting for a long time - yet all that time remaining in balance with that near-biscuity, dry and toasty maltiness. Retronasal impressions of dried citrus peel, toasted onion and wormwood could have been more expressive for me, but there is no denying that this is a very accomplished, oldskool (West Coast style) IPA indeed, if in a softened, more accessible form. Many craft brewers these days produce this kind of softened West Coast IPAs so I must conclude that these Barak guys know what they are doing when it comes to the IPA idiom - so convincingly even that I seriously doubt they brew everything by themselves, no matter how low their claimed production capacity is... As long as I have no more information on where this is actually brewed, I guess we need to give them the benefit of the doubt and welcome Barak as an interesting newcomer on the craft beer market, clearly seeking to avoid the old and hackneyed Belgian clichés. One to watch.