Hip Hop Weyninckhoven

Sampled from bottle at kermis’s. Hazy golden with white head. Sweet malts, orange peel, metallic. Light sweet and and bitter. Medium body and soft carbonation. --- Beer merged from original tick of Hip Hop Weyninckhoven on 09 Jan 2018 at 11:21 - Score: 6

Bottle shared thanks to kermis! Quite hazy golden with big fluffy white head. Some flowers, lychee, soft herbs and grass, light sweet malts, some bakers yeast, tangerine. Under medium itter and medium sweet. Medium bodied with quite some carbonation.

Bottle shared. Very hazy golden orange with a big white head. Aroma of herbal hops, mineral notes, light citrus and wheat. Flavour is light to moderate sweet and moderate bitter. Light medium bodied with moderate carbonation.

Bouteille 33cl, BB 17/12/2018 Dorée sur léger voile, col blanc. Arôme au nez assez frais avec des effluves de houblons laissant un relent d’agrumes, et parfum citronné frais, cependant, on peine bcp à y retrouver un signe de Cascade et de Citra, dommage quand on connait le caractère olfactif de ces houblons. Le grains est là avec un côté BE levure qui enlève encore plus des houblons. Palais de malt pils et cara pâle, rétro finement houblonné trop discret et encore une fois éclipsé par ce profil levure belge qui dénature tout l’apport fruité et herbacé des houblons. On retrouve de ce fait une base, sèche, monodimensionnelle orientée vers les malts. Au final, on innove peu et on rempile sur un style IPA d’influence belge qui ne montre rien au niveau des houblons.

Special and commissioned edition of their Hip Hop IPA, with Nugget, Cascade and Bravo hops, named after a local castle. Considering previous experiences with this brewery, I opened it carefully over the sink, but the crown cap loosened under high pressure and with a very loud hissing sound; alarmed by this ominous sign, I opened it further in the way a bomb squad would dismantle a bomb, but even with the most careful and slow opening I probably ever carried out, I could not prevent a violent stream of foam and beer spouting out of the bottle neck, losing about 1/4. I can imagine people being less prepared for this extreme and offensive amount of gushing, may easily lose 1/2 and will be confronted with quite a daunting cleaning task afterwards. ’Bath foam’ crept out of the bottle even after pouring about half of the beer into a glass. Well... onto the beer then: initially towering high and rocky head falling down to a very coarse, loosely structured but still thick layer of large, egg-white bubbles after a few minutes, leaving thick patches of lacing here and there; straw blonde, hazy robe with fierce fizz perturbing a fog of yeast particles, becoming more peachy blonde and more equally cloudy, eventually even muddy ochre, as the beer (or what is left of it) is poured further into the glass. Aroma of freshly cut stinging nettles, wet cardboard, damp hay, some bubblegum, raw potato juice, strong clove-like phenols, dry baker’s yeast, pineapple, moist white pepper, green apple peel, unripe banana, mandarin peel (a clear echo of the Cascade), camomile and sweetclover (the Bravo?), dust, gooseberry, grass, white bread dough. Fizzy onset, overcarbonated with a numbing and souring effect right from the start, covering up underlying fruitiness of unripe peach, green apple, slight banana and some gooseberry, with a sweetish core. The numbing, stinging effect of the overkill of carbonation goes on in the middle, detracting from a dryishly grainy, ’meagerly’ bready malt base with fruity and phenolic notes on top, the latter very spicy and old clove-like, then more aniseed- or even basil-like and eventually unpleasantly medicinal, rudely disturbing a floral, grassy, somewhat herbal and peppery hop aroma retronasally, with a very low - if any - presence of the sweet ’citrusness’ I’d expect from something containing Cascade. Back in the mouth, the hops are certainly there - both Nugget and Bravo are primarily used as bittering hops, so a long, grapefruity, spicy bitterness sticks to the finish, while a certain amount of malt sweetishness comes through; the yeast adds a very bready effect in the aftertaste and I can even clearly detect the alcohol, as a ’kruidenjenever’-like flavor and palpable warmth - something which should be all but absent in a 6% ABV beer. The name of this new micro brewery means ’kitchen brewers’ and although they do not literally brew in a kitchen anymore (but in some improvised container in their garden), this could not have been more amateurish. The intentions are good, the recipe could work if well-executed so I have a certain sympathy for this initiative - though ’pity’ would probably be equally appropriate. The gushing is among the most fierce I have ever seen, the hops are applied in a way that makes me feel sorry for the American farmers who have developed them. The Cascade, one of the most classic New World hop varieties, is almost completely lost, and both others do little else than yield some floral and herbal aromas as well as leaving behind a harsh, unpleasant bitterness, insufficiently backed up by maltiness. Worst of all, this thing is teeming with phenols which are completely out of control, completely dominating the finish where the hops are supposed to shine and effectively turning this beer - along with the banana and other fruity esters - into a hopped up Belgian blonde; I guess ’Belgian IPA’ is appropriate here, but this failed brew clearly does not make a good case for my argument that Belgian IPA should be recognized as a separate substyle of IPA. My expectations weren’t high for this one - some of their earlier brews were good from tap, but the bottles I had so far were far from impressive - and still they managed to disappoint me.

Bottle. Pöurs unclear yellow, huge, and growing white head ( looks like overcarbonation to the extreme ) Smell is rather yeasty. taste is bit bitter, weak, crisp, some malts, very mild hoparoma. Why tuning it down so much? the IPA made for modeste was a showcase of what an IPA should be ( for Belgian standards, that is ) but this... is a bit dissapointing . The taste itself is OK ( not an IPA to me though, more like a bit above average hopped blonde beer ) and the mouthfeel is nice ( no overcarbonation , actually ) . Just... An IPA needs hops !

330 ml. bottle @ Bahnhove. Bottled 21/05/16. Dark orange, huge collapsing white creamy huge. Nose is some moldy yeast, quite grainy, medicinal hop, overly fizzy medicinal hop & some jenever. Taste is fizzy, jenever, overly medicinal hop, unfitting yeast (dash), moldy yeast, lemon, finish is quite medicinal, apple, grain alcohol. Body is overly fizzy, hop is overly medicinal, you get moldy notes, too much jenever-like notes, etc. This is basically not how not to make an IPA, hop is overly medicinal, who is fizzy, grainy, medicinal notes etc. these guys are trying but this isn’t really how you should be doing it.