A clear golden beer with a white head. Aroma of mild sweet grainy malt, honey, belgian yeast. Taste of sweet strong pale malt, honey, belgian yeast.

A clear golden beer with a white head. Aroma of mild herbal and spicy pale malt, some citrusy hops. Taste of herbal and citrusy hops, pale malt, herbs, dry bitter finish.

Pours near-clear blonde, fairly small white head. Scent is fresh, zesty hoppyness, mild maltyness. Bit of spices but all in a nice balance and not very NA-forward. Promissing ! Taste is sharp, clean and fairly bitter. Mild NA profile towards the back, but the beer tries very well to hide it, only revealing it's essence in the aftertaste. Mild spices, peppers aren't very recognizable. Nice and drinkable at the start though. Medium low body, high carbo. Decent, would have been even better with a less sticky finish.

33cl bottle picked up in Belgium on my last trip (early May): BB 5th November 2024, drank at home on 1st May 2024. Bio and Belgian says the neck label and that sums up what this pretty good Pils is all about. Golden body, white crown, soft yet crisp and hoppy with a decent malt base, weak aroma like most beers of this style but I enjoyed what esters it did give out.

Pilsener by this Ostend-based client brewer, luckily not containing any malt adjuncts and hopped with New World hops - so in concept at least, IPL may be a beckoning from a distance. Longneck bottle from the Carrefour supermarket in the Groene Vallei in Ghent. Creamy and dense, snow white, frothy, thick and stable head, near clear pale straw blonde robe with greenish tinge and quite lively sparkling, pushing up tiny bits of protein here and there; shifting to a hazy yellow blonde further on. Aroma of white bread or even sourdough, dried lemonbalm, old lemon peel (the Cascade?), freshly cut grass and garden weeds, margarine, old potatoes, damp straw, wet flour, courgette, touch of dusty old paper. Crisp onset, a bit fruitier than normal for the genre due to the residual yeast, with vague notes of halfripe banana and pear, but not really sweet; more malt fruitiness after that, with prickly carbonation (softer than industrial pale lager, though) and smooth, bit glueish mouthfeel, feeling quite 'full' for this kind of beer. White-bready pale malt sweetishness, a bit 'moelleux', under remains of that estery fruitiness and retronasally carrying a lemonbalm-, zucchini- and pepino-tinged hop aroma, while the bitterness from the hops grows - yet restrains itself quite early on, to let the esters and malt sweetness pass through unscathed. There is a vague background citrusiness in here somewhere and the New World hops do add a certain freshness as well as a 'postmodern' feel, but there is also a residual sweetness that lingers, a bit much so for what is intended as a Pilsener. I wonder if this is not top-fermented after all, because it sure tastes yeasty and rounded enough for that... In any case a pleasant enough beer, easygoing and very different from what the average consumer expects when he sees 'Pils' on a Belgian label.

Organic witbier by this Ostend-based client brewer, having achieved a level of commercial success not every new microbrewer can enjoy - my bottle, for example, comes from a Carrefour supermarket in the city of Ghent. Some slow gushing, in the form of foam creeping out of the bottle neck, but nothing dramatic (contrary to their tripel I had earlier in the evening). Foamy, inches thick, off-white, very moussey and pillowy, somewhat crackling, cobweb-lacing, dense and firm head on a cloudy yellow blonde robe with khaki tinge - looking like an 'oldskool' Belgian wit indeed. Aroma of green banana, raw spinach, strong coriander seed, white soap, lemon peel, cucumber, cold chervil soup, withering lettuce, unripe green melon, old cotton cloth, hints of cooked turnip, sweat, pumice, gypsum, raw leek, moist white pepper, freshly cut grass, spruce tips (Chinook!), cumin cheese. Spritzy onset, lots of stingy (over)carbonation with strong minerally effects, also highlighting something clearly metallic (iron pipes) early on; fruity notes of green banana and unripe pear but restrained in sweetness and esteriness especially for this style. Minerally overcarbonation and that metallic effect continue under a smooth, slick, raw-wheaty base with grainy pale maltiness at its edges, a tad soapy and sourish as can be expected, gathering spicy notes from the added coriander seed (powder) and lemon zest, with certain refreshing effects. Hops are a bit more outspoken and 'developed' here than is typical for a Belgian wit, with background traces of grapefruity Cascade and piney Chinook still noticeable if you know where to look - but very subtly so, so that, as in many 'updated' Belgian blondes and tripels with New World hops I had, they feel a bit 'lost' here - a missed opportunity to upgrade this beer to an 'americanised' wheat ale, I think. They do add more bitterness, though, overruling the coriander a bit - but the lemon zest, fortunately, remains fresh and powerful enough to linger in the aftertaste, with very zesty, 'fresh' effect, indeed evoking the classic witbier experience in a somewhat distinct way. Very wheaty, not as 'coriandery' as many more oldskool 'blanchekes', more hoppy than average and still elegant, light and refreshing: this Pure White reiterates Pierre Celis' old Hoegaarden formula while at the same time daring to differ a bit with postmodern means, not an easy balancing exercise to perform. Not really my beer - I am but a cool lover of witbier - but admittedly more interesting than that half-hearted IPA and gushing tripel I had from these guys.

