Sampled @ Zythos Beer Festival 2022. A clear yellow golden beer with a white head. Aroma of herbal pale malt, straw. Taste of herbs, strong pale malt.

Bitterer Beginn, grasig-hopfig. Leichte Süße, kräutrig-herb, rund. Bitter-hopfig-kräutriger Abgang. 10/8/9/9//9

Sampled @ Zythos Beer Festival 2022. A clear golden beer. Aroma of mild citrusy hops. Taste of citrusy hops, grapefruit pine.

Fein säuerlicher Beginn. Spritzig, die Säure bleibt gering, mild. Trocken, eher kurzer Abgang. Ok. 9/8/9/9//9

This 12% Lager is as good as it gets.

Whisky barrel aged variant on the old familiar Gordon Scotch, from a cardboard box including the iconic thistle glass; comes in a 37.5 cl 'geuze' bottle with cork and muselet. Medium sized, slowly breaking, pale greyish white head over a crystal clear chestnut brown beer with ruddy mahogany glow, remaining clear till the last drop - very clearly filtered. Aroma of butterscotch, caramel sauce, indeed sweetish (blended) whisky, rum-soaked raisins, vague vanilla, 'Haagse hopjes', candyfloss, a touch of coffee grounds and 'colaflesjes' (cola-flavoured candy). Sweet onset with a vague sourish undertone, again those 'colaflesjes' but little fruitiness apart from a bit of banana, fizzy carbonation (artificially added), rounded and proportionally slender mouthfeel; cereally and somewhat bubblegummy backbone, 'camouflaged' by high levels of sweet caramel and a brown-honeyish sweetness. Alcohol is apparent early on, with a vanilla-like note that feels a bit 'added' as well; indeed whisky-flavoured alcohol in the end, while caramel and butterscotch linger about. A vague background note of toasty malt bitterness, typifying this old-fashioned style, appears as well, but vanishes again quickly. Clearly an industrial beer under the guise of 'craft beer': a macro brewery trying to be fancy and cashing in on the barrel ageing hype, or the craft beer hype in general. Everything here feels 'constructed' artificially, there is nothing of the depth and complexity an artisanal barrel aged beer tends to display and the whole remains sweet, superficial and 'easy'. Still, in masquerading as a fancy craft beer, I think this one does a better job than e.g. Bosteels' Monte Cristo, which is at least conceptually comparable. Do not bother stashing it in your cellar though - if you intend to buy this one at all, because even with the glass it certainly is not worth the 12 euros charged for it on Anthony Martin's webshop or the Delhaize supermarket chain that distributes it.

Good, dense, cream-coloured head, very stable with slightly irregular interface to the dark ruby beer. Sweet, alcoholic nose, preserved/dried fruit, fruitcake with spirit. Rubbing the head immediately releases ferrous oxyde both in taste and smell - explaining the stability, I presume? Sweet with a short crude woody bitterness backthroat. Whisky/spirit immediately obvious, in heat and in flavour, but I doubt it is a top malt. Again preserved fruit; banana, plums, raisins, again characterising it as liquidized fruitcake; hint of human sweat. Bitterness gradually gives in to the boozy sweetness. Precious little complexity. Good body, viscous, feels not very carbonated but quite slick. As serendipity would have it, this is sampled one day after another wee heavy: the No True Scotsman from Tall Poppy. Morals of the history: stick to small, local, real craftbrewers. This isn't bad, it's just "Oh well, OK". Available in any Delhaize, with glass. And where in Belgium is it brewed?