18 August 2025. At Geus van Gent. Cheers to the quiz team!

A: hazy golden, foamy, off-white head.
A: coriander, clove, wheat, lemon zest, parsley.
T: sweetish apple, sourish lemon, spicy coriander.
F: grassy hops, yellow fruits, spices, bit soapy.
P: medium body, slick texture, average carbonation.
Bit too high in sour- and soapiness, too low in hoppy bitterness. Okay.

Bottle from Gedeelde Vreugde.
A: gusher! Hazy golden, unstable, frothy, white head.
A: lemongrass, green apple, wheat, sour cream, oak.
T: sour lime, green apple, lemon peel, wheat, sourdough.
F: tart & funky lemon, stone fruit & oak.
P: medium body, slick texture, fizzy carbonation.
Interesting but needs some cleaning.

Newish beer from the Hallelujah guys, who got a dreamed amount of exposure in Amazon Prime's Beermasters show; this one is brewed at nearby Paenhuys. Slow gusher (possibly hop creep in this case) so be ware when opening. Irregularly shaped but initially thick and frothy, pillowy, plaster-lacing, off-white, slowly diminishing head over a hazy to eventually cloudy ochre-blonde robe with less attractive beige hue. Aroma of freshly ground white pepper, freshly cut sharp chili peppers even, yellow grapefruit and grapefruit peel, dry crackers, deep-fried parsley, unripe peach, pepino, green pear, straw bale, green olive, white bread dough, dry earth. Dryish onset, green fruitiness of unripe banana, pear and apricot, all very restrained in sweetness, medium carbonated; slick mouthfeel, cracker- and dry white bread-like malts with cereally core (breakfast cereals) under quickly growing spicy, very grassy and lightly citric hoppiness, with wormwood- and grapefruit peel-like associations, in a rather earthy manner especially when the spicy earthiness of the yeast comes in. More than anything, however, this beer is dominated by an extremely severe hop burn, to the extent that it seriously hinders drinkability - as if someone emptied a whole pepper-caster of white pepper in a blonde ale. This peppery burn lasts and lasts, I had effects like this in IPAs before but this is by far the most extreme case I ever came across - so I would not order this one for several rounds, even downing one 33 cl bottle is quite a challenge (and will not be physically possible for many people, in my opinion). Seemingly intended as a hazy IPA, it looks unattractively murky and beige too, and completely lacks those wonderful tropical fragrances a decent hazy IPA should exude. Technically flawed, clearly - sorry guys, this is not what the contemporary craft beer drinker expects from any type of IPA, I'm afraid... Needs to be redone from the bottom up, if you ask me.