The tripel in this mass-market-oriented Ostend beer project, from a longneck bottle bought at the Carrefour of the Groene Vallei in Ghent. Quite a violent gusher, spouting out of the bottle during opening - and with the carbon dioxide badly 'bound' into the beer, forming only a loose and rather thin, quickly opening, off-white ring of foam which then dissolves into almost nothing, over a hazy apricot blonde beer with beige tinge and dots of proteins floating around here and there. Rather weak aroma of dried apricot, damp kitchen towel, soggy Graham crackers, coriander seed, raw potatoes, old turnips, unripe pear, honey, field flowers, rainwater. Sweetish onset, estery peach, light banana and pear notes, sharpish effervescence (like a hundred micro needles piercing the tongue) and lean mouthfeel; soggy white bread with notes of crackers in the middle, some honeyish residual sweetness on top and retronasal coriander seed - but also a strong effect of ferrous water or rainwater (I was almost going to say seawater, considering where it comes from, but there is no saltiness). Floral hop bitterness in the end, blending in with the fruitiness and residual sweetness, before a somewhat astringent, not too well hidden 'jenever'-like alcohol effect shows up, scorching away the flavours - but then I had worse of this in other tripels, admittedly. Granted, the basic flavours are balanced and represent what the average Belgian consumer expects from a tripel - so pure flavour-wise, this is not even the worst I had in this overexposed style, but the gushing, the lack of head retention and those odd rainwater effects cannot have been intentional; if these technical issues are solved, then what you get is a perfectly acceptable, if stereotypical Belgian tripel for the masses, nothing more, nothing less.

Organic IPA hopped with Simcoe, Saphir and Pacific Gem, created by a client brewer located in Ostend. Snow white, medium thick, moussey, dot-lacing, slowly breaking head on a misty yellow blonde robe, fully hazy and ochre-ish-tinged with sediment added. Aroma of dried birch tree leaves, margarine, old potato peel, green banana, cold mash, apple blossoms, sweetclover, roasted cauliflower, dust, very vague orange zest. Fruity onset, halfripe banana, pear and a touch of yellow kiwi, sourish underneath a sweeter main flavour with the souring effects of the wheat malt and wheat flakes very apparent early on; softish carb, sweetish white-bready maltiness under continuing fruity esters and something thinly buttery (a trace of bacteria-generated diacetyl perhaps?), generally dry, with an only mild floral hop bitterness, lacking both the New World aromatics and bitterness I was hoping for. Instead, that general wheat sourishness dominates, and the combination of potentially bacteria-generated diacetyl and this ‘extra’ sourish undertone makes me suspect that a bacterial infection is already setting in here. Grassy and green-fruity notes do appear in the end, but clearly this beer does not contain nearly enough hops, either in aroma or in bitterness, to deserve the IPA moniker – not even if ‘Belgian IPA’ is intended. Feels more like a kind of atypical Weissbier (or even witbier), to be frank… Maybe the New World hops used, were old, or too sparsely used, or have already faded, I have no idea, but in spite of what the label advertises, they are in any case dramatically lacking to establish an IPA experience. Odd.

9/II/24 - 33cl bottle @ Gado Gado Indonesian restaurant (Gent), BB: 7/XI/24 22:22:33 (2024-82)

Clear blond to gold beer, big solid creamy off-white head, pretty stable, a bit adhesive. Aroma: pretty yeasty, ripe banana, sweet impression, some vanilla, pretty malty. MF: ok carbon, medium body. Taste: very yeasty start, quite some ripe banana, banana peel, spicy, coriander, bitter touch. Aftertaste: more yeast, hoppy, grassy, bitter finish, a hint of citrus. By no means can you call this an IPA. It’s just a hoppy blonde Belgian ale.