8

Boozy, sweet, vanilla

6

Sweet coffee. Solid

6.8

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

Oranjegeel bier met weinig schuim. Smaak is zoet en heel licht bitter met duidelijk iets van honing en wat grasachtig bitter. Heel goed.

6

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

Spritziger, wenig säuerlicher Beginn. Fruchtig, weich würziger Mittelteil, geringe Säure, mittellanger, weich beeriger Abgang. 10/8/9/8//9

6.5

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

Honey beer by this Amsterdam brewery, bottle from an Albert Heijn supermarket in the southern Netherlands. Thick and very frothy, egg-white, membrane-lacing, dense and regular, fluffy, stable head, initially practically clear 'metallic orange'-hued peach-golden robe with thin and disparate sparkling, turning equally misty and deeper orangey with sediment. Aroma of banana bread, canned peach, candied orange or even some marmalade, honey indeed in a sweet and flowery way, old bread crust, hints of freshly cut grass, some volatile cat pee-like mercaptans (lightstruck effect) upon opening but fading quickly, soggy cookies, potato peel, old straw bales, very old paper. Rounded, fruity, sweet onset with sourish edge accentuated by sharpish, minerally carbonation, hints of banana, ripe peach, apricot jam and cooked pear but all remaining relatively 'clean', slick and bit oily mouthfeel, tad resinous; caramelly and somewhat biscuity maltiness with a metallic 'zing' at the edges, otherwise very smooth and lean, sweet with indeed additional, somewhat artificial honey sweetness on top. Floral notes at the back from hops, providing late but lingering, bit grassy bitterness, but before long, badly hidden alcohol takes over, at first accentuating the caramelly and honey sweetness but then shifting to a heating, prickling, bit obnoxious wryness of a kind I have encountered too much already in Belgian style strong blondes, because that is essentially what this is. Lefebvre's classic honey beer Barbãr likely served as the inspiration here and the honey behaves similarly, too, with more unnaturally feeling 'added' sweetness than the lovely aromatic effects well-applied honey can lend to a beer, see e.g. Dupon's or Saint-Monon's 'bières de miel', even if actual honey-induced aromatics are certainly there. A honey beer for the masses, like Barbãr, but with badly hidden alcohol being a more important point of criticism for me personally; also a bit metallic and, on top of that, badly storaged as well, with oxidation effects already creeping in, albeit still very subtly so. Drinkable, but I expected a bit more from Troost, to be honest.