Golden colour with quick fading head. Aroma has grainy notes and floral fruit. Flavour has a fresh tartness at first. Granny Smith apple and unripe pear. Slightly drying and bitter in the finish. Very refreshing.

Blonde ale by Broers, with a considerable IBU of 64; bottle from Van Callenberge in Stekene. Irregular, tightly but very irregularly lacing, greyish-tinged snow white, very uneven-bubbled head, soon showing gaps and holes but retaining well around the edge; lightly hazy apricot blonde robe with khaki-ish edges, fierce sparkling rushing throughout, equally hazy with sediment. Aroma initially strongly lightstruck (cat pee - even if coming from a brown bottle), but after this has faded a bit, offering impressions of iron shavings (strongly so), raw potatoes, dusty old jute bags, unripe peach, freshly cut grass, stale bread, dusty straw bales, pond water, dry marijuana, baker's yeast, dust, green tea, minerals. Fruity onset but restrainedly so, only subduedly sweetish, hinting at apple peel, unripe peach and green banana, fizzy carbonation with outspoken minerally effects, lean body, on the thin side, with clearly resounding metallic edges. Thinly white-bready and cereally maltiness, hardly any of the caramel announced on the label, with a soapy effect and lingering 'metallicness', until a firm, earthy, very grassy and herbal hop bitterness sets in, reminding retronasally of the fact that it has degraded into mercaptans (lightstruck effect), but drying and mildly spicy in the end, while soapy, very dusty and metallic aspects linger on. Could have been intended as an English style pale ale, the way it was classified here apparently; this seems to make sense, as this is a largely forgotten, but once ubiquitous style - Bass Pale Ale, a big 'hit' in Belgium some five to six decades ago, still elicits nostalgia in elderly beer drinkers. It did, however, turn out very different, with a 'paler' and far less caramelly / nutty malt profile; if anything, this is more a Belgian blonde with a (for the style) unusually high amount of hop bitterness. That hop bitterness is the only redeeming feature here: this beer doesn't look too attractive, is very metallic and has been standing in the shelves of the store too long, resulting in a highly unpleasant (and in this case even quite tenacious) lightstruck effect, which in itself is not the brewery's fault, of course. I guess I should give this one a second chance if I ever come across it in fresh, young condition...

18/IV/20 - 33cl bottle from Geers (Oostakker), shared @ home, BB: XII/2021 (2020-346)

Clear orange to amber beer, big solid creamy off-white head, stable, bit adhesive. Aroma: malty, bit smoky, burnt rubber, something’s off here… MF: ok carbon, medium body. Taste: unpleasant bitterness, hoppy, bit chemical, tobacco, malty, rubbery. Aftertaste: unpleasant bitterness, very malty, grains, chemical notes, not a fan of this beer…

Copperish orange beer, finely carbonated to medium high, dense, just off-white head, stable. Malts, toasted, hint at citrus liqueur (Mandarine Napoléon, Grand Marnier,...) and old, wild hops. Toasted, lightly burning MF & flavour. Again hops as an afterthought; Cascade grown-in-Belgium just doesn't taste as Cascade from Yakima valley. Sweet, and, again, more than a tad liqueurish, including the citrus. Mild carbonation, very slick to viscous, dry. I guess the aim looked better than the result.

IPA with German-bred Amarillo hops, from Broers in Wachtebeke. Thanks to tderoeck for the bottle, cheers mate! Slow but steady gusher, with foam creeping out of the bottle neck for a very long time so keep an eye on it. Towering high, extremely foamy, almost 'unpourable', egg-white, tightly cobweb-lacing, rocky head on an initially lightly hazy, warm amber-glowing orange blonde robe with champagne-like, fierce swirls of sparkling throughout; deeper, almost brownish-tinged amber-orange with sediment, cloudy to even a bit murky, with some dead yeast bits sinking to the bottom. Aroma - after the head has reduced a bit, which takes a lot of time here - of yellow grapefruit peel, bitter orange, some sweeter background mandarin even, bread crust, dried wormwood leaves, iron shavings (quite strong!), peach, pineapple, rusk, straw, hints of sundried tomato, cheese rind, white pepper, dandelion, soap, honey. Spritzy, brisk onset, fruity notes of peach, pineapple, some light banana and red apple, sweetish, but suffering under an attack of - unsurprisingly seen the gushing - stinging overcarbonation, adding a lot of minerality; slick, lean rusk-, bread crust- and bit peanut-like maltiness with a softer caramelly edge, bittered by a firm dosage of spicy, tangy and citrus peel-like hoppiness, adding a citrusy and peppery aspect retronasally but remaining mostly focused on bitterness, fanning out over the tongue's root. Bready-yeasty and mildly phenolic notes show up in the end too, but not too obnoxiously so. Quite clean and focused for a Belgian IPA, not unlike De Plukker's All Inclusive or even Single Green series for example, but clearly heavily overcarbonated and in its 'roots' still clearly a very Belgian beer; I can certainly appreciate this combination, there is way worse out there, just too bad for the gushing and overcarbonation. Enjoyed this one nonetheless.

