Draft @ CoHop. Merci Vincent. Premier batch brassée sur les nouveaux équipements.
Dorée pâle, col blanc crémeux.
Arôme sur un léger bouquet fruité rappelant les agrumes; dont le citron vert, rétro est aussi axé sur un effet de grains concassés pils pâle pour une bière qui reprend plus les lignes d'une pale ale belge qu'un axe purement IPA.
Palais est frais, citronné avec des pointes d'agrumes, effet entre blanche et IPA avec un fini assez sec qui semble se retrouver sur de nombreuses bières des autres locataires du lie. Amertume fine et tranchée en fine de bouche, retour sur une base de malt pils - pâle.

The (for now) other 1B2T beer, also brewed at Jandrain-Jandrenouille by 1B2T, a new contract brewer from Schaarbeek near Brussels; apparently a spiced amber ale making use of - I assume - Indian spices. Thinnish but firmly edge-retaining, lightly lacing, snow white, bit milky, moussy head over warm and beautifully deep pure orangey amber robe, lightly hazed. Aroma of indeed very strong ethereal sweet spiciness (anything but subtle, contrary to what the label says), patchouli- and pot pourri-like with notes of cinnamon, black cardamom, cloves, ginger and coriander seed, general impressions of pumpkin pie, peanuts, peach, rusk, banana, jute, straw, dried clover, red apple, soap, damp earth and something iron-like. Sweetish onset, red apple, some banana, apricot and pumpkin, fizzy carbonation adding minerally, bit stinging effects, slick and supple, slightly oily body; dry-bready, rusk- and peanut-like maltiness, gently toasted bitterish, with the bitterness eventually accentuated by a spicy, leafy hop dosage stretching into the back of the mouth, bit peppery, but the pepperiness is of course also due to the added spices, which add a lot of ethereal, primarily cardamom-, clove- and ginger-like aromatics retronasally as well as a deep, slightly wry but in all quite palatable spiciness; the nutty maltiness lingers too. I generally dislike overly spiced ales and this is certainly one of those - it's as if the spices need to mask certain minor brewing flaws - but admittedly I had way worse in this segment, as in this case the spiciness, however dominant in the nose, remains relatively softish in the taste, in the sense that it does not add the strong, unpleasant astringency one often sees in spiced beers. It still remains an overly spiced beer, though admittedly technically better executed than its wheat beer sister.

One of the first two beers from this new 'bierfirma' 1B2T in Schaarbeek near Brussels, a white IPA. Opens with smoke coming from the bottle, but no gushing. Very thick and foamy, eggshell-white, paper-lacing, slowly thinning head, cloudy 'yolk yellow' blonde robe with apricot hue. Aroma of old dusty 'herbes de Provençe', old hay, dried out bread crust, jute bags, clear DMS (overcooked cauliflower), potato juice, cooked apple, banana peel, bitter honey, wet straw. Crisp, dryish onset, pineapple, unripe apricot and green banana fruity notes, very sharp and stinging carbonation, minerally; bready and bit soapy malt body with ongoing fruity aspects on top, leading to a drying, hayish and floral, quite 'noble' European hop character with only light citrusy notes. Spicy phenolic effects and bready yeasty accents interfear while the DMS returns retronasally and the expected hop bitterness remains altogether low, in any case much too low for anything labelled as IPA. Much more 'white' than IPA: this is a witbier with an above average hop dosage and lacking in the classic witbier spicing, but the fact that the hops clearly and significantly underachieve, makes this fall 'between two chairs', as the French would say. Needs a lot of work - see Source's Epervier IPA for comparison, also in Brussels: this 1B2T project can sincerely learn quite a lot from what Mathieu Huygens has begun, I think.