Generation V Brett DIPA

Bottle at Gollem in Antwerp. Buxton DIPA with Brett - seems like an unusual, perhaps even paradoxical idea, but I had a few very interesting and excellent beers in this concept so I had to try this. Very thick and frothy, heavily cobweb-lacing, irregular, egg-white, very stable head over a hazy peach-hued deep brownish amber beer. Intense aroma combining relatively strong 'Brettiness' with (less outspoken but still pronounced) hoppy dankness, resulting in a mixture of fermenting yellow plums, spoiled old onions, stale sweat, damp hay, sweet paprika powder, peanuts, dried wormwood leaves, old soggy biscuit, stale grapefruit juice, earthy turnip. Estery onset, apricot and redcurrant notes, lots of red apple peel crispness accentuated by fizzy carbonation yet fit for a beer of this very particular type, sweetish core surrounded by a 'dim', soft but thorough sourishness, rounded biscuity and bready malt body with nutty edges and a mildly toasty finish; lots of retronasal 'Brett urine', old hay, wet leather and fermenting berries, mingled with grapefruit zest and exotic pepper hoppiness, which also deposits a long, drying, wormwood-like bitterness on the root of the tongue. Malt juiciness lingers through this dryness and bitterness, followed by an afterglow of warming, gin-like alcohol. Exactly what I was hoping for: a kind of "Orval on speed" so to speak, using a fundament of beautifully autumny 'amber' maltiness to build a structure of animalistic Brett and dank and bittering hoppiness on top of it. See e.g. some of the special Troubadour Magma editions (2014 and 2015) for another, much younger Belgian equivalent - and, as with those two beers, I am left wondering what would happen if this beer was cellared for a year or more. Very interesting and yet another masterpiece by Buxton, whom I consider to be among the best breweries in England today.

Bottle at home sourced from the Buxton Taphouse. Pours hazy amber, with a white head. Aroma of funk, brett piney hops & malts. Taste is light sweet, dry, bready, fruity, earthy, funk, loads of brett. Medium bodied with soft carbonation. Funkily bretted, dry finish. A cracking drop, like a super bretted imperial Orval. Never a sour/wild ale though, surely?