Rubbens Nihil
Stokerij - Brouwerij Rubbens in Wichelen, East Flanders, Belgium 🇧🇪
Non Alcoholic / Low Alcohol - Pale Ale / IPA Regular|
Score
6.59
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Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 7 | Overall - 6
Even Rubbens, long known for jenever but only fairly recently for beer, has succumbed to the nablab hype sweeping the western world today - other than the traditional lambic breweries (for the time being at least), it becomes increasingly hard to think of a Belgian brewery of any size or ilk that does not have an alcohol-free or low-alcohol beer in its range today... I am beginning to wonder what a non-alcoholic Rochefort would taste like, but thank God at least some breweries remain immune to this trend so far. Steinie bottle from the Delhaize supermarket in Lokeren - near Zele, where the Rubbens story once began. Snow white, cobweb-lacing, medium sized, quite regular, moussey and stable head on a hazed pale apricot blonde robe with vaguely ochre-ish tinge. Aroma of Graham crackers and dry bread crust, rusk even, old dried lemon peel, old biscuit, green banana, very vague orange zest, raw turnip, coriander seed, jute rope, Thai green curry soup faraway in the background, vague touch of chalk. Sweetish onset though nowhere near sugary, hints of green pear and unripe banana, lively carb but not harshly stinging, supple body - and, importantly, notably less watery than most 'oldskool' nablabs of days gone by. Bready and grainy core, slick, again vaguely sweetish without actually being sweet, leading to a mildly floral-hoppy bitterish finish where soapy and chalky flavours become ultimately more prominent than the hops, alas - taking me back to those oldskool pre-hype nablabs after all. Begins more than decent, but descends a bit into a rather uninteresting finish - but most amateurs of this kind of beers will probably prefer this over the standard non-alcoholic pale lagers, and very rightly so. For what it intends to be, a simple alcohol-free blonde without any further frills, this does not perform badly at all - in that sense following Rubbens' general house style, I would argue.
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 6
Hazy blond colour, white unstable foam. Citrussy, hoppy with lemony notes. Taste is bitter, a bit medicinal, dry finish.