Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 8.5 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 8
One of two special BBA editions of Zwarte Bron’s flagship quadrupel, aged on Heaven Hill bourbon barrels (the other on Woodford Reserve). Thanks Jan! Medium thick, pale greyish beige, moussey, slowly breaking but generally stable head on a misty deep chestnut brown robe with ruddy-burgundy glow. Aroma of caramel candy, chestnut cream, walnut liqueur, pronounced vanilla-like impressions from oak and bourbon, plum jam, fig compote, sirop de Liège, ripe pear, cognac, dark candi sugar, almond, touch milk chocolate. Sweet onset, dark-sugary but not sticky, rich ripe dark fruit notes ranging from ripe pear over dried plum to blackberry coulis and fried apple, softly carbonated with full, very rounded body; caramelly malts with hazelnutty and toffeeish layers underneath, even a thin chocolatey edge (at least more so than is typical in a quad), remaining sweet but in a noble, not too sticky way, leading to a rich, soothing, warming finish of vanilla-tinged oak wood (low in tannic effects though), sweet and boozy bourbon (the Heaven Hill clearly recognisable though nowhere too ‘hot’) and lingering dark malts, supported by a subtle hoppy undertone, yet without explicit hop bitterness. This is high quality Belgian ‘pralines’ in a glass: the features of the base beer seem even more ‘dense’ and concentrated than before, while the bourbon is applied generously enough without overpowering – it is woven seamlessly into the beer and enriches it, with a finesse reminiscent of the barrel aged trappist quads by Chimay and La Trappe. Yet this one is notably sweeter, more liquid candy-like, more ‘desserty’ – the term ‘pastry quad’ almost seems in order, even though no lactose was used; the sweetness, however prominent, is nevertheless kept smooth and sleek, rather than sticky and candy-like. Very cleverly constructed, complex beer, perfected into detail. Impressive.
Rubin77 (10187) reviewed Tripel from De Zwarte Bron 1 year ago
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 6.5
33cl bottle from Struise Beershop Woesten e-shop. Head is big, off-white, good retention. Colour is deep gold, hazy. Aroma is banana, apples, bready, nutmeg, coriander. Taste is full malty base, banana, pears, apples, honey, spicy, nice balanced bitterness, medium carbonation, good one, enjoyed.
tderoeck (22711) reviewed Molten Moonlight from De Zwarte Bron 1 year ago
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 9 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 8.5
2/XI/24 - 33cl bottle from the brewer, shared @ home, BB: n/a, lotnr: D2B202306 (2024-1179) Thanks to Jan for sharing the bottle!
Clear dark brown to black beer, creamy beige head, a little stable, non adhesive. Aroma: good roast, quite some chocolate, a bit dusty, dried fruits, dates, prunes, some raisins. MF: soft carbon, medium to full body. Taste: good roast, bitter, pretty sourish touch, sweet malts, a bit oxidized, dried fruits, lots of alcohol, nice! Aftertaste: sweet, good roast, dried fruits, chocolate, caramel touch, more dark chocolate, nice stuff!
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 7.5
2/XI/24 - 33cl bottle from the brewer, shared @ home, BB: n/a, lotnr: D2B202303 (2024-1178) Thanks to Jan for sharing the bottle!
Clear purple brown beer, small creamy beige head, unstable, falls down quickly. Aroma: lots and lots of ripe banana, some vanilla, hint of tonka beans, some dried fruits, some cinnamon. MF: soft carbon, medium body. Taste: a bit sourish, a little chemical, sweet touch, fruity, caramel; Aftertaste: dried fruits, dates, cookies, soft roast, a bit sourish, sweet touch, lots of alcohol, a little bitter, decent!
Benzai (24515) reviewed Molten Moonlight from De Zwarte Bron 1 year ago
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 7 | Overall - 8
Bottle at home. Opaque black color, average sized light brown colored head. Aroma and flavor are malts, dark malts and a little roasty. After a while some chocolate notes come through. Chocolate malty bitters, bitter finish in general. Medium body, smooth texture, decent but also a bit fizzy carbonation. Quite alright.
