23/XI/24 - 33cl bottle as a gift, shared @ home, BB: n/a (ink on the bottle neck has been wiped out?) (2024-1217) Thanks to Bierridder_S for the bottle!

Clear dark brown beer, small aery irregular off-white to beige head, unstable, non adhesive. Aroma: acidic, some balsamic vinegar, earthy, soft roast, turpentine, solvents, more vinegar. MF: soft carbon, medium body. Taste: pretty sourish start, a little bitter, roasted, a bit sweet, lots of caramel, pretty fruity touch, red berries, nice! Aftertaste: acidic, some tannins, soft roast, strawberry jam, red currants, pretty acidic, hint of chocolate, bitter touch, very oxidized, earthy, tobacco, leather. Didn’t get any almonds, and practically no cocoa though...

The new Brigade Bier by Verzet, a special treat made for the members of their Brigade (a fan community); this is the first one for the year 2024, but I heard a second one is planned for later this year so that for the first time, there will be two Brigade beers for the same year. This one is described as a 'pastry oud bruin' (a clever variation on pastry sour), like the Thirsty Pastry they already made for the thirtieth birthday of HOP - a local beer club - though this one is a tad less strong. Thick and frothy, yellow-beige, dense, stable head on a notably dark chestnut-brown beer - blackish almost, but still clearly brown with a copper red glow. Aroma of black cherries soaked in balsamic vinegar, red plum, Schwarzwalder Kirsch, very pronounced oak wood, red wine, French fig or walnut liqueur, candied dates, passionfruit, solventy notes of varnish and acetone (which will probably fade with age). Full-on sweet-sourness in the mouth, candied cherries, raisins and ripe red plums, all edged by a balsamic tartness - very much 'oud bruin' in the more classical sense of the word, but in a kind of intenser, amplified way. Full, rounded, very vinous body, softish carb, lactose adding rotundity, creaminess and sweetness to a deeply tart lactic sourness, round a smooth caramelly and brown-bready maltiness; lots of oak aroma, yet the tannic effects remain mitigated by the lactose, as do 'silent' floral hops underneath this entire structure. Some warming brandy- or liqueur-like alcohol and lots of lingering 'red fruitiness', sweet and sour, with the sweetness even sticking a bit to the throat. Quite an oddity conceptually speaking: Verzet made part of its name and fame by reverting to the older history of 'oud bruin' (Flemish red), when it was boiled for many hours and remained unsweetened, and in that sense set themselves clear apart from the traditional, larger oud bruin producers like Rodenbach, Strubbe or Verhaeghe. This one connects with present-day craft beer flair by adding lactose, but then what you get in the end, is again a sweetened oud bruin, albeit in a more fancy and 'postmodern' kind of way; indeed many of the tasters present at the table that night compared with beer with Verhaeghe's Duchesse de Bourgogne, which is as traditional a sweetened oud bruin as you get. 'Pastry oud bruin', in that sense, seems to look both forward and backward at the same time, even if the kind of sugar used may differ. Very interesting - and a beautiful beer to both the traditional 'oud bruin lover' as the more progressive one, I assume...