Appearance - 7 | Aroma - 6.5 | Flavor - 6.5 | Texture - 5 | Overall - 7
Pours unclear blonde. Small white head. Scent is mild, sharp and rough, herbal florality. I truly get the aroma of spring, but rather than flowers, it more represents the green parts of the plants growing -shoots / young twigs . Taste is sharp, mildly biter, silky but overcarbed. The shoots-like idea is a bit hidden underneath the overcarbonation. Mildly sticky finish. OK.
Appearance - 7 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 5 | Overall - 6.5
Pours unclear blonde. Medium large white head. Scent is very green, rough, sharp metallic edge to it. DMS as well? Taste is sharp, very intense sharpness even. Towards metallic. unpleasant hoppy 'green-ness' for sure. Not actually metallic, just the aroma and taste combination that make it seem like it might be. Very raw, not a fan. Lacks any and everything that is to be desired in a fresh hopped beer. Overcarbed.
Appearance - 7 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 7 | Overall - 7
Pours clear blonde, scent is sharp, mildly malty. Taste is sharp, fairly bitter? Very estery BE yeast in the back. Sticky finish, medium on the banana. Minthy touch to it OK. tad too sweet for me, but true to style.
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 6
21/XI/23 - on tap @ HoReCa Expo 2023 (Gent), BB: n/a (2023-1099) Thanks to Erwin, Peter a.o. for sharing today’s beer!
Clear orange blond beer, small creamy white head, unstable, a bit adhesive. Aroma: ripe banana, sweet impression, fruity, very malty. MF: ok carbon, medium body. Taste: sweet touch, lots of ripe banana, very yeasty, a little bitter. Aftertaste: banana, malty, very yeasty, meh. Pretty generic and boring.
kerstbierfestival essen 2018
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 6.5
Cloudy blond appearance with thin head. Aroma and flavour have sweet malts , some orange and a little spice.
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7
The amber version in this new series of pseudo-abbey beers, completing the triangle of blonde-brune-ambrée. Medium thick, irregularly lacing, egg-white head, quickly showing gaps in the middle here and there but well retaining on the edge, hazy deep orangey amber robe, more densely cloudy and deeply amber with sediment added. Aroma of unripe peach, roasted peanuts, warm toast, banana and even some bubblegum, honey, earthy cooked carrot, freshly grated ginger, red apple peel, pear, jute, orange peel, damp straw, dried garden weeds, gin, cake, white pepper, cloves, hard cheese, rainwater somewhere but no off-flavours - not even the dreaded DMS, though some very faint cooked green vegetable does appear in the very end and with highly concentrated sniffing. Spritzy and fruity onset, banana ester with a light nod at bubblegum, peach, pineapple and pear sweetness with a dash of dim sourishness, strongly minerally carbonation but not overcarbonated, standard for a Wallonian ambrée and souring a bit; supple, smooth mouthfeel, lightly soapy. Rounded, lean malt body, cereally in its core but adorned with caramelly and nutty accents, a bit bready too with a very light toasted edge, functioning as a firm background for ongoing esters and onsetting phenols, but generally remaining relatively clean for this style. Finishes dryish, with floral and lightly ’rooty’, leafy hop bitterishness, providing balance against the sweetening banana ester and caramelly malts; just a tiny bit resinous in the end even, with an afterglow of mildly warming, young ’jenever’-ish alcohol and some earthy yeastiness especially after adding the sediment. Nothing spectacular conceptually, as expected: this is just your average strong Belgian amber ale, complete with banana ester and spicy phenols, but a bit more ’clean’ than I am used to from especially the Wallonian ambrée ’substyle’. No errors of off-flavours, no gushing, no DMS or any other serious flaws: this is technically well made, adequately hopped and well-balanced, in all notably better executed than the blonde and the brune in this series - so by itself a perfectly decent ale. Enjoyable in a very classic, 20th-century Belgian way, nothing more, nothing less.
