yespr (55501) reviewed François Grand Cru from Brouwerij Varenbroek 8 years ago
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 6.5
33 cl bottle. Pours hazy orange with a small white head. Aroma is phenolic and toasted malt. High carbonation. Mild fruity. Slight estery. Medium dry and light fruity finish.
tderoeck (22711) reviewed François Grand Cru from Brouwerij Varenbroek 8 years ago
Appearance - 4 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 5 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 4.5
Imported from my RateBeer account as Expert Beers François Grand Cru (by Expert Beers BVBA):
Aroma: 6/10, Appearance: 2/5, Taste: 5/10, Palate: 3/5, Overall: 9/20, MyTotalScore: 2.5/5
23/IV/17 - from bottle @ Zythos Bier Festival 2017 (Leuven) - BB: n/a (2017-1448) Thanks to kraddel for sharing today's beers!
Apparently I skipped this one while entering my ratings... I hope this is not a common thing I do... :p 2 from the same notebook... :(
Clear blonde beer, irregular aery white head, little stable, non adhesive. Aroma: lots of banana, sweet impression, marzipan, yeast. MF: lively carbon, medium body. Taste: bit hoppy, sourish touch, sweet. Aftertaste: lots of banana, sweet, yeasty, bit grassy, slightly bitter. The next thirteen in a dozen tripel, only selling because a famous person is the face for this project. Too sweet, too yeasty and too boring...
Kraddel (15844) reviewed Tipsor from Brouwerij Varenbroek 9 years ago
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 8
Pours clear, darker blonde. Good to big white head. Smell is bit sweet, yeasty. taste is very mildly bitter, yeasty, sweet. another one of those extremely common tasting beers. And - you guessed it - overcarbonated. Yeasty finish, some overripe fruits. Still a semi-fresh beer.
Alengrin (11609) reviewed Knots Natuurbier from Brouwerij Varenbroek 9 years ago
Appearance - 4 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7
Quad by Varenbroek, bottle from Wijnegemse Drankenhal. Very violent gusher, beer spouted out of the bottle neck even with very careful opening at relatively high temperature. Thinnish, pale greyish beige head leaving a steady but thin rim around the edge and thin ’islands’ of foam in the middle; cloudy burgundy brown robe with mahogany hue. Rich, sweet, liqueurish and alcoholic aroma of red plums, ripe black cherries, Kirsch, ruby port, hint of red fruit-flavored bubblegum, sweet brown rum, kahlua, candied fig, white pepper, lots of caramel, damp earth, cinnamon, roses, straw, Belgian chocolates filled with cherry liqueur, banana, medlar, gravy, brown sugar, dates, cloves, varnish. Sweet flavor, lots of candied fig and soaked raisins, banana isoamylacetate too, light umami accent (gravy) and much stronger undercurrent of elderberry sourishness, sharp carbonation - overcarbonated, in fact - coarsening an otherwise full, rounded, ’fluffy’ mouthfeel. Honeyish and caramelly malt and candi sugar sweet middle, bit sticky due to a lot of residual sugars, estery fruitiness continuing and being accompanied by quite strong phenolic features (cloves); herbal hop bitterishness in the finish, too soft to counter the initial sweetness, followed by a strong, heating, brandy-like alcohol glow, feeling a bit wry all the way at the back but otherwise not interfering too much with the rest. Some lightly toasted malt bittersweetness (but more sweetness than bitterness) remains after swallowing, along with this alcohol warmth. Not too bad flavor-wise, too sweet and a tad too alcoholic for my liking perhaps, but still a bit too messy and lacking depth to compete with the great (trappist) quadrupels. And then there is the gushing issue, of course... Let’s give it the benefit of the doubt then.
tderoeck (22711) reviewed Knots Natuurbier from Brouwerij Varenbroek 9 years ago
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7.5
Imported from my RateBeer account as Varenbroek Knots Natuurbier (by Brouwerij Varenbroek):
Aroma: 8/10, Appearance: 4/5, Taste: 7/10, Palate: 3/5, Overall: 15/20, MyTotalScore: 3.7/5
14/VIII/16 - 33cl bottle from Kerstbierenfestival (Essen) @ home - BB: XII/17 (2016-846) Thanks to Rik for transporting the bottles!
