Thick, dense yellowish head over veiled darker golden beer. Very dry pale malts' nose, white candi sugar, green leaves, bit pharmaceutical. Dry feel, bit toasted malts, bit alcoholic, more pronounced than in the nose, and in the end, it turns out quite sweet. Some bite in the MF, but also sharpish, alcoholwarming, quite good carbonation, slick. Typical Boelens, halfway decent but nowhere exciting. As to Semini, vivat, crescat, floreat! Txs to Stef!

Smell-weak malt, faint honey, faint caramel. Foam- thin, weak honey, weak malt, some bitterness, faint sweetness. Sticks. Head is white in color, and large. Appearance- brewer bottle cap, label, simple, but I like it. Bit cloudy, orange amber color, no carbonation, some active one. From - pint Taste - weak honey, weka hops, weak bitterness, faint sweetness, some malt, some booze in the background. Bit odd honey beer, but I see notes from that. Drinkable, but nothing special.

Commissioned beer (by Velt, an ecological association since 1973), brewed by Boelens for more than ten years now, using freshy harvested stinging nettles in spring; many thanks to my girlfriend’s mother for this one, big cheers to Annie! Egg-white, creamy, thick and membrane-like lacing, somewhat irregular but firm head on a hazy peach blonde beer with deep ochre-ish tinge and fine strings of visible sparkling at the edges. Aroma of apricot jam, banana peel, brioche bread, old dry apple cake, a green tea-like aspect I can only ascribe to the stinging nettles, Betterfood, honey, grass, cloves, field flowers, pear peel. Fruity, very estery onset, ripe peach and Durondeau pear with some banana and red apple, lively carbonation, rounded and supple, bit fluffy mouthfeel; honeyish residual sugars lay quite heavily on a cake- and brioche-bread-like malt body, with the sweet esters lingering about as well. Soft earthy and grassy hop bitterishness in the finish matched with a clear herbal aspect from the nettles, something raw celery leaf-, freshly cut grass- and green tea-like, accentuating the hops and subtly assisting to counter the residual sweetness; phenolic and bready-yeasty aspects further fill the final stage. Looks a tad messy, perhaps, but flavour-wise this is your typical Belgian style ‘kruidenbier’, very yeasty and residual-sweet, for me in a good way this time, with the nettles adding something sharpish-green, albeit subtly so. Still, they are noticeable and distinctive enough to make this a quite unique beer in its own way. Enjoyed it more than I was expecting, to be frank, but considering the generally low scores on other rating sites, quality probably has been fluctuating a lot in its eleven years of existence.

Beer dedicated to the participation of Hooverphonic, a successful rock band from Sint-Niklaas (where the brewery is located), in the Eurovision song contest of last year. Most likely Tripel Klok but differently hopped, difficult to tell without a side by side tasting. Violent gusher, in any case, and not seeing that coming from Boelens these days (contrary to a decade or two ago), I was not prepared and had to spend ten minutes cleaning my table and floor first. Egg-white, medium sized, moussy, quite dense, regularly shaped, relatively stable head on a hazed apricot blonde beer with pale orangey tinge and tiny dots of dead yeast throughout. Aroma of dusty old coriander seed, dried orange peel, raw parsnip, oxidized green apple slices, soggy bread crust, freshly cut grass, 'oude jenever', cold leftover potato mash, green pear, ferrous spring water, old crackers, wormwood, minerals, dust, faint rubbery note. Fruity onset, sweetish with a sourish undertone, green pear, apple slices, slight banana, very lively carbonation with lots of minerality to it; supple, slick body, cracker- and cereal-like malts with a bread-crusty edge, spiced with coriander seed 'powder' adding a spicy and dusty note, but then shifting attention to the hops, providing retronasal whiffs of grass and field flowers but also a touch of dried orange peel, while effectuating a late but long-stretching, pleasantly floral and spicy bitterness as well. The hop bitterness is not the only player in the finish, though, as those apple- and pear-like fruity notes, coriander and a thin slice of residual honeyish sweetness also remain; some gently warming, calvados-like alcohol tries to bind these factors together, but barely succeeds. Presenting itself as a tripel with a dash of New World hops (not the first time Boelens does that, by the way), indeed this Hooverphonic beer shows a bit more brightness and juiciness than the average Boelens tripel; that said, the coriander spicing and 'Belgian' yeast spiciness still stand in the way of these hops and as usual when traditional Belgian breweries touch upon New World hops, they are not allowed to shine as brightly as they should. Shame of the hops and a missed opportunity - and I remain unconvinced that the Hooverphonic band members will appreciate this amount of gushing each time they open a bottle of 'their' beer (not that I care - never really liked that band anyway, even though they are obviously talented in their genre). Typical boring and rather unbalanced Boelens tripel - the fact that Hooverphonic ranked much lower in the final results of the abovementioned contest than many bookmakers and other uninteresting people predicted, probably conveys the utter mediocrity of this redundant beer better than I ever could in my writing.

33cl bottle from Quali Drinks in Mechelen. F: medium, off-white, good retention. C: orange gold, hazy. A: banana, pears, honey, spicy, apples, floral touch, bit bready. T: full malty base, banana, bready, red apples peels, spicy, quite dry on the palate, dough touch, medium carbonation, good balanced for the style, enjoyed for sure.