Fles 33cl thuis. Rood fruit, zoetje, licht cassis, wat caramel, licht droog. (4-2016).

Bottled@HBF2016. Hazy ambery brown colour with a creamy/fluffy head. Aroma is sweet malts, some raisins, mild earth, alcohol and toffee. Flavour is yeasty, alcoholic, some chocolate and mild ripe fruits with some toffee as well.

Bottled@HBF2016. Deep golden colour, small white head. Aroma is sweet fruits, some wooden notes, mild spices as well as some spices. Flavour is tropical fruits, some caramel, mild bready notes along with some mild yeasty notes as well.

Not bad. Fruity (cherries!), malty dark ale. Alcohol not really noticeable.

Limitedly produced and commissioned Wolf beer, with thick, lightly lacing, creamy, egg-white head with good retention, warm ’old gold’ colour, bright and clear with orangey hue, turning hazy with deposit. Aroma of banana but not in the usual ’bubblegum’ way, rather green banana, peach, soggy bread, white pepper, cider, pineapple, honey, some iron, some clear DMS (cooked green cabbage), some old ’jenever’, moist tree leaves, old ginger powder, butter, pear, gooseberry. Fruity onset, estery but not out of control, with sweetish and sourish impressions of pineapple, banana, passion fruit and gooseberry, medium to sharpish carbo, bit minerally, slick and lightly oily mouthfeel, nice ’white bread’ malt sweetness with a very lightly toasted edge somewhere, a very subtle metallic ’tinge’ somewhere in the middle, some restrained phenols and a moderately dryish finish of ongoing malt sweetness and breadiness along with leafy, earthy and floral hop bitterness as well as a firm but non-astringent splash of gin-like, warming alcohol. Not bad at all apart from the DMS which I am overly sensitive to, but there must be hundreds of beers like this in Belgium with exactly the same profile; clearly intended to please its limited audience without any further ambitions than just being there reinforcing Belgian clichés. I have the impression this goes for most of their beers, though; the majority of them is perfectly acceptable, usually quite well-executed as well from a technical point of view, but a bit, let’s say, boring...

Weinig diepgang, geen echte bitter of zoet. Was wat moeilijker om door te drinken

From a can bought somewhere in Antwerp. Pale clear blonde with snow white head, notably sweet aroma and taste, almost honeyish even, smooth and relatively creamy mouthfeel for the style, bit metallic in the middle, hint of grassy hops in the finish but malt sweetness keeps prevailing. Sweeter and more ’rounded’ than the average standard pale lager and I actually kind of liked that, but I will have to re-rate this since the tasting conditions were anything but ideal. For now: quite okay for its style, to my taste at least, in being a bit different in its sweetness. I’d recommend this over the pale lagers of the industrial macro breweries any time. Reminded me a bit of Anker’s own pale lager (Blusser, not sure if this still exists).

Imported from my RateBeer account as Wolf 6 (by Brouwerij Wolf (formerly Lupus)):
Aroma: 7/10, Appearance: 4/5, Taste: 8/10, Palate: 3/5, Overall: 15/20, MyTotalScore: 3.7/5

18/III/16 - 33cl bottle from Aldi supermarket @ home - BB: 15/XII/17 (2016-283)

Note: so, first of all, about where I bought this. Apparently, this beer is exclusively sold, or at least launched, in the Aldi supermarkets. For those unfamiliar with the chain, Aldi is like the cheapest supermarket chain of them all. If you want to give your brand a cheap image, this is where you put your products. This makes absolutely no sense at all...
Clear dark brown beer, big creamy beige head, pretty stable, adhesive, leaving some lacing in the glass. Aroma: sweet, ripe banana, caramel, bit grassy, bit floral, malty. MF: lively carbon, medium body. Taste: bit sweet, pretty hoppy, sourish touch, grassy, hint of banana, pretty bitter. Aftertaste: dry bitterness, little malty, some banana, pretty balanced, little sourish in the end. I quite like it.

The latest addition to the Lupus range, bought at an Aldi supermarket. Very regularly structured, pale greyish white, moussy head remaining completely closed most of the time but eventually showing ’holes’, lightly hazy brownish copper colour with somewhat salmon pink hue, fully translucent. Aroma of caramel candy, quite strong banana ester even with some bubblegum, brown bread dough, hazelnut, cherry pits, some iron (head stabilizer even) but not overly off-putting, cane sugar, fresh ginger, nutmeg, honey, liquorish candy, peach, straw, dried manure, dried bitter leaves somewhere. Spritzy onset, quite sharply carbonated for a dubbel, restrained fruitiness (dry banana, fig, hint redcurrant), sweetish more than sourish but the sharp carbo adding more ’sourishness’ than it should, nutty flavours apparent from the start and growing in intensity in the middle, paired with a soft caramelly malt sweetness. Body is lean and supple, on the thin side even for a 6% beer and a little bit metallic, but still quite saturating due to the high level of carbonation. Maltiness evolves to lightly toasted bitter in the end, where a floral, earthy, lightly spicy hop bitterishness appears as well. Juicy caramel malt sweetness remains along with a (fortunately subtle) residual brown sugar sweetness. These Lupus beers never really convinced me (apart from Carte Blanche, perhaps): this brewery is about creating traditional Belgian beers for the masses, not about innovation, and though the initial DMS and other issues have apparently been solved meanwhile, this one is still a very cliché Belgian dubbel, aiming at competition with Leffe Brune or Grimbergen Dubbel. Both the iron factor and the isoamylacetate bothered me here a bit, though I have encountered both flavors in a much stronger way in several other beers. There is worse on the market in this specific segment, such as the aforementioned industrial dubbels; I’d rank this among Ename Dubbel or Steenbrugge Dubbel Bruin, easy, accessible and simple, but still fairly well balanced and quaffable, and one step above the mass-marketed ’macro dubbels’. An ideal beer to make ’carbonades à la flamande’ with, though.