Drebus (8639) reviewed François Grand Cru from Brouwerij Varenbroek 7 years ago
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 5 | Texture - 4 | Overall - 4.5
Bottle @ home. Hazy orange colour with a large white head. Smells sweet, malts, some herbs, slightly (overripe) fruits. Tastes sweet, herbs, yeasty. A bit dry, way to much carbo, unbalanced.
Sloefmans (15389) reviewed François Grand Cru from Brouwerij Varenbroek 7 years ago
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7
Towering, dense, light-yellowish head, leaving lace over fully hazy yellow-orange beer. Creamy nose, gassy, bit oppressive. Pale malts dominate, some herbal hops. Pale malts, sweetish, bit burning MF, CO² acidity. Petit Beurrre cookies, herbal again. Alcohol not completely hidden, yeast-filled, creamy feel from the stable head; bit viscous. Average. If this is the Grand Cru version, I'm not really curious about the standard version. If that exists. 6/4/6/3/13
Rubin77 (10187) reviewed Knots Natuurbier from Brouwerij Varenbroek 7 years ago
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 7
F: big, tanned, average retention. C: dark brown, hazy, opaque. A: malty, dark fruits, caramel, bit chocolate, dark cherries, cocoa, BE yeast. T: malty, dried fruits, chocolate, caramel, bit dark cherries, medium dry on the palate, medium to full body, medium carbonation, good balanced, enjoyed, sample from 0,33l bottle @ second day ZBF 2018.
Beertalk (16424) reviewed Knots Natuurbier from Brouwerij Varenbroek 7 years ago
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 5.5
Zythos 2018. Hazy chestnut with a small off-white head. Aroma of toffee and caramel with dried fruit and a yeasty touch. Aroma of toffee, dried fruit and yeast with notable alcohol.
Rubin77 (10187) reviewed François Grand Cru from Brouwerij Varenbroek 7 years ago
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7
F: huge, bit tan, good retention. C: dark amber to brown, hazy. A: malty, fruity, strawberries, red berries, banana, sweet apricot, toffee, bit apple. T: malty, fruity, coriander, red fruits, banana, spicy, bit grassy, dry on the palate, well attenuated but feels more on the sweet side yet somehow it works, enjoyed, medium to full body, high carbonation, but 6€ for small bottle bit too much, 33cl bottle from Prik&Tik Kampenhout near Leuven.
Alengrin (11609) reviewed Tipsor from Brouwerij Varenbroek 8 years ago
Appearance - 4 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 3
Blonde "from Wommelgem", so the label claims; bottle from Wijnegemse Drankenhal. Strong gusher, with foam (and beer) streaming out of the neck upon opening, causing me to lose about 1/5. Medium thick, egg-white, moussy head is left, quickly dissipating over the surface of an immediately misty, pale orange-hued peach blonde beer. Aroma of green cabbage, cooked Brussels sprouts (DMS) as well, spoiling chicory soup, sourdough, apple peel, clove-ish phenols, soggy white bread, raw shallot, cooked carrots, cold camomile tea having been heated over and over again, withering lettuce, old potato mash, unripe peach, banana peel, pumpkin soup, some overripe tomato and very old salty abbey cheese even, hints of dry powder sugar, wet tree leaves, dry and very old cigarettes and rotting pineapple. Estery onset, banana peel and peach, sourish green apple, some unripe peach, restrained in sweetness with a sourishness insipidly reinforced by sharp and numbing overcarbonation; soggy white bread- and lightly damp peanut-tinged, but also somewhat soapy malt body with superficial but ongoing infectious-like sourishness on top. Ends very earthy and quite 'dirty', with notes of bready yeastiness, crude spicy phenols and soggy bread-like maltiness, only very mildly bittered by a dash of earthy, floral hops, providing insufficient bitterness to add another level at the end - or to lend the finish any body whatsoever. Ends fairly watery and messy - and with this much of infection effects going on, down the drain as well. This is an utter mess of a beer: teeming with off-flavours (most notably DMS), infected, gushing, simply earthy and dirty in taste. Feels like some Belgian loner concocted their first creation in their kitchen - this should not have hit the market in this form, it seems as if everything that could possibly go wrong, has effectively gone wrong. An uncontrollable, amateuristic, boring and superficial mess of a beer - it's a good thing the original brewer of the brand, the late mister Beirens, does not have to endure this ridiculously amateuristic attempt at generic, bland Belgian blonde. This is wrong on so many levels... Rest in peace, mister Beirens, and forgive the harsh words I am going to utter now: shame on you, Varenbroek. You guys have done (a bit) better than this!