Here is one I had to taste: earlier this year, Amazon Prime created a television show about home brewing, which was sold abroad and which ran for five episodes; it was presented by famed singer James Blunt and brewer and beer sommelier Jaega Wise and basically was a home brewing contest in which the contestants, recruited from different European countries, had to brew several beer styles, with the prize being that the winning beer would be brewed and sold commercially. The Belgian contestants were, unsurprisingly perhaps as I have been following brewing activities in Belgium closely for years, not unknown to me: Hallelujah Brewery, a young 'bierfirma' in the city of Sint-Niklaas, the Eastern Flemish city where I was born many a moon ago. Their beers are developed at home but normally commercially brewed at Paenhuys - this one, however, won the contest and was subsequently made in larger volumes at Camden, an AB InBev brewery in London. I am not chauvinistic at all, but I cannot deny having felt a certain amount of pride when these sympathetic guys won - so I contacted them and they referred me to the HOPT website, where I bought a bottle of this winner. Produces a thick, foamy, creamy, membrane-lacing, yellowish pale beige head upon pouring, crowning a clear (filtered), dark coffee-mahogany brown beer with somewhat purplish tinge. Aroma of brown bread crust, dried prunes, croissants baked for too long, slightly burnt raisins, old dusty bags of grandma's brown sugar, nutmeg, hard caramel, sugared tea, hints of dried fig, dry autumn leaves, wet earth, gin. Sweetish onset, noticeable dark candi sugariness but nowhere cloying or outspokenly sugary so kept well in check, with some restrained banana-, pear- and fig-like fruitiness; lively carbonated but in a refined way, with smooth, rounded body. Brown-bready and hard-caramelly maltiness with vague cookie-like core, sweetish but again in a somewhat restrained way, even quickly shifting to a more coffee-like toasted bitterness which gets to dominate the end, especially when a leafy hop bitter element and, eventually, some lightly astringent 'jenever'-like alcohol come into play. The sweet part lingers a bit as well, with a retronasal impression of figs sprinkled with brown sugar and lingering caramelly maltiness, but the bitter part is well-developed and maintains balance in the overall flavour profile. In fact, this may be labelled a barleywine probably because that sounds relatively familiar to the mostly British audience of the show, but with the dark maltiness, brown sugar element and strong toasty-bitter portion, it comes much closer to a Scotch (wee heavy) in my book, as is the case with many other Belgian strong dark ales. Certainly not "Europe's next great beer" as the show wants us to believe, but not a bad beer by any means, enjoyable as a rich, hearty and toasty winter warmer, even if adding absolutely nothing to the 20th-century Belgian strong ale idiom. Too bad Camden found it necessary to filter it: making this bottle-conditioned would have retained so much more finesse and flavour... I congratulate Sven and Nicholas with their victory in the contest, but I also seize the opportunity to recommend them to take this recipe in their own hands and make a bottle-conditioned version of it for the local market in and around Sint-Niklaas. And when they do, I will make sure to return to my birthplace and get a few bottles, because the recipe is clearly a solid one. Cheers guys - I think there could not have been a more gratifying form of advertising than winning a television contest, use it to your advantage, I would say.

Rocky off white head left a spotty cover on a dark brown body. Malt, stewed fruit & sweet berry aroma. Medium to full bodied, velvety & soft with a clean back. Bitter, stewed fruit, jam, & lightly hopped tastes with a tangy finish. Nice.

Appearance- very dark brown, with a small foamy beige head. Aroma- caramel malt, biscuity hints, trace of raisin and dark fruit. Taste is sugary dark fruit, brown bread, sticky malt, caramel. Fizzy mouthfeel, short finish.

330ml bottle from Beer Hawk - Deep mahogany body, little short lasting head. Nose of stewed prunes and figs, lots of dark fruits. Taste of Christmas figs and dates, mellow dark cake fruit finish. It won that thing with James Blunt. Nice enough.

Pours unclear, darker blonde. Huge white head fades fairly fast. Scent is full on BE yeast, mild pine, stonefruit-pits. Woody hops. Taste is full, hot on phenols, malty. overcarbonated, milder on the hoparoma's.

Blonde quencher made for one of Sint-Niklaas' most renowned cafés ('t Hemelrijk) by a local 'bierfirma' operating in the kettles of nearby Paenhuys; 75 cl bottle with crown cap from Dranken De Moor. Egg-white, moussy, medium thick, stable head, clear orange golden robe, cloudy and more orangey-peach with sediment. Aroma initially dominated by sharp carbon dioxide but quickly shifting to impressions of moist white pepper, mugwort, straw, potato juice, rusk, dried lemon thyme, old orange peel, linseed, cooked green beans. Very fizzy carbonation in the mouth, but notably dryish in flavour, some hints of unripe apricot and apple peel, smooth body; white-bready malt core with sharper grainy edges but also a vague caramelly accent, remaining quite dry, the dryness even accentuated in the end by a very confident, long, rooty hop bitterness, wormwoody and floral, accompanied by slight accents of coriander seed and cooked green beans. Dry, leafy, long, bitter finish, much more so than average for a 'terrasjesblond' - this Hallelujah project clearly deliberately tries to veer away from the commercial Belgian clichés; not sure if this will be a huge success at the Hemelrijk café for that reason, but certainly a nice surprise. Needs some finetuning, but if this any indication of the general house style of this new client brewer, then I am really interested in trying their other beers too (and not just because I was born in Sint-Niklaas...).