Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 8

Dark brown with quick fading head. Aroma and flavour have a meaty smokiness . Surprisingly deep in flavour. Malty background sweetness.

Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 7.5

Bottle online from Belgiuminabox. Pours a murky dark chestnut brown colour with a medium sized creamy beige head. Aromas of roasted malts, coffee with lighter notes of dry dark fruits, caramel and chocolate. Taste has strong roasted malts and coffee notes, notes of leather, a little dark fruit, nuts and chocolate. A lovely long roasty bitterness on the finish. Medium to full body, average carbonation and slightly oily mouthfeel. A cross between a Quad and a Stout. Very nice.

Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 7 | Overall - 6.5

'Export' (in the old Belgian sense of the word - i.e. standard pale lager or 'pils' in brown 33 cl bottles) by Vliegende Paard, hopped with Groene Belle, an old and forgotten, but recently rediscovered local variety from the Aalst region, the hops of which were once as important as those from the Poperinge region. Snow white, frothy, thick, rather creamy, stable head on a clear, pure golden blonde beer with fierce, almost champagne-like sparkling, pushing upwards lots of loose, pale protein flakes of about a millimetre in diameter, which becomes worse further on, when the beer shifts to a hazy straw blonde and the protein flakes get bigger and darker... Clearly past its prime, but let's have a go at this anyway. Aroma of white bread dough with even a slight fresh sourdough hint to it, dried camomile flowers, wet grass, flour, crushed barley as in dry chicken food, faint background impressions of lemon zest or even hand soap, apple peel, rainwater. Crisp onset, rather neutral as can be expected from a lager but still with faint traces of yeasty fruitiness (unripe banana, apple peel) adding a bit of 'life', vivid carbonation with somewhat souring and prickly, even lightly numbing, minerally effect, rounded and slick body; white-bready maltiness with a sourish edge again vaguely reminiscent of sourdough but also sorrel leaf, leading to a floral finish, with camomile- and sweetclover-like, 'rural' hoppiness retronasally yet only soft bitterness, so that this undercurrent of sourishness and increasing yeasty breadiness remain more dominant - paired with a luckily brief whiff of overt phenols. I should have drunk this much sooner (the bottle has been laying around here for months) but based on sheer experience, I can still imagine what this might have looked and tasted like when it was still young, and even if Préaris' top fermentation shines through, I do believe that this was made with a very neutral lager yeast and thus qualifies as a standard pale lager - which indeed becomes 'export' in Belgium when it ends up in 33 cl bottles; with a regional 'craft' (artisanal) lager like this, I cannot help but think about the past, many decades ago, when many more of these 'local' pale lagers were around in Belgium, with only a handful of those still being alive (but hardly kicking) today. Not bad for what it intends to be - I'll try to ignore the unpleasant sight of all those protein bits and flakes...

kerstbierfestival essen

@ 2018

@ 2018