Deutlicher Kaffeebeginn, rund hopfig. Weiche Röstnoten, geringe Bitterkeit, süffig. Das Kaffeearoma nimmt zu, die Herbe ebenfalls. Gelungen. 12/9/10/11/9/11

7 June 2025. At Stroom brewery. Cheers to Matthias's stag do!

Hazy bright yellow, small, foamy, off-white head. Aroma of coffee bean, turnip mash, pineapple, orange juice, mandarin peel, grilled cauliflower (slight DMS). Taste has sweet apricot, pineapple & mandarin over sourish wheat & citrus zest in a doughy malt body surrounded by whiffs of coffee bean. Floral & earthy hops in the finish, lingering juicy citrus, earthy turnip and coffee. Medium body, fluffy texture, average carbonation. Somewhat earthy, bordering on dirty, but still well made.

New England style IPA flavoured with coffee from Vandekerckhove, a trusted and reputable coffee house (since 1854) in the Brabantdam, an ancient street in the historical city centre of Ghent - with a label depicting the work of a local artist, as Stroom usually does. Contains malted wheat, and is hopped with Magnum, El Dorado, Citra and Cryo Mosaic - so not just another version of that lovely Grindstone coffee IPA they did already in 2022, but a close relative for sure. Thick, yellowish egg-white, thickly cobweb-lacing, crackling, uneven-bubbled yet firm head on a hazy warm peach blonde beer with beige-ish tinge. Aroma of green coffee beans rather than actual coffee, old 'haricots verts' even, damp earth, old bread, drying mandarin peel, raw sweet potatoes, lemon thyme, cooked turnips, overcooked kale (DMS indeed - no doubt related to the coffee), red apple slices, hint pineapple, puddle water. Fruity, sweetish onset with a prominent minerally undertone - a bit metallic even (ferrous spring water), combining with impressions of kiwi, red apple, pineapple and ripe pear, with a slight sourish undertone; active carbonation with minerally effects, but nowhere bothersome. Slick mouthfeel with a slight wheat soapiness to it, very smooth, a tad brioche-bready, with ongoing fruity sweetness on top - like a sandwich spread with apricot jam, but less sweet than that. The coffee comes in retronasally, this time not in a cooked vegetable kind of way, but in a 'true' and aromatic roasted coffee bean way - agreeable for sure, but I am not convinced that it works well with that fruity sweetishness and - eventually - the mandarin- and lemon thyme-like effects of the hops, though both together do provide more bitterness than one would expect in a hazy IPA. Before long, the earthiness returns, with again a dash of DMS (a scent I hate passionately); a nice lacing of hop bitterness lingers in a floral kind of way, matching well with the bitterness added by the coffee. Interesting, but with all due respect to Vandekerckhove, their coffee acts out a weird kind of lingering 'greenish' bitterness as well as a retronasal aroma I find rather difficult to reconcile with the hops; in that sense, Stroom's original coffee IPA called Grindstone suited me a lot better, especially because this one effectively has a few 'dirty' side aromas (DMS, damp earth). That said, the aftertaste is a very agreeable one, with the bitterness established by the combination of coffee and hops lingering for a long, drying, pleasant time. Not sure what to think of this - IPA has become so disproportionally popular in the past decade that I can accept it being extended into added ingredients which naturally fit other beer 'style groups' better, and I did have a couple of decent coffee IPAs in my time, but here the flavours seem to get in each other's way. I also think this Vandekerckhove coffee could come into its own much better in a porter or a stout than a blonde IPA...