26/XI/23 - 33cl bottle as a gift, shared @ home, BB: 23/III/24 09:37, FYP 23-0002 (2023-1110) Thanks to Cybu for the beer!

Clear gold blond beer, so yeah, not a NEIPA as stated on the bottle… Big aery irregular white head, unstable, a little adhesive. Aroma: nice, some tropical fruits, citrus notes, yeasty character. MF: ok carbon, medium body. Taste: very yeasty, malts, good bitterness, a bit of banana, hint of tropical fruits, more yeast. Aftertaste: floral, gentle bitterness, a bit soapy, very yeasty, overripe banana, sweet finish. Meh.

The new embodiment of Ypra, a historic Belgian beer originally brewed by Vermeulen till 1976, then discontinued and revived in more recent times by first the Proefbrouwerij and later Bockor (who created a once-only tap version already in 2010); the current revival was sparked by Edouard Vermeulen, the founder of the famed Natan fashion house, but also the son of the brewer of Vermeulen, who had a close connection to Bockor (now Vander Ghinste) in its day - which closes the circle. Bockor has explicitly stated (to me personally) that this 2023 bottled version is brewed to a different recipe than their first try-out in 2010, hence the new entry here. Thick and foamy, crackling, densely moussy, cobweb-lacing, egg-white, pillowy to cauliflower-like head on an initially crystal clear pure 'metallic' golden beer with a steady column of visible sparkling in the middle, turning misty further on. Aroma of raw quince, unripe green peach, raw cereals, white soap, dry straw, green pear, raw radish, freshly cut grass, unripe banana, chamomile, dried out white bread, gypsum. Crisp, rather dryish onset, hinting at green pear, hard green banana, unripe peach and apple peel with limited residual sweetness, disturbed by very sharp, minerally carbonation; lean pale malt sweetish middle, cereally and slick with a thin layer of unfermented white candi syrup-like sweetishness on top and minerally side notes provided by this sharp, ongoing (over)carbonation. Very light spicy phenols here and there in the finish, but more importantly a floral and grassy hoppiness, providing a mild and thin, but somewhat lasting bitter note; meanwhile this 'green fruit' element persists, along with something soapy and gypsum-like. Quoting its refermentation in the bottle as a distinct feature, as the brewery apparently does, seems absurd given the fact that most top-fermented Belgian beers are refermented in the bottle, and frankly this beer differs very little from the lowest common denominator in hypercommercial, easygoing, characterless Belgian blonde thirst quenchers - in fact it hardly shows any personality at all. Seems like a slightly cleaned up version of the 2010 (Bockor) original, even though - from what I recall - the difference is minimal and ignoring the true historic original as well as that one-time Proefbrouwerij interpretation (both of which I never had); what you get in the end, is a typical 'industrial pale lager substitute', the most flavourless type of Belgian blonde ale around. Technically correct, but that is about it: I will have forgotten about this beer's few flavours within an hour from now. Much ado about nothing.