5.9

Appearance - 5 | Aroma - 5 | Flavor - 6.5 | Texture - 5 | Overall - 7

Joeri Cools is a familiar face in the Ghent beer scene, for inventing one brand after another - starting off with the Libidus beers, which I got to know seven years ago from the man himself when he was still a cab driver. The Libidus range along with the Coucou brand currently belong to a company called Let It Beer which is only partially owned by Cools (if this is even still the case today - I should ask him if I come across him in Ghent), while his 'own' beers fall under a new company called United Beers, first and foremost comprising a range of abbey beers (Bavo among others) which are heavily promoted all over Belgium. These 'holy' abbey beers recently got the company of this very profane Julientje, a pale lager aimed at partying students and referring to a snack developed by Julien Taghon, long-time owner of "De Gouden Saté" snackbar in the heart of Ghent's university and students' district; after his death in 2013, his children named the snack (consisting of fries, saté spicing, mayonnaise, stewed beef sauce and toasted onions) after their late father. And then, so many years later, Joeri Cools pops up, sensing that there is money to be made and coming up with this 'festive' pils - but of course annoyingly refusing to disclose where it is actually brewed; my bet is on Eutropius, now called BCB, but I could be wrong and have no hard evidence - another thing to accost him for if our paths cross again in the city. Long story short: decorative can depicting partying students and talking of "Premium Belgian Pils", bought at a Delhaize supermarket. Medium sized, stable if partially breaking, snow white, intricately cobweb-lacing head over a crystal clear, notably pale straw-yellow blonde beer with greenish tinge and disparate strings of sparkling. Weak aroma of soggy bird seed, withering lettuce, mineral water, industrial white bread, corn, rainwater, dusty grains, grass somewhere. Sweetish but otherwise neutral onset, no relief at all with straightforward corn- and malt extract-like 'pure' and bland graininess, slender and slick but rather tasteless with some minerality from the carbonation adding some refreshment; the finish, luckily, does add a relatively - for this kind of beer - firm dosage of grassy, somewhat leafy hops, bringing bitterness that lasts a bit, though thinly so. Whatever little flavour the 'malt' offered, has completely faded by the time the finish is reached, leaving nothing but some minerality and the dying remainders of this hop bitter element. Fleetingly thin, superficial 'pilsje', I guess the very pale colour was already a sign of how diluted this was going to be; feels like some Mexican macro lager but with more hops, which is about the only positive thing I can say here. Typical 'pure commerce': using the name of a locally legendary 'friturist', positioning it in supermarkets and who knows where else, and then offering this utterly bland, thin, diluted macro lager. Yet, as said, there are no heavy off-flavours here and the hops really try hard, so I will rate this like any macro pale lager with 'premium' hop profile: just a little bit above the worldwide ocean of similar products that probably tens of millions of people still sadly regard as the 'standard' in beer.