Imported from my RateBeer account as VBDCK Kerel Kaishaku (by VBDCK Brewery):
Aroma: 8/10, Appearance: 3/5, Taste: 6/10, Palate: 3/5, Overall: 12/20, MyTotalScore: 3.2/5

28/IV/18 - shared @ Zythos Bierfestival 2018 (Leuven) - BB: n/a (2018-513) Thanks to the ratebeer crew for sharing today's beers!

Clear pale blond beer, small creamy white head, unstable, dissipates quickly. Aroma: pretty fruity, decent, some bubble gum, banana, little spicy. MF: ok carbon, medium body. Taste: alcohol, more alcohol, sweet, fruity, banana. Aftertaste: yeasty, pretty bitter, some banana peel, bit metallic, funky.

The latest addition to Verbeeck-Back-De Cock's Kerel range, and probably the least likely one so far: a superstrong ale fermented with sake yeast, of a strain capable of producing and surviving an ABV of - in this case - 15%, like several of the different specific Saccharomyces strains used in sake nowadays (combined with a specific Aspergillus mold, which is or could not be used here as it only eats rice). Fermenting beer with sake yeast has - on relatively rare occasions - been done abroad, think of Nögne Ö's Red Horizon for example, but never in Belgium, and from what I can find, this may well be the strongest Belgian beer ever obtaining its ABV purely from fermentation. Actually had this before in preproduction two years ago when the first brewing experiments at VBDCK were carried out, and in that stage it was the only one bottled in these stubby, cough syrup-like bottles VBDCK uses for all their commercial beers, so at least that 'proto-Kaishaku' had an influence on the overall stylistic identity of this brewery. The brewer said he had been tinkering with the recipe and this commercial version, released a couple of weeks ago, is supposed to be an improvement of the first, preproduction version. Foamy, eggshell-white, creamily lacing, irregular head, quickly falling apart in the middle under influence of the alcohol but otherwise retaining remarkably well in spite of it; cristal clear, warm pale orange-tinged 'old gold' colour with some tiny, disparate bubble strings rising up through it, and a vague khaki-hued edge, turning misty and deeper, more amber-ish with sediment. Strong aroma, carried upwards by the alcohol, reminiscent of calvados and home made pear wine - or indeed a fruitiness pointing at warm sake, chewing gum, peaches soaked in rum, dry cookies fresh from the oven, banana-flavored candy, methylated spirits, wood glue, Grand Marnier, fresh orange slices, honey, melting white sugar, hint of dried flowers. Sweet onset, white candi syrup sugariness and candy apple, banana-flavoured bubblegum, peach but everything is palpably soaked in alcohol right away; finely tingling, very soft carb, vinous mouthfeel, very hot all around from the booze. Sweet, biscuity and caramelly malt base, banana and apple-like flavours lingering, but the alcohol which already dominates from the start, becomes all-powerful from the middle onwards, heating the mouth cavity in an almost liquor-like way (calvados springs to mind again, in combination with the sweeter apple aspect) - I even hesitate to swallow. Indeed, a harsh moonshine- or cheap wodka-like alcohol wryness rules the entire finish in a way I personally find hard to ingest, engulfing everything excluding a late, agreeable bread- or even cookie-like aspect all the way at the back. The whole chest is warmed up by the alcohol, while its wryness keeps sticking to the mouth cavity and tongue. Sweet and extremely boozy, this feels like the top-fermented equivalent of a malt liquor or superstrong Euro lager, the type of 'beers' I probably hate most of all. I had beers of 15% and even stronger before, and even outside of that often ridiculous Eisbock hype, many of them carried their alcohol load in a subtler way than this; I guess a pale-ish grain bill as used here, is just a bit thin to carry the enormous weight of the booze. The end result is basically a 'doubled tripel', I guess you could say a 'sextupel' or something, which sadly collapses under its own top weight. Even if that sake- and calvados-like aroma fascinates me, I cannot physically finish a whole bottle of this, which unfortunately obliges me to give only a low score. Would have worked way better at just over half of its strength, I think... But then, that's me, having a dislike against the pure flavour of alcohol as such, so others may like this - it is in any case very unusual, if not unique, certainly within a Belgian context.