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 8.5 | Flavor - 8.5 | Texture - 9 | Overall - 8.5
Bottle at home. Opaque dark brown to black color, brown colored head. Aroma is malts, roasted malts lightly, light coffee, brown malts and lightly earthy. Flavor is malts, earthy again, brown malts, toasted whole grain bread crust, a tad sweetish which must be the vanilla I guess, mostly moderate to medium bitter. Very solid stout, I like it! -- Upgrade after the second half of the bottle: chocolate and cocoa come through. Very pleasant, very pleasant indeed! Up from 8.0 to 8.5!
Benzai (24515) reviewed Corbillard Danse Macabre from De Zwarte Bron 1 year ago
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7.5 | Texture - 7 | Overall - 7.5
Bottle at home shared with Laura. Medium to dark brown colored beer with a medium sized beige head. Aroma is malts, brown candy sugar. Flavor is malts, sweetish, candy sugar, malt bitters. Medium body, decent to medium carbonation. Alright.
Alengrin (11609) reviewed Corbillard Danse Macabre from De Zwarte Bron 1 year ago
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 7.5
New version of Corbi-Art, the quadrupel it all began with for Zwarte Bron's forerunner Weerspannige Brouwers, with tweaked recipe. Thick and dense, foamy, creamy, membrane-lacing, yellowish pale beige, stable head on a clear, deep bronze-caramel brown robe with mahogany glow. Aroma of hard caramel candy, fresh and actual ripe pear, sirop de Liège, strong green apple peel, fresh fig, unsugared chewing gum, toffee, freshly cut grass somewhere, dark honey, calvados, fresh halfripe blue plums, beef stock, fresh dates, furniture wax, 'appeljenever', hints of 'Koetjesreep' and dried basil. Sweet onset in a ripe-fruity way, lots of ripe Doyenné pear and Jonagold apple with even that waxy, rounded malic acid touch, hints of medlar and fresh fig, softish carb with full, rounded, slick mouthfeel. Deeply caramelly malt body with toffeeish and vaguely chocolatey edges, touch of brown bread dough, all carrying forward this apple-pear combo of actually added fruitiness to a warming finish, where the fruit combines with the alcohol in a notably calvados-like alcohol warmth, sustained by lingering caramelly malts and a dash of leafy, earthy hops, lingering at the back and providing a much-needed balancing bitter element, reinforced by a certain astringency from the pear-apple addition (the peels, I guess). Warming, pear-, apple- and caramel-flavoured finish - a bit like previous Corbi-Art embodiments, but seemingly amplified, especially in the apple and pear department. Something beef stock-like lingers retronasally. I recall Aubel's apple ales from a time when the brewer of this beer and myself started venturing into the beer world and liking them quite a lot, even if I am not the biggest apple fan out there; this apple-and-pear quad manages to showcase both fruits extensively, while retaining its own basic caramelly and boozy quadrupel character. Opens up in complexity as it warms, but still: if you love the smell of fresh apple and pear (peel) in the morning, this is one for you. Indeed a kind of 'fortified' and intensified version of the classic Corbi-Art (already containing at least the pear), but it is mainly the fruit which is fortified instead of the malts and hops - I would rather have seen it the other way around, perhaps, though this is a mere personal appreciation. In general, this beer is doubtlessly very well made, and fits Zwarte Bron's current focus on thick, heavy, lush 'bières de dégustation' perfectly. I wonder how this one would evolve within a few years.
