on tap oro limpida buona schiuma erbaceo buona seccgezza amaro medio piacevole

Tap at So Good in Rome. Clear pale golden pour, medium white foam pretty adhesive. Nose: weedy, pinch of honey, malt is soft. Mouth: the base is tasty, clean, classic, easy in a way. A solid India pale lager, a bit thin which you might like.

On tap oro velata buona schiuma buona persistenza piacevole agrumata resina sottobosco buona intensita in bocca un filo ruvido secca piacevole amaro affumicato?

Draft at FOB, Rimini, Italy. Pours intense hazy brown with fine white foam. Aroma is weak malty. Body is surprisingly light, with modest carbonation. Taste is moderately sweet with decent bitterness. Finish is average.

An orange and murku beer, a head is big and blond. Aroma has generic fruitness and citrus, herbal spicyness. Taste has fruitness, strong spicyness of peppers, warming alcohol. Medium bodied, high carbonation. Strong spicyness, boozy, decent.

0,33l bottle from Beergium. Hazy, orange brown beer with good and very stable cloudy head. Aroma has yeast, caramel, honey and flowers. Taste has caramel, hints of orange, spices and alcohol. Medium body and carbonation. Too boozy tripel.

33cl bottle from AbeerVinum, Rimini, Italy. Pours intense hazy gold with white foam, very fine. Aroma is fruity and quite alcoholic. Body is medium-dense, with intense carbonation and relevant stickiness. Taste is moderate in sweetness, with marked bitterness and maybe also some spiciness. Quite extreme and exaggerated for its alcohol level. Finish is long and bitter.

Tripel from an Italian beer company I hadn't heard of before, apparently brewed at Extraomnes. Bottle from Beergium. Fairly thick and densely moussy, 'membranously' lacing, very stable, egg-white head slowly thinning in the middle, over an initially practically clear, very warm orange-hued 'old gold' beer with lively strings of fizz throughout, shifting to a misty, much deeper orange-tinged darkish ochre with sediment. Convincingly tripel-like, rustic but also very notably boozy aroma of spritzy orange zest, dried biscuit, ripe apricots, ginger, dried banana, honey liqueur, old white pepper, gin, mandarin, calvados, clove-like phenols, meringue, fresh camomile, papier maché, old straw, melon, baker's yeast and dough especially (or in fact almost only) after adding the sediment. Fruity onset, estery as is to be expected from a Belgian style ale, with hints of banana but in a 'clean', not overly perfumey or sweet way, pairing well with sharper, more crisp impressions of freshly cut red apple, peach, unripe pear and raw pineapple, altogether sweet (residual 'white' sugar syrup, mostly) with a deeper, sourish, crisp edge to it, quite firmly carbonated but not overly so for a tripel, adding sourishness and minerally aspects. Bready, soft malt sweetish base, relatively clean at first but 'dirtier' (and also softer) as more of the yeast goes in, accentuating the breadiness; floral, even somewhat zesty, quite aromatic but still very "Old World" hoppiness in the end, bitter and mingled with mild spicy 'phenolics' - but what I had been fearing from the "sniffing phase" onwards, is soon confirmed: a peppery, stinging, heating, wodka- or gin-like 'white' alcohol effect is already popping up subtly at the beginning, but wreaks havoc from the middle of the tongue onwards, ending in a very wry, unpleasantly heating, almost 'white spirit'-like booziness which eventually overpowers the aforementioned subtleties of the hops. I like the aroma, I like the way this beer imitates sweeter Belgian tripels (or even 'edelbieren') without descending into bubblegummy esteriness too much, I even like the flavour for the first half - but I very much dislike the harsh, strong, fusel- and spirit-like alcohol effect ruining the second half completely. A good Belgian style tripel (is there a non-Belgian style within tripel to begin with?) should be warming and 'treacherous', sure, but a really good one also hides its ABV much, much better than this. Too bad: as said, I really like the general flavour profile these guys have constructed here, but it's a shame this profile is then ruined by brutal ethanol. Hadn't it been for this overt booziness, I'd easily given this a 3.6 or something, but in this shape, I think 3.0 is more than generous enough.

330mml bottle. Tasted on the 09/11/2017 at home. Cloudy orange colour with a medium white head. Aroma of fruits and caramel. Taste is caramel, malts, orange and some spices. Medium to high carbonation. Next one please!