Bottle at home, dark brown red-ish beer, small head. Aroma is vanilla, wood, cocos, nuts, fruit, chocolate. Taste is the same, sweet and bitter. nice one! --- Beer merged from original tick of Breugem Handdruk on 09 Mar 2017 at 15:00 - Score: Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 9. Original review text: Bottle at home, dark brown red-ish beer, small head. Aroma is vanilla, wood, cocos, nuts, fruit, chocolate. Taste is the same, sweet and bitter. nice one!

Bottled (KS & MT late January tasting). Golden colour, small off-white head. Aroma is fruity, mild catpissy notes as well as some herbs and mild spicy notes. Flavour is citrus, some fruits, mild herbs, spices, sweet malts as well as some earthy notes. Some mild yeasty notes too.

Bottle from the Mitra in Lelystad (I think) - apparently a renewed version, but I cannot compare since I never had the original one; contains a slightly higher ABV and different hop varieties, no European noble hops anymore (previous one contained Northern Brewer next to new varieties); only Citra and Centennial have remained. Very slow gushing but nothing dramatic. Initially very thick and very frothy, egg-white head, thinning to medium but very compact and remaining closed for most of the time; warm peachy orange blonde robe, clear with a haze of pale yeast bits throughout and some fizz disturbing this haze. Turns into an equally cloudy, deep amberish orange after adding the sediment. Perfumey, sweet and pleasant but - for an IPA - somewhat unusual bouquet of lemon candy, fragrant sweet roses, pomelo or some other exotic citrus fruit, lime peel, overripe melon, biscuit, cloves, strawberry, dried wormwood, cake, honey, clove-like phenols, lemon-scented hand soap, almond, young spruce needles, Thai basil, old paper, sweet potato, Turkish delight, dough. Vividly fruity onset, sweet banana, peach and pineapple with a sourish, redcurrant- and unripe kiwi-like undertone, but very sharply overcarbonated, numbing the tongue almost completely at first, only to calm down very slowly as more carbon dioxide escapes; mouthfeel is quite coarse as a result, but (very) soapy at the same time. Light to medium bodied, based on a well-positioned middle phase of toasty malts with a softer bready, even very slightly doughy edge, bitterish and a tad nutty. This toasted bitterness supports a long, spicy, resinous, hop bitter finish, dry and aromatic with retronasal hints of - again - sweet roses, some lime and some exotic fruits here and there, with only the lightest piney accent, but in a bright ’moss green’, young spruce shoot-like way. Phenolic aspects return retronasally, in a spicy, ’Belgian’ kind of way. Juicy background deep in the throat, some very light alcohol warmth is noticeable but does not disturb me; the spicy, somewhat exotic hop bitterness remains in the throat, pleasantly and elegantly so, but so does a late, unexpected honeyish sweetness. Somewhat weird, but interesting IPA; very clearly much more aligned with the typical ’Belgian IPA’ than with true Anglo-Saxon IPA, but that does not necessarily have to be a bad thing and in this particular case, I think the spicy phenols actually work well together with the delicate hop aromas - though I am willing to admit that this is probably just a happy accident and comes down to personal taste anyway. In any case, the whole is elegant and pleasant enough for me, in a very ’feminine’ kind of way. Different from what I expected, for sure, but also notably better than I expected after the tripel in this series.

Bottle from the Mitra shop in Lelystad. Apparently a beer company now brewing at 7 Deugden, but until four years ago a micro brewery in its own right; my second beer in this ’Saense’ series. Medium thick, egg-white head, quickly dissolving into thin islands of foam in the middle and a well-retaining, densely moussy edge; pure, ochre-hued ’old gold’ robe with a haze of yeast particles throughout. Aroma of cooked potato, banana and indeed bubblegum, wet hay, camomile, old cheese, ’jenever’, unripe pear, sweetbread, green apple peel, coriander seed, rhubarb, powder sugar, minerals, old cake, sourish peach, and a vague, but unmistakably clear, sulphuric presence of DMS (cooked white cabbage). Fruity onset, some sweet banana isoamylacetate but not exagerrated, hints of green pear, stewed rhubarb and raw pineapple, sweetishness mixed with some gooseberry-like sourishness, minerally carbo but fit for the style, smooth and full, lean, somewhat soapy mouthfeel, made softer by the oats and slicker by the wheats. Cereally and very lightly caramelly malt base, a bit bready even especially after adding the sediment, but with a sharper, slightly wry grainy edge too which I assume represent both the wheat and the oats; in the finish, a glow of white rum-like alcohol manifests itself, lending it a warming, but also lightly astringent effect initially, though this seems to be mitigated by an earthy, very slightly starch-like, bready yeastiness, some soapy coriander (but fortunately kept relatively subtle), and leafy, floral, soft hop bitterishness after the sediment has been added. The malt sweetness and even the sweet banana ester keep dominating as the beer goes down the throat. A bit too alcoholic even for a tripel, with this somewhat annoying white candi sugar and banana ester sweetness lingering at times when they should have already disappeared: I truly believed 7 Deugden, which has produced more than one decent beer, could have been capable of delivering a tripel true to the ultimate Westmalle standard - because beers like this usually cling to that even if there are already too many tripels around in the Netherlands and a lot more so in Belgium - but this one disappoints a bit. I probably had too many tripels already in my ’beer rating time’ but this does not add anything to the style at all, it merely positions itself on the sweeter side of the range, with a very - overly - boozy aftertaste to it; making things worse, it suffers from DMS, which I am extremely sensitive to. Point off for both the DMS and the badly hidden alcohol, even though otherwise it is still fairly decent from a purely technical point of view and I probably would have enjoyed it a lot more without those two major flaws.

On tap at Rootz beer festival. Thick creamy off white head. Clear amber pour. Light bitterness. Easy drinking

Draft at Huppel, The Hague. ABV 4.6%. Hazy brown with a medium tan head. Aroma of overripe dark fruits, raisins, malt, caramel, light leather and herbal notes. Flavour is moderate sweet and bitter. Medium bodied with light carbonation.

Bottle picked up from World of Drinks, Market Hall, Rotterdam, Netherlands, consumed in Frank at Camping Corfewater, Pettern, Nord, Holland, Netherlands 27th September 2016 Pours dark very murky brown (bad pouring on my part) with a mid sized off white head/light beige. Soft in the mouth, very nice carbonation, plenty of caramel, a little boozy, sweet but not too sweet. Good slick big Quad, nice spiciness, good warmth, really moreish, enjoying this. A7 A3 T7 P4 Ov14 3.5

33cl bottle from a trade with Douberd. Pours hazy orange brown colour with a huge most good lasting off-white head. Aroma of sweet medium strong dark malt, caramel, sugar. Taste of sweet toasted malt, caramel, biscuits, toffee, some spices, quite nice.