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 8
Big pastry stout by Zwarte Bron in a village in the Waasland region of northeastern East Flanders, containing lactose and flavoured with vanilla and coffee, one in a series of three (of which only two seem to have reached the market so far). From a stubby 50 cl bottle, quite unusual indeed but fitting for a beer intended to mature and reminiscent of old-time English barleywine bottles; label designed by Craftmember. Medium sized, moussey, pale mocha-beige, slowly breaking and dissipating head on a black beer with misty burgundy edges (under bright light). Aroma of (actual) coffee grounds, dark chocolate, bourbon, Cuban cigars, reduced blackberry juice, cocoa, even a hint of chocolate milk thanks to the lactose, black peppercorns, some vanilla indeed but weakly so (this was bottled last year so I guess it already faded like it tends to do), roasted chicory, marmite, haemoglobin, blue plum, bayleaf. Sweetish onset yet nowhere sticky, dense but not syrupy, fruity yet clean – with notes of dried prune, smoked apple peel and dried blackberry, medium carbonated with (very) full, smooth, oily body. Dark-chocolatey and thickly toffeeish malt core with layers of caramel, cocoa, toasted walnut and chicory on top, becoming more bittersweet and coffee-flavoured in the end, where an actual, very aromatic, spicy and delightful coffee scent rises up retronasally, much more strongly so than the remainders of the vanilla that also went in here. Leafy hops support the toasty bitter aspect of the malts while the lactose keeps adding creaminess and sweetness, both parts balancing each other out; I was fearing that the lactose would be too obvious and ‘whiny’ as it sometimes is in pastry stouts, but here it is subtly and very cleverly applied. Warming bourbon- and gin-like alcohol glows in the final stage but does not become overpowering or wry at any point – so that I have to conclude that Zwarte Bron has once again produced a beer of dangerously high ‘drinkability’, in much the same way as their other strong beers (think Black Anchor or Molten Moonlight). A rich ‘web’ of chocolate, nuts, coffee, vanilla, caramel and more, feeling very contemporary and postmodern – but most of all, very tasty and agreeable to slowly sip on a chilly evening.
Alengrin (11609) reviewed Molten Moonlight from De Zwarte Bron 2 years ago
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 7.5 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 8
Only (briefly) after having marketed a few flavoured 'impies', De Zwarte Bron in Sint-Pauwels (a village in between Sint-Niklaas and Stekene in East Flanders) offers this 'plain' imperial stout without any additions or barrel ageing - seemingly reversing the natural order of things, but all the more interesting if you are familiar with this brewery's house style. Medium thick, pale greyish beige, regularly shaped head breaking quickly in the middle but retaining well around the edge and in flat 'islands' in the middle; black robe with wafer thin burgundy edge. Quite powerful bouquet of dark chocolate and chocolate liqueur, dry caramel, walnut oil, nougat, candied figs, burnt currants, whisky, cold cappuccino, brandy-filled Belgian chocolates, almond, wet leather, hints of powder sugar, blackberry jam, black tea, liquorice, shoe polish. Dense onset, dark fruitiness hinting at dried fig, dried blackberries and plum jam, sweet but nowhere too much so, with a slight sourish undertone; quite lively carbonation for the style, with certain minerally effects, but not disturbingly so. Full, oily body, layers of dark-chocolatey, caramelly and pecan-nutty malts filling the mouth cavity, sweet at first with more emphasis on the chocolatey part, but drying a bit further on - though not developing full-fledged roasted bitterness, even though a coffeeish, 'warm' bitterness is certainly present, reinforced by a leafy hop bitter element. Slight spicy aspects retronasally (black peppercorns and a dash of liquorice), blending well with the dark fruitiness and full 'black' maltiness, while everything is warmed - and in that sense amplified - by brandy-like alcohol, unsurprisingly of course at this strength. Toffeeish and chocolatey sweetness lingers, but an elegant coffee note does too, not from added coffee this time but from malts alone. Not the oldskool roasty and dry 'English style' imperial stout I was prepared for, but a sweet, creamy, warming, chocolatey imperial stout the American way, and in that sense very 'in sync' with what the present-day craft beer consumer expects from the genre. I will not try to hide that the brewer has been a personal friend of mine for decades but in trying to remain as unbiased as possible, I think this beer's very quality simply speaks for itself, and I can safely state that it even exceeds my expectations, biased or not. This is full-blown postmodern craft brewing, totally detached from Belgian traditions (in contrast with many other Belgian attempts at strong stouts which often still show a 'Belgian' spiciness or fruitiness) and doubtlessly appealing to a more seasoned craft beer audience, even without all the frills and barrel ageing trends. I am very sincerely impressed - cheers Jan, this is liquid gold, or 'moonlight', indeed.