Speech Impediment
White Pony Microbirrificio in Piove di Sacco (PD), Veneto, Italy 🇮🇹
Brewed at/by: BCB (Formerly known as Brouwerij Eutropius)Strong Ale Regular
|
Score
6.68
|
|
Sign up to add a tick or review
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 5 | Flavor - 5 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 6
Keg at craft and draft Amsterdam September 2017... Deep copper... Small tan head.. Soft sweet toffee caramel malts... Soft sweet caramel sweet malts
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 4 | Overall - 7
New ’imperial India brown ale’ by White Pony, brewed at Het Nest like their other recent creations. Bottle from Wijnegemse Drankenhal. Medium thick, pale greyish off-white, fairly regular head, leaving some limited lacing here and there and flat ’islands’ of foam in the middle, on top of an initially clear, warm ruddy-hued, deep and pure amber coloured beer, misty and more brownish with sediment. Slightly ’dank’ aroma with hints of dried grapefruit peel, toasted onion, candied fig, chestnuts, dried peach, rose petals, honey-glazed beetroot, soggy toast, tea, soap, butterscotch, wormwood, cedar oil, accents of goat cheese, rainwater, gin, stale sweat, varnish. Fruity onset, clean-ish with subtle notes of dried apricot, unripe pear and baked banana, only very restrainedly sweetish with a sourish edge, medium carbonated with a supple, somewhat oily and very subtly soapy mouthfeel; grapefruity hop bitter ’stings’ are apparent from the start. Lean, slightly bready, toasty malt basis, sweetish caramelly and hazelnutty accents but predominantly toasted bitter, with this bitterness soon taken over by the hops, providing a very bitter, long, dry, tonic water-like, rooty finish, spicy and lingering on the root of the tongue and in the throat for a long time, whilst releasing some retronasal grapefruit peel and toasted onion notes. A gin-like alcohol effect ensues but manages to avoid bothersome astringency. Interesting beer, apparently intended as an ’India brown ale’, in other words: an American style brown ale hopped like an IPA. In any case the American craft beer revolution served as the source of inspiration here; Stone’s Arrogant Bastard and other ’hybrid-style strong hoppy Americans’ are not far away and very little here reminds of the fact that this is actually brewed in Belgium - an impressive accomplishment by Het Nest, I would argue. Nice enough if you like strong hop bitter ales, but then it does lack some depth and refinement; I think a more expressive and fruity hop aroma would really lift this up, as would a sweeter, more biscuity and thicker malt profile. Could have been a lot more elegant: in this form, it comes across as somewhat thin for its strength as well as being a tad harsh and wry. Still: White Pony did well to move their activities from Gaverhopke to Het Nest, that much is clear, because I will never forget the huge gushers and other misfits that came out of their Gaverhopke adventure - making me very wary about their beers in general.