6.6

Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 5.5

Strong Walloon 'ambrée' brewed by Abbaye des Rocs for this commissioning company run by beer lover Mathieu Gastout since 2015. Still concentrating on two beers only, this Marcelin company seems all about commercializing beer rather than creating it, but since it has been in existence for five years now, I reckon it deserves a separate entry here. Creamy, quite dense, pale clay-beige, irregularly edged, stable head on an initially crystal clear, deep 'metallic' orange-gold robe with deep 'old gold' hue rather than true amber but turning misty and gaining some more colour with the sediment added; lots of sparkling in fine strings. Aroma of wet toast, peanuts, cloves, hard caramel, old 'jenever' or even (vaguely) armagnac, dried banana, apricot, dry biscuit, vague hints of toasted chicken skin, white pepper, deep-fried potato wedges, old dried thyme, brown sugar. Sweet onset but not too sticky, hinting at dried fig, baked banana, apple peel and apricot but all in a cleanish, almost more malty than estery way, lively carbonated; full, rounded, soft body. Minerally aspects from the carbonation accompany a soft bready and caramelly maltiness with a light peanutty edge, while honeyish residual sugar looms overhead; clear 4-vinyl-guaiacol in the finish (cloves, but also something 'meaty') as well as a floral hop character adding mild and late bitterness. More bitterness, or should I say wryness, comes from the alcohol, becoming obvious way before it should, in a cheap brandy-ish way; this typical candi syrup-fuelled, astringent, 'jenever'-ish booziness puts me off a bit, along with the sweetness that keeps lingering for just a bit too long. Otherwise a decent, but forgettable and hopelessly old-fashioned Walloon ambrée, though, a bit reminiscent of Rocs' own La Montagnarde... Kind of qualifies as a 'Belgian style barleywine' too, like Silly's La Divine or Dubuisson's Bush series, but I should give up all hope that strong amber-coloured Belgian ales will ever get recognition as a subclass of Belgian ales in general that way, now that the original Anglo-Saxon barleywine has reinvented itself thanks to the global craft beer movement.