Organic white IPA in this Houblonde series, steinie bottle bought at Ekoplaza (organic shop chain) in Ghent. Light gusher - i.e. foam slowly creeping out of the bottle neck. Membrane-lacing, beaten egg-white, foamy, thick, audibly fizzing, densely fluffy head resting stable on a misty yellow blonde beer with lots of dark protein bits floating around everywhere - even remaining on the foam like tiny dark dots. Aroma of initially stinging carbon dioxide, quickly receding and giving way to young mugwort leaf, old potatoes, raw turnip, coriander seed, damp straw, grapefruit pith, dry cotton cloth, old baker's yeast, something sulfurous, dust, oxidized green apple, old white bread, old herbarium, very faint chicken stock (oxidation!). Spritzy onset, stingy minerally carbonation piercing through estery notes of oxidized green apple, hard pear, unripe banana and a vague touch of gooseberry, low in sweetness with more pronounced sourishness (also due to that sharp carbonation), with essentially soft, smooth mouthfeel; wholegrain bread- and cracker-like malts with wheaty sourishness and a sharpish graininess from the millet intertwined, sourish-grainy and vaguely bready-sweetish, increasingly bittered by an earthy, spicy hoppiness with aspects of mugwort and dandelion as well as dried old citrus peel, but nowhere near the brightness and aromatics I expect from anything labelled as 'IPA'. Ends dryish, bitterish, grainy, spicy and earthy - not an unpleasant combo, in all, I must admit; the wormwoody earthiness and bitterness combined with (too obviously witbier-like) coriander seed spiciness, lingering clove-like phenols and fruity-bready yeastiness does point at 'Belgian IPA' for sure, as in "hopped up Belgian ale impersonating real IPA" - but by no means is this the Anglo-Saxon style 'white IPA' it pretends to be. By no means an unpleasant beer, albeit too old for a hoppy one (Ekoplaza should know better than to let this sit on the shelves for ages) and very 'Belgian' in every sip; if anything, this is best described as a 'hoppy witbier' of sorts. I always regret encountering something like this because it conveys a wrong idea about white IPA to less educated beer drinkers, but I admit that all things considered, this is not the worst beer around, not even in Brunehaut's portfolio. Passes.

33cl bottle from FÄRM.HANKAR bio shop in Brussels. F: big, white, good retention. C: pale gold, hazy. A: malty, peach, floral, bit apples peels, dough, coriander, honey. T: medium malty base, peach, bit herbal, chamomile, coriander, honey, dry on the palate, medium carbonation, nice balanced Belgium interpretation of the style, enjoyed for sure.