6.6

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

Newish summer beer in this series of very local beers, developed by a hobby brewer in the Muide quarter of Ghent and especially popular in that quarter (as well as adjacent Meulestede). At the Meulestede CC, where last Saturday the twentieth birthday of this brand was celebrated with a party. Egg-white, thick and frothy, membrane-lacing, stable head on a misty straw blonde robe with ochre-ish tinge. Aroma of raw green cereals, corn, iron (head stabilizer no doubt), old potatoes, DMS (overcooked cauliflower), cooked pear, stale industrial lager, grass. Sweetish onset, vague notes of apple peel and green banana, but with a sourish undertone too I cannot quite identify (onsetting infection perhaps?); minerally carbonation, sweetish pale maltiness but very cereally and a bit ‘empty’, while that DMS and hints of old potatoes and stale white bread come up. A grassy hop element provides a bit of end bitterness and phenols add odd spicy background notes, but that stale pale lager effect remains dominant. More hops could have saved the day here, perhaps, but the whole beer feels frankly unbalanced and ‘patched’ with iron to mask errors. Technically a bit flawed, unfortunately, and quite a disappointment after the more interesting autumn beer in this series. Oh, as for the IPA branding: I classified it as one here out of respect for the brewer’s intent, but that is where the IPA part stops for me…