Benzai (24515) reviewed Sibyl from Brouwerij Varenbroek 8 years ago
Appearance - 4 | Aroma - 4 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 4 | Overall - 4
Bottle @ home. Clear golden color, small white head. Smell and taste malts, hayish / straw a bit, metallic, lightly grainy and a bit herbal-bitter. Iron / metallic aroma quite strongly which annoys me, quite off-putting tbh. Firm carbonation, average body. No, don't like it.
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 5 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 3
Bottle from LDW, Eke. Hazy yellow colour, creamy white foam. Nose of citrus, peach. Taste is very weak, watery and dull. Bitter and grassy. But the price! €5,5 for such a mediocre beer is a shame.
Alengrin (11609) reviewed François Grand Cru from Brouwerij Varenbroek 8 years ago
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 4 | Overall - 7
New Belgian ale commissioned by (and named after François Huysmans from Foodtaster.be in collaboration with journalist Patrick Van Gompel and the well-known brewer Marc Knops. Received quite a lot of attention due to the fact that one of the commissioners is a familiar face on television and claims to be "unique" due to the use of four hop varieties and four different yeast strains (one of which I strongly suspect to be a champagne yeast) - of which the latter is indeed uncommon in Belgium, though I hesitate to literally call it unique. Anyway, comes from a quite luxuriously looking, skittle-shaped bottle with golden print (much the same look as that new Galea also from the Antwerp region - in fact I first thought it was a bottle of Galea when I spotted it in the local Prik & Tik where I bought it), with the name printed on the crown cap - clearly the commissioners mean business with this one, and put cost and effort at least in design. Let’s hope the same expensive approach is reflected in the beer. Medium thick, regular, off-white head leaving behind flat islands of foam in the middle and a steady rim on the edge, on top of a hazy ’old gold’ coloured beer with warm orangey tinge. Malty and phenolic aroma of fried apples, banana but no overt bubblegum, ripe pear, camomile, dried apricot, bread crust, cloves, minerals, cooked parsnip, ’oude jenever’, soapy coriander seed, soggy white bread, dried orange peel, fainter hints of cumin cheese, raw rhubarb, pineapple slices, powder sugar, straw, turnip. Fruity, crisp onset, banana ester mingled with hints of pear, unripe nectarine and gooseberry, sweetish with a nicely souring edge but numbed by very strong, fizzy overcarbonation, which adds a certain amount of sourishness and coarsens the mouthfeel, which is otherwise ’full’ and supple, yet soapy as well. Carbonation keeps stinging the sides and surface of the tongue as a bready, very lightly caramelly and even somewhat nutty malt sweetishness develops in the middle paired with a considerable amount of wheat soapiness (wheat malt effectively having been used here), with the fruity esters moving backwards. Spicy phenols (cloves, vague cumin seed or even aniseed) quite strongly develop in the end, alongside the eternal soapy coriander and floral, slightly hayish hoppiness, remaining ’dim’ in retronasal aroma but providing some elementary earthy bitterness below, the earthiness being reinforced by yeasty effects. Malt sweetness and banana ester keep prevailing even when a significant amount of warming, ’jenever’-like alcohol comes to the foreground - yet it somehow manages to stay in place and avoid unpleasant astringency. Classically coriandered, candi syrup-boosted, banana-estery and malt sweet Belgian tripel, with the natural soapiness of the coriander accentuated by the presence of wheat malt. I did not have too high hopes for this - the name alone is as obsoletely Belgian as it gets - and they prove right, this beer, in spite of its fancy bottle, does not add anything significant to the Belgian beer map. Far from a bad tripel, don’t get me wrong, I just do not think it deserves this amount of attention compared with many others that receive less publicity. The first batch of 8000 bottles seems to be sold out already in a short amount of time, but the project will be continued, I heard.
Kraddel (15844) reviewed François Grand Cru from Brouwerij Varenbroek 8 years ago
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 9
Sampled at Zythos 2017. Thnx for sharing, Ruben and Tim ! Pours rather unclear blonde, small white head. Smell is full, fruity. Not too sweet. Yeasty. Taste is sharp, bit bitter. fruity esthers. High carbo. Def aiming for a champagne-like feel. OK