6.8

Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7

7 3 7 3 14 Bottle shared at Gollemke. Very hazy amber brown with a cream coloured head. Aroma of grapefruit, caramel malt and herbal hops. Flavour is moderate sweet and moderate to light heavy bitter. Medium bodied with soft carbonation.

6

Imported from untappd on 02-05-2020

5.9

Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 5.5

33 cl bottle. Pours hazy orange with a small white head. Aroma is toasted malty, slight fruity. Light herbal fruity. Bitter, slight herbal. Dry fruity finish.

7

Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 8

Sampled @ RBBSG 2017. A bit hazy orange color, full sized off-white head, quite foamy, but lasting. Smell and taste malts, some hops, grapefruit, tart citrus peel, bitter. Decent to medium body and carbonation. Quite nice for only 4.2% ABV.

6.8

Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 7

Thanks to Alengrin! 330 ml. bottle sampled @ “Belgian Ticks Tasting Ghent”. Dark orange, creamy white. Nose is weirdly sweet, milky, sugar, dough, candy, malt,… Taste is industrial sweet, oily, sugar, dough, caramel, fruit is lost, nothing IPA in the regular sense here,… Body is caramel, wort, oily, sugar,… It has one great rating on here but this is very weak compared to the international scene I think, there are BE breweries making far, far, far better IPA’s than this.

7

Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 7

Imported from my RateBeer account as VBDCK Kerel Grapefruit IPA (by VBDCK Brewery):
Aroma: 7/10, Appearance: 3/5, Taste: 7/10, Palate: 4/5, Overall: 14/20, MyTotalScore: 3.5/5

21/VII/17 - 33cl bottle @ Belgian Ticks Tasting (home) - BB: 21/XII/18 (2017-1095) Thanks to Alengrin for sharing the bottle!

Clear orange beer, lots of small specks floating under a small creamy irregular off-white head, unstable, non adhesive. Aroma: bit malty, grains, somewhat fruity, hint of grapefruit and some tropical fruits, bubble gum, bit of passion fruit. MF: lively carbon, medium body. Taste: pretty bitter, grassy kind of bitterness, malty notes, some citrus and grapefruit, hoppy, bit resinous. Aftertaste: fruity, citrus, bitter, bit resinous, very malty, grains, bit grassy, very bitter and dry finish.

6.5

Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 8

Pours rather unclear amber. Good white head. Smell is vegetal. Taste is vegetal, bit bitter, some yeast. Sigh...

6.8

Appearance - 4 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7

One of no less than six beers just launched by this new VBDCK brewery near Temse, a series of modern craft beers all under the same old (until 1966) Kerel brand, the original beer of which has nothing to do with this new series apart - allegedly - from the yeast strain, which was retrieved from a very old bottle, or so they claim. Thick, dense, regular, egg-white, very stable (closed) head over a misty amberish-tinged orange blonde beer with a suspension of yeast throughout (not a very good sign really) - turning all murky and a tad brownish (’muddy’) with sediment. Aroma of freshly baked bread and warm bread crust, peach, dried grapefruit peel, dandelion leaves and other bitter garden herbs, dried apples, baker’s yeast, straw, faint hints of orange zest, olive oil, peanuts, bubblegum, old nutmeg powder and, fortunately only after adding the sediment, something unpleasantly slurry pit-like (E. coli?) which luckily quickly fades again after a few moments. Crisp onset, fruity but not overly estery (almost no banana ester contrary to my expectations), hints of dried apricots, peach and pear, but blotted by very sharp, stinging carbonation, too much so for this style, numbing the tip of the tongue; flavour is generally dry, with sourish and only very distant sweetish notes. Very bready middle, bread crust-like with a lightly toasted bitterish edge, in all quite dry and becoming increasingly hop bitter towards the finish, ending in a very potent, tonic water-, black pepper- and bitterroot-like end bitterness, drying and quenching - and made even more bitter by the grapefruit, with eventually an aftertaste which indeed reminds me very strongly of yellow grapefruit flesh - or even the white underside of citrus peel in general. This is well-intended, but somehow the - admittedly still very young - concept of ’grapefruit IPA’ hasn’t been understood here: first of all, IPA is not just ’a’ beer made very bitter by hops and secondly, why not use some of those wonderfully fragrant American hop varieties which in themselves release very grapefruit-like flavours? Apart from these conceptual remarks, there is also the fact that most present-day consumers (though this will admittedly be true only for real beer geeks) probably expect a soft, not very bitter and highly aromatic New England style IPA with added grapefruit juice or flesh, as many breweries are doing these days. Last but certainly not least, there is a minor technical issue as well, as even a ’Belgian IPA’ (because that is basically what this is) should not contain a visible ’soup’ of yeast from the first pour. And yet, all those things aside, I have to admit that I expected less: this is not perfect at all, but it still is one of the hoppiest beers made in this region, called Waasland, to date and I’m a bit of a hophead, so even in spite of its lack of ’new’ hop aromas, overt breadiness due to the excessive yeast and not very attractive looks, I did enjoy this and certainly wouldn’t mind having another one.