Sampled at Wieze 2017. Pours clear blonde, small white head. Smell is sharp, malty. Taste is rather sweet, bit thin. rather yeasty. This is named after their own nickname - Ajuin ( which means onion) I think it’s a missed opportunity not to use onions in the beer, as long as (judging by tasting this ) you just wanted a beer and didn’t have a specific recipe vor hat you think is the best beer in the world. Just play with it, and have some guts ! Belgium doesn’t need another OK Belgian style tripel...

Sampled at Wieze 2017. Pours clear blonde, good white head. Smell is bit yeasty, mild sweetness. malty. Taste is wattery, hollow maltyness. Bit sweet. very gentle. Easy drinker. Bit crisp. OK, low carbo and average MF. Since this is brewed for an Aalst group ( pretty sure they were a carnavalgroup ) this is named after their own nickname - Ajuin ( which means onion) I think it’s a missed opportunity not to use onions in the beer, as long as (judging by tasting this ) you just wanted a beer and didn’t have a specific recipe vor hat you think is the best beer in the world. Just play with it, and have some guts ! Belgium doesn’t need another OK Belgian style blone...

sampled at Vilvordia 2017. Thnx for sharing, eugene and co ! Pours rather clear amber, small white head. Smell is rich, ambermalts. Taste is sharp, ambermalts. Very full, crisp. Mild bitterness.

Imported from my RateBeer account as Biermusketiers Aramis IPA Tripel Hop (by Microbrouwerij Den Triest):
Aroma: 7/10, Appearance: 3/5, Taste: 7/10, Palate: 3/5, Overall: 13/20, MyTotalScore: 3.3/5

19/III/17 - 75cl bottle @ home - BB: 1/VIII/16 (2017-392) Thanks to Jerre for the bottle!

Clear to little hazy orange to amber beer, lots of small specks floating in the beer under a big solid creamy yellowish head, stable, adhesive, leaving some lacing in the glass. Aroma: sweet, caramel, malty, some banana, fruity, apples, sweetish. MF: soft carbon, medium body. Taste: malty, pretty bitter, caramel, bit yeasty, sweet, cookies, almond. Aftertaste: soft bitterness, caramel, sweet, malty, grains.

750 ml. bottle sampled @ VBF 2017. THX! for sharing Kraddel. Hazy orange, creamy off-white. Nose is nice, mellow banana, sugar, low band-aid, sweet sugar, yeast, candy, malt, esters,... Taste is poorer than smell, chemical, cleaning product, band-aid, bitter, plastic, chemical, soap, sugar,... Taste is not too pleasant,... Body is plastic, banana,...

Imported from my RateBeer account as Den Triest Met Handgeplukte Hop (by Microbrouwerij Den Triest):
Aroma: 7/10, Appearance: 4/5, Taste: 7/10, Palate: 4/5, Overall: 13/20, MyTotalScore: 3.5/5

19/II/17 - 75cl bottle from Bierhalle Deconinck (Vichte) @ home - BB: 18/IX/17 (2017-185)

Clear orange to blond beer, small creamy off-white head, unstable, bit adhesive. Aroma: oranges, bit sweet, malty, some caramel, some paint. MF: ok carbon, medium body, smooth creamy texture. Taste: some citrus, bit grassy, spicy notes, pretty bitter, orange peel. Aftertaste: very bitter, hoppy, some oranges, resinous, piny, very dry finish, some citrus, bit malty.Earlier Rating: 2/6/2012 Total Score: 3.84/II/2012 75cl bottle @ Brugs Bierfestival - BB: n/a (2012-90)

Cloudy light orange beer, big white creamy head, pretty stable, bit adhesive. Aroma: very yeasty, cheese, bit of flowers, hay. MF: ok carbon, medium to full body. Taste: bitter, yeasty, cheese, flowers, bitterness prevails. Aftertaste: bit more cheesy, a fruity touch, overripe to rotten fruits, grapefruit and citrus.

