Bottled from DBW - bubbles pour , yeasty floral notes, mild sweetness as well. Decent

Draught from rattle. Cloudy yeller. Mild head. Aroma was somewhat piney and citrusish. Taste was kind of malty and bitter and earthy. Not what I expected.

Sour and herbal aroma on a malt backbone. Sweet malt taste with again sour herbal taste, light bitterness and mid-dry finish.

On tap at Kerelshof Cassel. Punk orange colour lasting off white head. Flavour of Hibiscus and pear no doubt. It's very drinkable given the abv. Some sweet bitter finish. Fairly well balanced. I liked it

Old rating from Aug 2015 - 330ml bottle from the Het Kasteelhof on Mont Cassel, Cassel, Nord France. Pours a cloudy amber colour with a white head. Aromas of cherries, vanilla & hops. Tastes start with a sweet fruity flavour, after a few sips you can taste the cherries & vanilla as well as maple, with a aftertaste of hoppiness. Overall on a very hot summers day a beer that that goes down lovely!

One of the standard beers of one of France's pioneering 'new generation' brewers, strange that I did not have this one before - so thanks Jarno for bringing me this bottle from northern France! Quite a fierce gusher upon lifting the crown cap, but the gushing stopped relatively suddenly as well. Medium thick, off-white, sparsely lacing, uneven-bubbled, medium thick head thinning in the middle of an initially near clear, warm and pure golden robe with pale orangey tinge and translucent, minute dots of yeast everywhere (explaining the initial gushing), shifting to a hazy warm orangey peach blonde only in the very end. Aroma of rainwater, autumn apples, artisanal honey, field flowers, cooked sweet potatoes, halfripe apricot, dishwater, egg yolk, coriander seed and a lot of it, a forest floor in autumn packed with dead tree leaves, hints of chervil soup (typical for dead yeast), old rubber or at least something sulphuric, old onions and a whiff of background iron. Fruity onset, sweetish with notes of (luckily quite restrained but still obvious) banana, ripe peach, pear and apricot, with a vague sourish undertone; medium carb, some minerality but altogether on the softer side of the spectrum, with a supple, smooth body. Sweetish pale maltiness, cereally with a somewhat 'denser' edge, almost biscuity but not quite, while the fruity esters persist and phenolic spiciness grows, clove of course but also wet nutmeg and a dash of mint somewhere faraway in the background - overruled by actually added coriander seed, with slightly soapy effect. In the very end, bready yeastiness pairs with a floral hoppiness, lasting for quite a while and eventually becoming quite earthy and leafy, while 'graanjenever'-ish alcohol warms the throat - but remains altogether decent in behaviour, in spite of its tendency to wryness. Coriander does linger and so does this very earthy breadiness of the dead yeast, making for a rather 'dirty' ending. Feels a bit sloppy and messy, all things considered - but very Belgian at that, at least when you consider the gazillions of small-scale 'lesser' tripels that were produced in this country for years (maybe we should call ourselves lucky that the beer hype is in decline here), on both sides of the language border. There are some 'dirty Walloon' features here which I can normally appreciate, but the residual sweetness remains clearly stronger than average for that, and feels more 'Flemish' - alas. Probably over its prime by now - which may explain why it was so desperate to get out of the bottle - but I cannot call this a "très beau travail", in spite of it being basically enjoyable.