Ein Beschiss das Schweizerkreuz, das Bier aber ok

Bottle shared, golden beer, small head. Aroma is yeast, malt, spice. Taste the same, yeast, spice, peppery, malt, what a yeast bomb... drinkable

Probable presence of Cara malt or equivalent given the color and taste. Unfortunately, it's almost obliterating the Cascade and Citra hops...

Belgian strong blonde from the Savoie region in eastern France, many thanks to Stéphane for the bottles! Thick and foamy, pillowy, egg-white, dense and rocky head, lacing in thick patches but eventually thinning and opening over a crystal clear, warm and pure 'old gold' coloured beer with lots of fine sparkling. Aroma of baked banana, 'honingwafels', fried red apple, powder sugar, cooked sweet potato, tulips, stewed white celery with sugar sprinkled over it, cooked paksoi, chewing gum, pronounced iron (iron pipes - likely head stabilizer and unambiguously proven by the 'hand test' as well), caramel, candyfloss, rubber, and, heavily draped over it all, that 'cooked cloth' smell of pasteurization. Sweet onset, lots of banana ester, very bubblegummy, mingled with hints of fried apple and candied apricot, medium carbonation (actually on the soft side for the intended style); white candi syrup sweetness moves on over a slick, slender cereally maltiness with slight caramelly edge but also 'hot', indicating pasteurization, the typical odour of which reappears retronasally. A layer of residual honeyish sugariness rests on top, with no intentions to withdraw in the finish, where the banana, sugars and some floral hops linger - the latter incapable of providing sufficient bitterness. Meanwhile that metallic iron effect manifests itself on the edges, and apart from a pleasant flowery note in the end, the finish adds little else than a warming, wodka-like alcohol effect, becoming a tad wry on the tongue, if only in the very end; a very vague DMS (overcooked cauliflower) seems to appear there as well, but fortunately of very short duration. An 'edelbier' indeed, an attempt at creating something largely Duvel-like, but in a somewhat simplistic, crude and semi-industrial way - the pasteurization bothered me here, even more so than the iron effect or the rather monotonous residual sweetness. Feels like a late twentieth-century Duvel epigone, but one of those overly sweet and unrefined ones, like e.g. Alken-Maes' Judas of the time (not sure if that still exists, haven't seen it around in years). Not good, but considering the non-beery region it comes from, still acceptable for what it is; the average Belgian palate, rooted in the previous century, will surely be able to appreciate this as a kind of exotic 'streekbier' more than I do.