8.4

Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 9 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 8.5

4/IV/21 - 33cl can from Bierhalle Deconinck (Vichte), shared @ home, BB: n/a, canned: 8/VI/20 (2021-257)

Clear dark brown to black beer, big creamy beige head, bit irregular, pretty stable, adhesive, leaving a nice lacing in the glass. Aroma: lots of coffee, good dark roast, caramel notes, dark chocolate, little fruity. MF: ok carbon, medium body. Taste: sweet smooth start, good roast, bit malty, sourish touch, little fruity, some raspberries, sweet touch, soft bitterness. Aftertaste: some citrus, good roast, coffee notes, bit sweet, some strawberry jam, bit lemony, soft bitterness, lovely, very nice black IPA! Really like it!!!

7.4

Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 7.5

Dumpy 33cl bottle: BB Aug 2021. Obtained somewhere in Belgium, most likely in De Bierboom, Brugge; but can't be sure. Anyway, opened and drank at home on 9th Feb 2021 after a mini American beer tasting with myself. This beer poured a dull and deep ruby red, almost black in fact, the head not worthy of mention, it disappeared so quickly. Malty nose with a peppery/fiery hint. The taste is also malty, again with a leaning towards hotness and fire, yet it's suggestions rather than actual heat or chilli/pepper flavours. It's a strange one all round, but I really enjoyed trying to find the esters and flavours of this beer. I had been saving this for a Beer Share in Shrewsbury, but because they have been stopped I've had to sink this all on my own: How sad!

6.8

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

Bottle at Pressklubben. Hazy golden with a white head. A bit sweet with flowers, some notes of banana, spices and yeast. Light bitter finish.

7

Appearance - 4 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 8

Collab of De Feniks in West-Flanders with world famous Mikkeller, apparently a lambic (even if they do not explicitly state that it is a lambic, for legal reasons I presume) with grapes normally used for champagne - I just had to taste this. Gusher, but manageable if cooled properly in advance and when opened carefully enough. Snow white, mousy, open, thinly structured head fizzing away into almost nothing in seconds; hazy straw blonde robe with peachy tinge. Funky, fruity aroma of stale lemon juice, kombucha, sweating abbey cheese, green gooseberry, cava, wet wood, stale urine (Brett!), sorrel, goat cheese, pomelo, gherkins in vinegar, sour grapes, wild apples, damp earth, hay, raspberry vinegar. Very crisply sour onset, lemon juice-like, but remaining fruity and lactic in nature without adding a vinegary sting; green gooseberries, sour grapes and lemon, fizzy carb in a refined way, supple body; bready core completely dried by this acidic lemony fruitiness and lactic yoghurt tartness, grape skin aspects, chalky side note becoming more important towards the finish, where sweaty-funky Brett aspects, some light and elegant tannic astringency and an impression of stale citrus juice join in. Crisp, very dry finish, some of the sourness is indeed absorbed by the wood and the breadiness of the malts, keeping everything enjoyable and refreshing. The chalky effect reminds me of Berliner Weisse, but this is clearly a lambic style sour indeed, complete with Bretty notes and estery fruitiness - though the 'champagne grapes' remain a bit too subtle to my taste and could have added a more interesting, sweeter juiciness to a beer acidic enough to potentially put off people not experienced in sour beer styles. Interesting, elegant experiment though, I'm not complaining (even if the price could have been a bit less stiff, for what it is...).

6.4

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

6.8

Appearance - 4 | Aroma - 7.5 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 7 | Overall - 6

Saison spiced with Szechuan pepper and bergamot, apparently the first one in a series of collabs (called "Your place or mine?"), this time with Brewed by EDIT, an Italian craft brewer. Very extreme gusher: even in lifting the crown cap for about a millimetre, foam prayed out of the tiny opening, and kept doing so for minutes on end; even after letting the bottle stand aside like that for half an hour, I was unable to open it without further loss. Very foamy, egg-white, thickly plaster-like lacing, pillowy head on a misty pale orangey-peach blonde beer with refined but lively sparkling; murky and more ‘dirty’ brownish-orange with sediment. Aroma strongly characterized by both the added ingredients: perfumey, herbal, Earl Grey tea-like as well as spicy-peppery (Szechuan pepper) and orange or even grapefruit peel-coloured (bergamot), further accompanied by impressions of soggy rusk, red apple, ground peanuts, peach, soap, lavender blossoms, caramel but without the sweetness, autumn leaves, dry clay, sweat. Fizzy, crisp onset, very minerally carbonation effect (as befits anything labelled as ‘saison’), fruity with notes of peach, apricot and freshly cut red apple, but remaining fairly dryish and restrained in sweetness; a peanutty and rusk-like maltiness does bring in some sweetness in the middle, bready-yeasty at its edges and strongly aromatized by those pronounced ‘dry Asian spice’, dried orange peel and lavender tea-like effects from the bergamot and the Szechuan pepper. Spicy, herbal, soapy finish with a late, rooty and earthy bitterness, from hops but of course enhanced by the spicing, ending in a long, dry finish. The very violent gushing was really hard to manage here, but admittedly the eventual beer was not all bad, better than expected even, so I guess it was the sugar and yeast balance that caused the heavy gushing here rather than an infection induced by the added ingredients. I hope the others in this series are more manageable to open, but in any case this one was, in the end, quite enjoyable so I will not let it interfere with my rating too much.

3.5

@ 2018

3

@ 2018

1

tried and failed

@ 2018