One-off brewed with hops that were manually collected (hence the name) in September 2016, as part of the (H)op Smaak event, a series of beer-related activities organized by the Hageland region in Flemish Brabant, the region where this Triest brewery is also situated. From a 75 cl bottle bought at Bierhalle Deconinck. Thick, densely moussy, hops-enhanced, tightly lacing, cream white, attractive head sustained by fierce sparkling in the initially clear, deep and warm golden blonde beer underneath, turning lightly misty and deeper gold with even a light peachy hue as the bottle gets emptied. Aroma unfortunately has a whole lot of DMS - clearly this beer hasn’t been boiled long enough or the wort hasn’t been cooled quickly enough; the sulfuric, overcooked white cabbage-like odour of it penetrates the nostrils completely. Would be a good beer to introduce people to this off-flavour... Apart from this overdosis of DMS, I get straw, lots of ’green’ field weeds, camomile, red apple peel, vague banana, dry chicken food, soaked chickpeas, wormwood, mashed potato, parsley, dried apricot, bitter honey, unripe pear, dandelions, burning rubber, slight bubblegum. Crisp onset, restrained, very softly sourish fruitiness of apple, hard Conférence pear and unripe plum, very subdued sweetishness of green banana, sharp carbonation, numbing the tongue a bit at least initially, minerally side flavours, supple and smooth basic body. Very grainy middle with ongoing unripe fruit notes as well as a softer, pleasantly bready edge; something undeniably metallic too, even echoeing well into the finish, which is otherwise adorned with a lot of ’green’, herbal, grassy and floral, old European hoppiness, providing quite a long and dry, slightly astringent, lingering, resinous - even glueish - and bitter weed-like bitterness. Some of the typically Belgian banana ester becomes more apparent as the bottle is gradually emptied and lingers in the tail. A ’Belgian bitter blonde’ that looks pretty and tastes fine, just too bad for that truckload of DMS significantly covering the delicacies of the hops, which are meant to shine here in full glory and should obviously remain unhindered by such stinky off-flavours. This goal has not quite been achieved the way it should, but as said, this beer tastes a lot better than it smells, which enabled me to eventually finish the bottle anyway.
Earlier Rating: 7/31/2016 Total Score: 3.6
Rating the 2015 edition, but apparently all editions use Target so it is the same beer every year (so there is not much use in adding the years after the name to begin with...). Much like e.g. Plukker’s Single Green Hop series, which does differ per year contrary to this one, this is a ’Belgian IPA’ using hops organically cultivated by the brewer himself. Lots of pressure on the bottle but no gushing. I do get a towering high, rocky, egg-white, irregularly shaped head, slowly thinning and leaving thick patches of papery lacing in the process; the beer itself is a pure and warm golden blonde with lively fizz sustaining the oversized head and lightly hazy in appearance due to minute yeast bits floating around throughout the liquid, making it altogether hazy and more peachy blond as the rest of the bottle is poured into the glass and eventually a murky ochre in the very end. ’Green’ and somewhat rural aroma of freshly cut garden herbs, green banana and banana peel, sourdough, old dried lemon peel, jute, dried field flowers, dry hay, apricot, red apple peel, bread crust, powder sugar, sweet-clover, white grape, old ginger powder, molten butter, unripe pear; more bready and less freshly ’green’ with sediment added. Spritzy onset, minerally carbo numbing the tongue a bit but only in the beginning, fruity esters reminiscent of unripe stonefruit, wild berries and green banana, more sourishness than sweetness; supple, lean body coarsened a bit by the sharp fizz (but again, only in the beginning, calming down as the carbon dioxide slowly escapes from the bottle), dryish and lightly bready with sharper grainy edges, a tad sourish even, leading to a resinous, peppery, grassy and notably floral hop bitterness, aptly illustrating the qualities of the Target, which is essentially a - still relatively young - improvement of classic English bitterhop varieties. This ’clean’, very floral and spicy hop bitterness lingers in the back of the mouth for a long time, accompanied by a vaguely sweetish remainder of the grainy maltiness. In all, quite a pleasant beer actually, feeling very ’green’ and floral, as a walk through the countryside - in fact, after pouring this down, I feel like going out for a walk through the fields here. Belgian yeast effects are clearly there but do not interfere too much with the Target hops (at least not as much as is the case in many other ’Belgian IPAs’) so that this is a suitable beer to get to know this particular variety. One of the better Triest beers I had so far.