16/X/25 - 33cl can from DOK Brewing (Gent), shared @ home, BB: 30/VIII/26, batch: DOK269 (2025-1013)

Pretty cloudy beige blond beer, big creamy irregular white head, pretty stable, a little adhesive, leaving some lacing in the glass. Aroma: nice, quite some tropical fruits, a bit yeasty, ripe banana, citrus, satzuma, grapefruit, tangerines, a little dank, marijuana, onions, zesty, nice! MF: ok carbon, medium body. Taste: very grassy, herbal, dank, slightly smoky, some marijuana, very bitter, a bit zesty, bitter orange peel, dank, earthy. Aftertaste: soft acidity, citrus notes, bitter grapefruit, dank hops, a bit resinous, slightly smoky.

16/X/25 - 33cl can from DOK Brewing (Gent), shared @ home, BB: 16/VI/26, batch: DOK264 (2025-1012)

Little cloudy deep beige blond beer, solid creamy irregular white head, stable, adhesive, leaving a nice lacing in the glass. Aroma: lovely, lots of citrus, tangerine, orange peel, lime, floral notes, some satzuma, lychee, nice! MF: ok carbon, medium to light body. Taste: a little hoppy, gentle acidity up front, fruity, a little sweet, a bit soapy, citrus notes, a bit grassy, herbal. Aftertaste: more bitter, dry, grassy, some citrus, malty touch, herbal, soapy bitterness in the finish, ok but not great.

15/X/25 - 33cl can from DOK Brewing (Gent), shared @ home, BB: 30/VII/26, batch: DOK267 (2025-1010)

Clear to very slightly hazy gold yellow beer, big aery irregular white head, a little stable, adhesive, leaving a nice lacing in the glass. Aroma: nice, very floral, fruity notes, some tropical fruits, papaya, citrus, some kiwi, white grapes. MF: lively carbon, medium body. Taste: nice, ripe to slightly overripe fruits, some sweet physalis, floral touch. Aftertaste: a bit spicy, herbal and fruity, grassy, sourish touch, some kiwi, good bitterness, slightly soapy, some orange peel, nice one!

Pacific pale ale (PPA, I guess) but not with New Zealand hops as is most often the case in this segment: here some of the more recent, but nevertheless familiar Australian varieties were used, albeit supported by German Merkur (one can wonder why, surely an Australian one could have done that job just as well); collab with Lucky Bay in Western Australia and brewed with malts from Hof ten Dormaal (the farmer-brewer) and famed Dingemans. Huge foamy head, inches thick, egg-white, crackling, cobweb-lacing, pillowy and only slowly receding; hazy peach-gold with ochre-ish tinge. Aroma of lemon zest, grapefruit flesh, freshly cut Chinese aloe, cilantro leaves, thuja branches, green guava, white hand soap (oddly), pitaya, white bread, unripe pineapple, gypsum, green apple, deeply hidden orange somewhere, very vague and volatile whiff of young Gouda cheese. Fruity onset in an exotic way, notes of guava, watermelon, dragonfruit, lychee; lively carb but fine-bubbled, smooth and somewhat creamy mouthfeel. Porridge- and white bread-like malts soaked in tropical, yet not overly sweet hop aromas - as a Pacific breeze sweeping through it all, with an almost aloe-based shampoo-like touch to it, as in a television commercial... Flavours of guava, unripe mango, lychee and green kiwi fill the finish retronasally, while down below, a white pepper- and lightly grapefruit flesh-like bitterness settles, spreading over the tongue's root, but remaining altogether gentle and citrusy rather than deeply bittering. Interesting, 'breezy', soapy, green-fruity APA which I guess is a PPA only because of the hop varieties used - showing how thin the lines between all those different subtypes of IPA and APA can be. This one may not entirely be my cup of tea, but it is well executed and entertaining for sure.

