7

Smokey and sour... Quite nice but needs some more tweaking.

6.3

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

Huge, pale cream to beige head over deep dark cola-coloured beer. Chocolate, roasted, sweet-roasted, slight oxydation, 'hot' fermentation. Sweet, roasted, melanoidin(over)laden. Milkchocolate or chocolate Ersatz (Cadbury's). Very slick to viscous, seems fuller bodied than it probably is. Over-classical dark Belgian. Who still wants this? Thanks to Stef!

6.2

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

20 October 2018. Late birthday dinner at 't Botteltje, Ostend.
Pours clear dark golden with a lasting, small, unstable, frothy, off-white head; irregular lacing. Sweetish aroma of pineapple, banana, peach, white bread, honey, wheat, faint soap, grass, dough. Medium fruity sweet onset with dough-like maltiness, pineapple & (canned) peach; light grassy bitter middle, a bit hoppy with a sourish wheaty touch & a slight metallic effect. Dryish, grassy hoppy finish, lingering dough & pineapple, hint of warming jenever alcohol. Medium body, slick texture, soft carbonation. Not too shabby but nothing special.

5.8

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

Blood orange- and tea-flavoured beer from Ostend’s self-proclaimed city brewery, 75 cl bottle with crown cap bought at the brewery’s shop; bears the same general hangtag as their other bottles, a hangtag mentioning and detailing all their beers, but failing to mention which one is in the actual bottle; the crown cap doesn’t reveal this either so in this case, I actually had to write down the name of the beer at the shop itself, as I would never have been able to retrieve it afterwards if I hadn’t done so. Anyway: no gushing here like the other Koelschip bottle I recently opened, fortunately… Loosely knit, egg-white, initially foaming but very unstable, fizzing away like the ‘head’ on a glass of coke and reduced to a wafer-thin ring in instants, atop a misty, pale orangey-blonde beer with olive greenish tinge. Aroma initially quite lightstruck (the cat pee odour we all know and love from cheap pale lagers in green or colourless bottles), remaining quite pronounced for a while, accompanying notes of water-diluted orange juice, aspirin, soap (maybe the seeds of paradise), apple juice, old bread, cold green tea, cranesbill leaves, wet cardboard, chalk, apricot. Sweet onset, mandarin, peach and light banana notes with a pear-like edge, sourish aspect from the blood orange brings some freshness but a bit of ‘dirtiness’ as well; very soft carb, bit undercarbonated in fact, slick and soapy mouthfeel. A persistent chalky aspect lingers alongside a thinnish bready maltiness, with the blood orange sourishness continuing as well; the finish brings an outspoken, yet not very elegant tea aspect retronasally, in combination with the citrus and the chalky note becoming reminiscent almost of children’s flavoured aspirin or something alike. The lightstruck effect never really goes away and hops, though present in a hayish bitterish form way back in the finish, underachieve and are insufficiently strong to lend the finish enough body – so that it ends a bit thin and watery.

4.2

Appearance - 2 | Aroma - 5 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 2

The witbier in this young Ostend microbrewery's range, spiced with the obligatory curaçao and coriander; 75 cl bottle with crown cap and hangtag mentioning all their beers - and used for all of them, so the only way to distinguish this one from other Koelschip bottles is the grey cap with a "W" written on it. Bought at the brewery and opened one day later, this must be one of the worst cases of gushing I've ever seen: upon lifting the edge of the crown cap for probably even less than a millimeter, a stormy and huge amount of foam formed underneath it, with gas shooting upwards from the bottom of the bottle - carrying along unpleasant chunks of protein all the way to the top. Not very promising of course, and even after waiting for fifteen minutes and carefully removing the cap, I could not avoid losing more than 2/3 of the bottle to my girlfriend's lawn. After all the gas had escaped, the foam was extremely unstable: a thick but very loosely knit, snow white head was gone in seconds, never to return. The result: a 'beer' looking like the content of a mud pool, no head at all, and murky ochre-ish, sand-coloured beige in appearance - I've rarely seen a beer looking this unattractive. The aroma wasn't a lot more promising: mud, wet old bread, raw dough, lemon juice, spoiled ginger juice, dishwater and rotting potatoes pushing away subtler and probably more intentional hints of apple, coriander seed, pear and orange peel. Clearly infected, the first sip was marred by an unpleasant, 'dirty' sourishness, lemony at its edges and clearly much more sour than any true witbier could ever have been intended; sweetish peach, pear and apricot notes underneath, with still finely tingling carbonation and a soapy, but unsurprisingly very powdery mouthfeel. Soggy bread-like malts, some coriander soapiness and citric sharpness mixing with the infectious acidity with a hugely dirty yeast effect, something rotting retronasally and lots of out-of-place, band aid-like phenols... Phew, this is obviously a gigantic failure of a beer, the basic recipe may have been quite alright for a witbier but it is rare to see a commercially sold beer in this awful condition. A pity, but this brew is so flawed and unpleasant that I couldn't even finish a single tasting glass. I must have stumbled upon a failed bottle, or at least I hope not all of them - including other bottles I bought there - suffer from the same issues as this poor thing. My first beer from this brewery was teeming with diacetyl - I still vividly remember it - and this, to put it carefully, is not very inviting either to further explore their range. It seems they are unable to control even the most basic technical issues and I am definitely not looking forward to opening the other bottles of their beers that I bought there...

7

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

04/02/2018 - small glass shared by tderoeck, 77ships & rubin77 @BAB, Bruges. Dark brown with a small tanned head. Nose is dark malts, some roast, leather, sweet. Taste is roast, caramel, red fruits, reminds a bit of cola, sweet.

6

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

04/02/2018 - small glass shared by tderoeck, 77ships & rubin77 @BAB, Bruges. Brown colour, small head. Nose is dark malts, caramel, fruits. Taste is malts, caramel, fruits, hint of chocolate. Not bad as the others.

3

Appearance - 4 | Aroma - 3 | Flavor - 3 | Texture - 2 | Overall - 3

04/02/2018 - small glass shared by tderoeck, 77ships & rubin77 @BAB, Bruges. Amber, thin head. Nose is cow fodder, raw malts, rotten fruits. Tase is same. Just as you think it can't get worse. What's in a name?

5.8

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

04/02/2018 - small glass shared by tderoeck, 77ships & rubin77 @BAB, Bruges. Orange, small head. Nose is malts, orange. Taste is malts, orange, yeast.