Õlle on selline jook, et iga uus kord kui klaasi või pudeli suule tõstad, siis leiad midagi uut, sõltuvalt tuhandest-miljonist pisiasjast, mis hetke olukorda mõjutavad. Seega piirdun iga õlle juures selle tekstiga.

Hazy golden colour, white foam. Messy, light bready, yeasty and bready, not the best balanced tripel.

Pours deep pink. Pinkwhite head. Scent is raspberry , natural, malty. Tasge is surprisingly bitter, some fruity acidity. Fresh, wheat beer base like even though its not. Quite enjoyable !

Pours cloudy amber. Medium small white head. Scent is malty, mild whiff of oak ( some vanilla). Taste is bitter, spices are milder than the base version. Woody (virgin wood like tannins are quite high). Mild vanilla. Medium body with medium high carbo.

4/VIII/24 - 33cl bottle as a gift (I guess?), shared @ my parents’ place, BB: 3/V/24 (whoops), lot: 2204/929 (2024-687)

Clear gold blond to yellow beer, big creamy solid off-white head, irregular, stable, adhesive, leaving some lacing in the glass. Aroma: spicy, coriander, lemony, grains, meh, weird, almost infected, a bit oxidized. MF: ok carbon, medium to full body. Taste: very spicy, lots of coriander, bitter, a bit sourish, some yeasty, ripe to overripe banana. Aftertaste: more sourish, grassy, a bit hoppy, citrus touch, ok.

5/VII/24 - 75cl bottle, shared @ the Gibb’s crib, BB: 24/XI/25, P02162 (2024-486)

Clear blond yellow beer, creamy solid white head, stable, adhesive, leaving a nice lacing in the glass. Aroma: ripe banana, very yeasty, sweet impression, hint of vanilla, pears, nice if a little boring maybe. MF: ok carbon, medium body. Taste: very yeasty, some chlorine, a bit sourish, weird bitterness, sweet, lots of ripe banana. Aftertaste: bitter, a bit soapy, floral touch, dry finish, very very yeasty.

Another blonde commissioned by a hobby brewer (this time from Opwijk in Flemish Brabant) and executed by BeerSelect, designed specifically to facilitate this kind of hobbybrewers-testing-the-market formula. The brewer, a young fellow named Fozzie De Clerck, has been tinkering with this recipe since 2015 but the beer only became commercially available in 2021. Snow white, creamy, thick and even-bubbled, stable head on a misty ochre- to beige-tinged straw blonde beer with lively sparkling, turning cloudy and even more beige with sediment. Aroma of raw turnip, soggy cereals, DMS (overcooked broccoli), old bread, raw potato, banana peel, dried thyme, cumin cheese, linseed and something soapy. Sweetish onset, some ripe apricot, banana and pear, fizzy carbonation, vague sourish undertone and frankly a tad ‘dirty’; slick cereally, doughy and old-bready middle with slight soapiness and sourishness probably pointing at wheat (as does the witbier-like glass), with only light residual sugars and some herbal effects retronasally (dried and old thyme and fenugreek) next to a soft floral hop bitterness. Banana ester and DMS linger a bit. Weird, earthy, spicy-phenolic, slick blonde with certain witbier-like features, marred by some unappealing off-flavours. Not a great success for me, this needs a lot of further finetuning.

Medium whitish head over cold-hazed, very finely carbonated golden beer. Shoepolish, dried herbs and branches, rainwater, dried droppings, young shoots. All the former, plus Chinese herbs, bamboo shoots, geesedroppings. Gets more dubious warming up, off-flavours. Bit slick, very demure for 8%... is it? Very disappointing. Maybe take a look closer to home?

Bottle, golden beer, small head. Aroma is funked hops, citrus, malt, sweet. Taste is bitter, dry, yeast, sweet, malt, bitter dry aftertaste. Forgettable run of the mill belgian blonde

New BeerSelect blonde created by three inhabitants of my city of Ghent plus a guy from Stasegem near Kortrijk in West-Flanders, hence the name; at a Thai restaurant in Zwijnaarde (and apparently already quite widely available in greater Ghent - these guys mean business, it seems), cheers Jacqueline! Contains - sigh - "a secret magic touch", in the form of herbs or spices which are of course, in the best of Belgian traditions, kept secret. Snow white, thick, moussey and dense, stable head on a misty warm yellow blonde beer with deeper apricot tinge. Aroma of drying orange peel, lemon thyme, brioche bread, honey, sweetclover, ripe pear, minerals, faint hints of papaya, mandarin and sandwiches. Fizzy onset, very sharp and numbing on the tongue with strong minerally effect as in carbonated water; sweetish with notes of pear, pineapple and mandarin, slender honeyish sweetness persistently hovering over a brioche-bready pale malt base with a touch of, perhaps, crystal malt; smooth finish with floral, mild but somewhat balancing hop bitterness combined with a light citrusy aspect (orange peel) and indeed sweet herbal notes of basil, rosemary and dried lavender flowers, but nothing overpowering, remaining vague and subtle yet fitting actually quite well into the whole. Sweet and fruity, mass-marketed blonde for sure, overcarbonated as well, but admittedly clean, sleek and tasty, feeling 'natural' and free of off-flavours - in that sense this is actually relatively refined, a bit like that Paalsteen from Sint-Martens-Latem (which does not have the herbs). Better than expected, to be fair, maybe even one I may consider to revisit when I come across it again on a sunny outdoors café somewhere in Ghent.