6.6

Appearance - 7 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 7 | Overall - 6.5

One of the first beers by this new nanobrewery in Hasselt, apparently erected by an elderly brewer who once helped create the Dikke Nek beer for the Hasselt cafés, but decided to go solo with his own small brewing equipment in 2020. This Pils shows a medium thick, moussy, regular, slightly off-white, dense and closed head and misty golden blonde robe with vague ochre-ish tinge and a steady column of sparkling in the middle. Odd aroma of cooked broad beans, sugar beet, stewed celery, pear, white bread, raw turnip, minerals, ferrous spring water, halfripe apricot, vague banana peel. Fruity onset, sweetish and in that sense not Pilsener-like at all, with notes of banana, apricot and pear though all admittedly subdued, minerally carbonated with a light metallic touch as well; supple, soft, cereally pale maltiness, sweetish and a bit white-bready, carrying some floral hops in the finish with slightly dryish effect but only mild bitterness. Some of those vegetable-like effects reappear retronasally but less strongly so than orthonasally (luckily); hints of clove, dust and straw linger about as well as that metallic side effect. Sweetish, fruity, metallic and missing the point: I find it hard to believe that this was actually bottom-fermented and cold lagered as a Pilsener should be, this is likely a top-fermented Belgian blonde labelled as 'pils' to please the masses. Point off for claiming to be a lager without being one - and even if regarded as a blonde, it is still a weird one, with cooked vegetable aromas (not in a DMS kind of way though) that should not be there. Drinkable, in all, but odd and very obviously not a Pilsener of any kind, not even the watered down industrial one.