[backlog] 31-12-15 / bottle at home, bought in France. Quite nice. Fruity spicy. Some orange. Medium sweet. I started rating my beers with Untappd and a few basic notes. Now I want to rate them on ratebeer. So my rating sometimes lack some information. Just ignore it, it is for my personal statistics. Untappd-Rating 3.25/5

Aroma: sweet spices and ripe fruits. Flavour: very sweet with sugar, ripe fruite and slight dark berries some toffee. Colour: amber with a white head. From: Voldby Købmandsgård Nov. 2015.

33 cl. bottle @ the bungalow in Vencimont, bought @ Intermarche, Givet. Clear dark brown with a beige head. Caramel aroma with some coffee tones. Low carbonation and a light bitterness. A bit boring.

The bières de garde of northwestern France are well known, but it is a lesser known fact that the Alsace region of northeastern France historically also belongs to the ’beer belt’. This is a not so traditional example, a strongish lager with an irregular, lacing, rather unstable, pale yellowish beige head and a beautifully deep orange golden colour with a steady column of bubbles rising up from the bottom of the glass. Sweetish, grainy aroma of caramel candy, dry cookies, old cake, minerals, sugar corn, grass, some vague banana, wet cloth and wet cardboard. Crisp onset, low in esteriness as expected from a lager, sweet and pure barley taste, a bit toasted, minerally and a little bit metallic, with a hint of grassy hops in the finish; a faint touch of warming alcohol appears as well. Malt sweetness remains the last impression after swallowing but the hops do what they are supposed to do, in establishing a gentle, grassy and little bit spicy, but also somewhat vegetable-like bitterness to accompany the malt sweetness. I am not the greatest fan of strong pale lagers, they are usually way too sweet, bland and alcoholic, but here the sweetness feels natural (as in: pure barley) and the alcohol remains more or less in place; this is a good example of a bad style, in my opinion.

Clear medium amber colour, small frothy white head, mostly diminishing. Aroma malty, caramel, bread, candy sugar, nutty notes, yeast. Medium sweet taste, slightly bitter, sugary. Medium body, oily texture, soft carbonation, aftertaste mild sweetbitter, light toasted, spicy notes, lacks character, thinnish, don’t like it.