12/III/20 - 33cl bottle from Geers (Oostakker), shared @ home, BB: one big unreadable smudge of ink (2020-257)

Clear orange to amber beer, big solid creamy off-white to beige head, stable, bit adhesive. Aroma: very malty, some caramel, esters, ripe banana, sugary impression, nail polish, unpleasant smell. MF: ok carbon, medium body. Taste: all alcohol, very sugary, some cloves, overripe banana, soft bitterness, bit chemical, caramel, very sweet. Aftertaste: little metallic, sugary, very chemical, banana, unpleasant, bit oxidized, bitter finish.

Broers in Wachtebeke (not far from Ghent) attempting the honorable barleywine style and even labelling it as such in English, something you do not often see in Belgium. Intended as a winter seasonal, this beer pours with a thick and frothy, tightly paper-lacing, pale yellowish ecru-coloured, stable head and initially clear, pure and warm orange-hued amber robe. Aroma of burnt caramel, toasted peanuts, halfripe banana, chewing gum, dried peach, rusk, wet toast, young 'jenever', brown soap, cloves, baking powder, hints of raspberry coulis, cheap brandy, cooked carrots and stewed bayleaf. Fruity, sweetish onset, not as 'dense' as it should be in this style, banana ester clearly at the front but 'dimmed' by peach, red apple and pear notes, quite bubblegummy and white candi syrup-like (as in a sweet tripel), medium carbonated with light but clear minerally side notes; slick, lean but full body of caramelly, white-bready, thinly soapy and slightly peanutty malts, sweetish with a very light toasty edge (bread crust), soon bittered by very 'hot', peppery, astringent, 'jenever'-like alcohol that burns deep into the finish, while a floral hop touch and lingering phenolic spiciness (clove, perhaps nutmeg) remain behind. A sweet-malty, bubblegummy, very boozy effect continues to vibrate after swallowing, with the latter being the most prominent, eventually becoming unpleasantly wry. Barleywine made the Belgian way - with lots of estery and phenolic effects and lots of white candi syrup replacing part of the malts - so basically a tripel made boozier and maltier, with more booze than it can handle. Feels like a 'tripel on speed', so to speak; I can accept a general idea of 'Belgian barleywine' for deeper-hued, very strong beers extending the tripel genre, think Bush Caractère, Silly La Divine or Stille Nacht, and I can accept this one fitting neatly into that category, but that kind of beers at their core are basically still very strong, very malty tripels and not 'truly' Anglo-Saxon barleywines. I guess I shouldn't have expected that from this brewery anyway - clearly they have no detailed knowledge of this often misunderstood style. Not disastrous at all, this winter warmer, but too boozy, thin and bubblegummy for me - I can imagine the average Belgian consumer enjoying this one on occasion on a cold winter night, but the stakes are high these days, and I must admit that I was silently hoping for a decadently rich and vinous, English or American style barleywine (like e.g. HopSaSam does in Oudenaarde, albeit in a rather idiosyncratic way). Very strong tripel, this one - too strong for its own good. I was wondering if ageing this for, say, a year or two would improve it - but in all honesty and with the experience that I have built up in a couple of decades of sampling beers, I don't think it will.

1/III/20 - 33cl bottle from Geers (Oostakker), shared @ home, BB: VII/2022 (2020-201)

Clear amber orange beer, huge towering creamy off-white head, very stable, adhesive, leaving a nice lacing in the glass. Aroma: some citrus, pretty floral, soapy touch, malty, grains. MF: ok carbon, medium body. Taste: very malty, sweet, lots of caramel, soft bitterness, grains, cow fodder, some banana. Aftertaste: bit spicy, some citrus, oxidized, very malty, some honey, bitter finish. Not much IPA character in this one. Too bad. Wondering about the BB-date, does this mean it was brewed in July 2019? This just showed up in our bottle shop. :-o

Light brown colour with thin head. Aroma and flavour have light hoppy notes in the background. Furthermore plenty of sweet malts. Caramel and alcohol.