Clear dark brown beer, big aery beige head, unstable, bit adhesive. Aroma: sweet, caramel, dried fruits, bit metallic, spicy, liquorish, alcohol. MF: lively carbon, medium body. Taste: sweet start, caramel, spicy touch, dried fruits, liquorish, little roasted. Aftertaste: ripe banana, bit sour, hoppy notes, dried fruits, some black liquorish.
Bierridder (4318) reviewed Sibyl from Brouwerij Varenbroek 9 years ago
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7
23/04/2016 sample glass shared with the BE RB crew @ZBF2016. Hazy blonde with nice white head. Nose is light citrus, a bit grains. Taste is bitter hops, some grains again, thin ending.
mike_77 (15875) reviewed Sibyl from Brouwerij Varenbroek 9 years ago
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 6.5
New: 3.1 - Golden colour with thin head. Aroma and flavour have light malts and a touch of vanilla sweetness. Old: 2.4 - Hazy yellow with soapy head. Texture is like soda water. Very high carbonation. A bit sharp. Some yeast and banana notes too.
Alengrin (11609) reviewed Sibyl from Brouwerij Varenbroek 9 years ago
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 6
Varenbroek beer apparently honoring Hildegard von Bingen, a crucial figure in medieval culture not just for mentioning hops as an essential ingredient in beer, but also for music, poetry, medieval philosophy (for what that is worth) and even botany - but maybe more importantly, an influential woman in an age otherwise dominated by men when it comes to historical figures. Expectations are high especially seen the hoppy aspect of this figure... Lot of pressure on the bottle but no gusher. Very thick and frothy, irregularly shaped, very stable, egg-white head leaving thick layers of ’paper’ lacing and residing over an immediately hazy straw blonde beer with ochre hue, with the haze ’disturbed’ by vivid sparkling. Aroma of green banana (isoamylacetate but not exaggeratedly so), dried pineapple, some dried lime peel too, dry grass, hay even, field flowers, moldy apricot, old dry ginger powder, red apple peel, baker’s yeast, white bread, chamomille, cooked sweet potato, dried leaves, powder sugar, Conférence pear, abbey cheese, bitter honey, soap, bitter orange and a hint of rancid butter. Crisp, very spritzy onset, lots of minerally and souring carbonation numbing the tongue and distracting from the actual fruitiness, which yields impressions of green kiwi, unripe peach and green banana, very faintly sweetish and more dominantly sourish but in all quite neutral; grainy middle phase, a tad bready perhaps, with light mouthfeel ’coarsened’ a bit by the overcarbonation, while the sourish fruit aspects continue; finishes earthy and grassy, hop bitterish for sure, but still juicy and grainy more than anything else; retronasally I get floral and grass aromas of Euro hops and the earthy bitterness does last for a while, as the fruitiness fades away into oblivion. Clearly overcarbonated and not ’fully’ malty enough (in other words: too neutral and insufficiently malt sweet) to justify this dosis of herbal, earthy, floral hoppiness. I get the idea of creating a light, hoppy, crisp beer (think session IPA but in a very traditionally European ’noble hops’ kind of way), but if you force this idea upon a thin, grainy blonde of 4.5% ABV, things quite simply get out of joint. That is exactly what happened here: Varenbroek tried to pump more hops in this beer than it can carry, resulting in an unbalanced beer which is actually quite hard to pour down even if it is below ’session’ level to Belgian standards. Could improve a lot with a bit more ’weight’ and caramelly sweetishness in the malt department. For now: interestingly hoppy in the nose (floral and mildly spicy, though disturbed by Belgian esters especially in the omnipresent banana form) but unbalanced in the mouth. Technically okay, but conceptually a bit flawed, let’s say.
Kraddel (15844) reviewed Sibyl from Brouwerij Varenbroek 9 years ago
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 8
Sampled at Zythos 2016. Thnx for sharing, everyone ! Pours unclear yellow, small white head. Smell is sharp, bit bitter. Taste is sharp, very bitter, citrussy ( lemon ) high carbo. Ok !
Koelschtrinker (42542) reviewed Sibyl from Brouwerij Varenbroek 9 years ago
Appearance - 4 | Aroma - 3 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 4
Hell herb bitterer Antrunk, unsüffig. Wenig malzig, plörrig trocken. Kaum vorhandener Nachgeschmack. 6/6/7/6//6