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 6
The blonde in this new series of ’pseudo-abbey beers’, actually more a tripel than a blonde at this ABV. Thick, frothy, egg-white, more or less regular head, stabilizing as a moussy foam around the edge and a disparate, landmap-shaped veil in the middle; warm peach blonde colour with almost salmon pinkish hue, hazy from the start, with strings of visible fizz here and there. Aroma of banana-flavored bubblegum (clear isoamylacetate), powder sugar, canned peaches, orange juice, pineapple, cooked potato, Kirsch, raw apple juice, camomile, sweetbread, dough, old dry ginger powder, green melon, honey, soap (coriander seed), hay, turnips cooked for too long, pond water and an unfortunate whiff of DMS. Spritzy, fruity onset, lots of detracting, initially even somewhat numbing carbonation, sweet banana, ripe pear and peach flavors with a thin rim of green berry-ish sourishness somewhere as well as some welcoming orange ’fraîcheur’, supple, ’full’ but notably soapy mouthfeel; this soapiness continues in the middle, with a soft, bready and slightly caramelly malt sweet core, the sweetness of which is accentuated by residual sugars, resulting in a somewhat honeyish impression. This sweetness and the aforementioned soapiness (again: coriander?) keep dominating the finish, where only a subtle hint of earthy hop bitterness is added, but insufficiently so to balance out the sweetness; it does, however, cling a bit to the throat after swallowing, but so does the sweetness and to a much larger extent. Some warming, wodka-like alcohol too, but nothing too wry or fatiguing; the DMS, however, does return retronasally, and I am very sensitive to it. In all, an easy-drinking, very stereotypical but technically decent tripel, once again one on the sweet side of the style (think Karmeliet and the other usual suspects), and in that sense at least obsolete - but if you want to sustain worn-out traditions by making a threesome of utterly classical Belgian styles, I guess this is a perfectly acceptable way to do so. Works relatively fine for me, all things considered.
Appearance - 4 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 6.5
The ’brune’ in this series of new abbey beer-inspired ales, from a brand new micro brewery near Saint-Ghislain in Wallonia. Quite strong gusher, with the beer flowing out of the bottle neck upon opening. Medium thick, regularly shaped, off-white head quickly reduced to a steady, straight rim around the edge and a thin veil in the middle; deep bronze-ish chestnut brown robe with ochre-like hue on the edges, translucent but immediately cloudy, clearly related to the gushing effect and usually not a very good sign. Aroma of caramel candy, stewed pear, mushed banana, damp earth, raisins, cloves, melting brown sugar, medlar, soapy coriander seed, brown rum, candied figs, soggy brown bread, old milk chocolate, glue, liquorice candy somewhere, autumn leaves on a forest floor, hint of FFF (suggesting an infection with E. coli) but fading away after a while. Sweet, rounded onset, apple and pear along with some banana and slightly souring purple gooseberry, minerally carbo initially a bit strong for the style but calming down quickly, residual brown sugar sweetness but nothing cloying. Smooth, ’filling’ and somewhat ’fluffy’ mouthfeel, caramelly malt sweetishness with a slightly bittering nutty aspect to it as well as a deep, soft, soggy breadiness which is clearly enhanced by the yeast distributed all over the beer. Phenolic aspect in the finish, clove-like and not too medicinal fortunately, soapy and even somewhat ’glueish’ coriander, very earthy, ’deep’ and dim hop bitterness as well as equally (or more) earthy yeastiness, further increasing the bready effect; alcohol, in all, remains well hidden, though I do get a - pleasant - rum-like warmth in the end; drinkability remains high as a result of the cleverly hidden alcohol, I do not get the feeling I am drinking an 8% beer. Some basic sourishness lingers afterwards. Earthy, a bit dirty, needlessly coriandered (though not exaggeratedly so), gushing and too cloudy from the beginning: this is clearly a first, still somewhat amateuristic attempt at the classic dubbel style at an ABV which is above average for the style (making it a ’massieve ale’ intermediary between dubbel and quadrupel, simply said), but hiding its alcohol relatively well. Technically, there clearly is still some work afoot, this needs finetuning and cleaning up; in terms of style and concept, this is about as classically Belgian as it gets. Not that this is a bad thing per se, but I wonder how this can ever add something to a beer map already teeming with similar beers - heck, there are so many of these trappist- and abbey beer-inspired dubbels, tripels and quads already that the zenith of these traditional Belgian ale styles has long been reached and I think it would have been more advisable to produce new internationally oriented beer styles. Still, since this clearly was not the intention here and who am I to judge the stylistic choices this new brewery made: enjoyable and balanced in terms of pure flavor, but falling a bit short on basic technical levels. Glad I was able to taste this though, since distribution is still very limited. I wish monsieur Carpentier all the best with his new brewery.