Bottle 33cl. @home poured into a chalice. Sour nose. Hazy deep golden colour, fair frothy off-white head, dissipating slowly, thin layer remains, light lacing. Sour aroma, unripe peach, green apple, light wood, brett, barnyard. Complex taste: an interesting mix of medium sweet, light bitter and fruity sourness, brett, malty notes, unripe peach, green apple, star fruit, malty and woody notes, some vinegar. Medium body, slick texture, average carbonation, mild sourish and a modest bittersweet aftertaste, spicy notes at the finish as well as some wood, a well executed blend, overall quite good.

Bottle at The Monk Brugge. Hazy gold amber colour lasting white head. Lambic aroma. Sweeter in mouth due to the tripel but the lambic dominates. Good lemon flavour. Yep easy drinking Hides abv well. Good stuff

Interesting. Like a slightly sweet gueuze, like Lindemann's almost

FLAX. Pic: name that star

Bottle 33cl. @home poured into a tumbler. Hazy pale golden colour, tall mouessy white head, good retention, light lacing. Aroma wheat, lemon, coriander, yeast. Prickly taste, medium sweet, slightly bitter, some light acidity, wheat, lemon, coriander, yeast, herbal notes. Medium body, watery texture, lively carbonation, sweetbitter aftertaste, refreshing, again light acidity, lemon zest, orange pith, light mineral notes, very nice.

For me the last of six 'Mash of the Classics' beers, in which d'Oude Maalderij invited six classically oriented Belgian brewers to come over and brew something they would not normally brew - an experiment which has led to as many interesting beers (the porter by Boon, for example) as underwhelming ones. This one is a witbier by Vicaris, flavoured with the very predictable coriander and orange zest, but also - and this is the 'out of the box' part - bergamot and lemon verbena... Quite some pressure on the bottle with foam creeping out if you wait for a few moments, but no gushing. Towering high, bath-foam-like, rocky, egg-white, regular-bubbled, plaster-lacing, very stable head, almost impossible to pour without filling the glass in seconds; misty yellow-golden blonde robe with a column of almost champagne-like sparkling in the middle. Aroma of freshly ground coriander seed, leftover dough, green pear, orange zest indeed but not in very 'lively' way, withering lemonbalm - but in fact the lemon verbena, cheap prosecco, pumice, raw parsnip and even a vague hint of raw Florence fennel, matcha tea (but probably 'just' the bergamot in reality), honey, cooked sweet apples, propolis, dusty touch, some damp earth lurking in the background and disturbing the idyll of citrusy fraîcheur. Painfully numbing and stinging overcarbonation in the onset, fruity impressions of unripe pear, green apple and some green banana; effervescent tablet dissolving in your mouth due to the severe overcarbonation, distracting from the actual flavour. Rounded, dryish, wheat-soapy and cereally core, underlying wheat sourishness connecting well with the added orange zest, bergamot and lemon verbena, of which (especially) the latter two propel herbal effects forward - reminiscent of green tea, accompanied by pronounced coriander seed, in itself accentuating the soapiness of the wheat. Some late, herbal and earthy hop bitterness shows up, but the end bitterness here has more to do with the added orange zest and bergamot, I believe; minerally, leafy, herbal and citrus peel-like aspects linger, along with a deep, far less refreshing aspect of overcooked vegetables and old potatoes. Some honeyish sweetness, very thinly so, also remains, a bit annoyingly so. Witbier going hipster, which in itself could potentially lead to refreshing and surprising results perhaps, but this one has too many earthy and vegetable-like notes to fully convince me of its refreshing properties and even if this beer does offer some interesting flavour contrasts, I still feel it could have been executed in a more sophisticated way, technically difficult as that may be. I guess it is, however, the drinkability-hindering overcarbonation which bothered me the most here. Could have been much better - but still enjoyable I suppose. Now that I had all six of these "Mash of the Classics" collabs, I guess half of them managed to convince me (Boon, Lupulus and Nest) that this project was a good idea, while the other half (Anker, Senne and Vicaris) did not. Fair enough, right?

Bottled (from De Biertonne). Yellowish golden colour with a mediumsized foamy slighly off-white head, which leaves some lace. Aroma is fruity, floral, some spiciness and mild malts. Flavour is fruity, floral, yeasty, some slight spicy tones with mild herbs and sweet toffee. Very smooth and balanced.