Light brown colour with thin lacy head. Aroma and flavour have a strange mix of grassy, resinous hop and some sweet raisins and caramel

Overcarbonated... but no gusher. Taste is ok.

Sampled @ RBBSG 2017. Dark orange to reddish color, full sized rough off-white head. Smell and taste some fruit, some caramel, some pineapple, dry, bitter. Average to medium body and carbonation. Drinkable, but not a black IPA at all!!

33 cl bottle. Pours hazy dark orange with a huge off white head. Aroma is toasted malty. Bitter, dry hoppy. Smooth fruity. Bitter, slight fruity. Mellow. Smooth fruity finish.

Thanks to Alengrin! 330 ml. bottle sampled @ “Belgian Ticks Tasting Ghent”. Dark amber (seriously) tanned head. Nose is poor stale old hop, herbal with overly sweet malt. Taste is soap, banana, stale old chemical hop,.. Body is caramel malt,… Poor and that is ignoring the abysmal style interpretation here, so bloody Belgian.

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

21/VII/17 - 33cl bottle @ Belgian Ticks Tasting (home) - BB: 22/XII/18, brewed: V/2017 (2017-1102) Thanks to Alengrin for sharing the bottle!

Clear orange beer, small creamy beige head, unstable, non adhesive. Aroma: pretty fruity, very pleasant, tropical fruits, sweet, malty, caramel, some pineapple, decent! MF: soft carbon, medium body. Taste: pretty bitter start, grassy, caramel, some diacetyl, hoppy, some tropical fruits. Aftertaste: hoppy, raisins, dry, bitter, grassy, some caramel.

Pours bit darker amber. Small white head. Smell is stale hops, malty caramel. Bit yeasty taste is likewise, bit stale hops, but not overly bad. Caramel malts. Faded hopbitterness. Meh.

The ’dark IPA’ in this series of Kerel beers, making use of an old brand name whilst filling it with new beers, by a recently opened family-owned brewing enterprise in Tielrode near Sint-Niklaas, situated in the restored buildings of the former ’Kerel brewery’. Lightly ’membranously’ lacing, medium thick, densely moussy, egg-white head, slowly thinning and opening in the middle, over an initially clear, deep amber-glowing, coppery bronze beer, clearly not as dark as a typical BIPA; turns expectedly hazy with sediment, the haze perturbed by strings of fizz. Aroma is however reminiscent of BIPA (or ’Cascadian dark ale’) in more than one respect, albeit in a somewhat ’idiosyncratic’ way, with hints of toasted brown bread, old biscuit and bread crumbs (the same ’real’ breadiness as in their regular IPA), hard butterscotch candy, horseradish, black tea, dried orange peel, toasted walnuts and walnut shells, ’vegetative’ iron, dried golden berries, a whiff of coffee grounds, nutmeg, a hint of pine resin and vague honey- and marmelade-like sweetness elegantly peeping from underneath the malt and hop bitterness. Fruity onset, juicy, more fruity than expected based on the aroma, some esters but no banana, rather hints of dried apricot, unripe pear and red apple, subdued and elegant, fairly ’clean’ for a Belgian ale, with restrained sweetness and a dim kind of sourishness underneath - and even a very light, dried olive-like umami touch. Carbonation is spritzy but acceptable for the intended style, mouthfeel is smooth and a tad resiny. Pleasant nutty and toasted maltiness in the middle, pretty straightforward and to the point as it is not bothered by overt Belgian yeast effects, only vaguely sweetish in its core but much more bitter toasted, with a thin metallic edge that feels entirely natural and undisturbing in this case. The toasted, soft bitterness of the malts pair with a spicy, tonic water-like, rooty, leafy hop bitterness in the end, releasing mildly piney and more explicitly peppery aromas retronasally. This hop bitterness, though in all still on the lighter side for this style (BIPAs do have a wide IBU range, usually between 50-90), lingers for a long time, drying the throat with a very quenching effect; the toasted malts also stick to the throat. I get not too much phenolicness, no misplaced yeastiness, no interrupting esters: this may be lighter in colour and more caramelly than your average American-style black IPA, but two things need to be noted here: first of all, this beer is sold as ’dark IPA’ rather than ’black IPA’ so making it entirely black was never the intention; in this sense, this is very comparable with the also Belgian-made, but Wallonian Belgian Psycho by Brasserie du Brabant. Secondly, this style, originating in the U.S. in the late nineties, has only just begun to carefully penetrate the Belgian beer landscape and it is to be expected that the still very few Belgian brewing companies that have attempted to brew a BIPA so far, will not necessarily end up with a full-fledged American-style Cascadian dark ale. I know that saying that this is among the best Belgian BIPAs I had to date, really is not saying a lot, but surely this is about at the same quality level as e.g. BBP’s Dark Sister, which seems to have served as a source of inspiration here. I expected way less from this, after many mediocre test brews and a couple of not too impressive commercial products from this brewery, this is much closer to what I needed to get more enthusiastic about them, though it is still far removed from what actual BIPA should be. Quite pleasantly surprised - though it can still be entirely ’black’ and more aromatically hoppy for me.