Newish APA by Dok and a single hop one, featuring nothing but Krush, a hop variety launched officially only in 2024 by the Hop Breeding Company, operating in the upper echelons of the current hop industry. I have encountered this variety once before but I cannot remember in which beer or from which brewery - in any case this is Dok's first application of it. Irregular, intricately 'sun prominence-like', yellowish egg-white, medium thick, opening but otherwise more or less retaining head on a cloudy apricot blonde robe with beige-ish tinge. Quite distinct and interesting aroma of green guava, pepino, raw Kohlrabi, fresh grapefruit zest, unripe apricot, lemon bread, cut true aloe leaves, hints of young redcedar leaves, green plum, surimi, barley porridge. Restrainedly sweetish, quite juicy onset, citric, with side hints of unripe green fruits - far less 'tropical' than I was expecting, unless of course one counts unripe tropical fruits, "à la" green mango, green guava or green carambola; medium carb, smooth body, a tad powdery, with a basic porridge-like barley 'sponginess' soaked in the Krush hops, adding a range of 'green' aromas in spite of their proportionally low myrcene content - almost as in green kale stalks (or indeed Kohlrabi), cucumber peel and matcha tea, but also hints of freshly cooked shrimp (oddly), parsley, dandelion leaves and pear peel. The hops in question also deposit a late yet persisting, eventually quite 'deep' peppery bitterness. Totally different from what I was expecting from this hop variety based on what is typically advertized for, far less 'sultry' and far more 'green plant-like', but all the more interesting for it - this relative oddity has notes of green house plants and raw green stalks one does not find in just any beer so in that respect it is certainly a different take on the typically sweet-citrusy, mango- and passionfruit-like aromas and flavours of other contemporary APAs. One of those beers that show that Dok continues to be at the cutting edge of international developments in brewing - it takes a very alert and passionate brewing team to maintain this approach especially in times when craft beer seems to be a bit on the wane here in Belgium. A bit of a challenge, this one, but once you get used to it, it keeps surprising with its unexpected, sometimes even downright odd features. I am happy to give an extra point for that.

The latest in the unofficial "Dude" series by Dok, now in its sixth year and consisting of variations on a sour IPA theme - in this case 'enriched' with grapefruit and blood orange, the first even already added during whirlpooling. Medium thick, off-white, shred-lacing, slowly breaking head on a misty yellow blonde robe with warmer apricot glow. Aroma of indeed very pronounced grapefruit but in a marmalade-ish way, grapefruit zest, less obvious blood orange but still clearly present if you know what to look for, sour milk, sweat, overripe onions forgotten somewhere at the back of the fridge, drying grass, lemon thyme, valerian, old socks, lemon soap, old cheese rind, dusty gravel. Spritzy, crisp onset, fruity-sour in a yoghurty way but sharply so, lemony, with the citric effect obviously amplified by the added grapefruit and blood orange, the first adding more bitterness than juiciness and the second the other way around, with side impressions of lime and guava fleetingly passing by; lively carb, minerally, with smooth body. Cereally core, indeed simple Pilsener malt with a touch of pale, pressed between drying, lactic sourness with sweaty-funky side effects on the one hand and bright, zesty citrusiness on the other hand, coming from the hops, but of course also from the actual citrus fruit. In the end, drying yet altogether quite moderate bitterness is interestingly established by a confluence of hops and grapefruit, while the blood orange maintains a long-stretched effect of crisp citric juiciness. Luckily more beery and less "brunch juice"-like than I was fearing, this is another satisfying Dude episode, with some funky elements just for fun while focusing on how juiciness can merge with bitterness by learning from nature's masters in that very combination: citrus fruit. Summery and quenching yet still intellectually entertaining, what is there not to like?

Pours slightly unclear yellowblonde. Fairly unstable, white medium sized head. Scent is Malty, but also quite fruity - to even a sweet impression. Not as crisp as I had hoped. Taste is quite smooth, malty, but also gives me corn-like vibes (which are not in here), fairly heavy on the palate. Grassy, bit citrussy, overripe kiwi-kinda hoppyness. Not super intense, but certainly intense for a pilsner. Not as crisp and clean as I had hoped, and for a westcoast I would have imagined it far more dry and bitter, more typical Pine-like as well. Anyway, it's not a bad beer in general.