Sweet, sugary, malty, alcohol, jammy, apples

Sourish, lemon, white wine, oak, woody, tannins

Lichtgeel vrij helder bier met weinig schuim. Smaak is fruitig fris en vrij zoet met iets van champagne, wat druif en meloen. Aparte maar degelijke smaak. Heel geslaagd wat mij betreft

Donkergeel bier met mooie schuimkraag. Smaak is licht bitter hoppig en kruidig met ietwat rook, wat bloemen en iets hout achtigs. Heel bijzondere maar interessante smaak.

Lichtbruin bier met schuim wat snel wegzakt. Smaak is krachtig en bitterzoet met iets van banaan, wat karamel en een heel licht rooksmaak.

#quad

Creamy white good mostly lasting head. Amber colour. Moderate malty and hoppy and yeasty aroma. Moderate bitter flavor. Average moderate bitter fnish. Creamy palate.

Creamy white good mostly lasting head. Yellow colour. Moderate malty and hoppy and yeasty aroma. Moderate bitter flavor. Average modeerate bitter finish. Oily palate.

One of the three first beers commercialized by the new Grimbergen microbrewery, erected with money from owner Carlsberg and used as a kind of 'taste lab' under their supervision; refermented with wine yeast, which is strange, since the moniker 'brut' in Belgian context usually refers to champagne yeast (forget about any connections with brut IPA or other contemporary American 'brut' beers though - there aren't any). Thanks tderoeck for the bottle! Towering high, egg-white, foamy, regularly shaped, densely creamy, tightly plaster-like lacing head on a persistently crystal clear and therefore clearly filtered, straw blonde beer with 'metallic' golden glow and some strings of sparkling in the middle - looking almost Duvel-like. Aroma of unripe Conference pear, green apple, fresh white bread dough, pineapple, acacia honey, ripe green melon, fresh peppermint leaf, dust, white demi-sec wine, bubblegum, Pineau de Charentes, banana peel, industrial sweet cider, freshly ironed cotton cloth (pasteurization?), clove. Sweet onset, ripe red apple and ripe pear, hints of pineapple and green melon with a dash of banana, lively carbonated but not too numbing, rounded and bit glueish mouthfeel but still feeling more slender than I would expect at this ABV. Lots of residual powder-sugariness, honeyish in the end, combining with the fruitiness in an effect that more closely resembles honeydew melon than grapes; the malt part remains thin and cereally, slick and clearly 'pumped up' with white candi sugar. A slight vinous effect sets in towards the finish, in a sweet or demi-sec-like way, as if drinking a wine-based apéritif (like Pineau) especially when an afterglow of effectively Pineau-like alcohol comes into play. A light fruity-sourish effect, with some imagination connectable with sweet white grapes, runs underneath, but does not succeed in sufficiently countering the residual honeydew and even candyfloss-like sweetness that dominates this beer - and that began to bother me after a few sips already. This 'Magnum Opus' is hopefully not really this brewery's magnum opus because otherwise I do not think I will keep track of what they do - my sympathy, when it comes to non-trappist monasteries brewing on their own premises, would rather go to Braxatorium Parcensis instead, more than twenty miles further east. I do get the wine yeast idea - this beer sure has that typical sweet maltotriose flavour as a result of leftover sugars unfermentable by wine yeast - but in this form, everything has been kept very sleek and accessible, lacking in the phenols a typical wine yeast could and would produce if managed differently; I also recommend owner Carlsberg to ditch the word 'brut' in the name as this only creates wrong expectations (see many of the ratings below for that). Too sweet, one-dimensional and 'empty' for me, in spite of its considerable alcohol content; maybe I just had too many of these 'inflated' strong Belgians in my lifetime. I do understand the appeal this beer may have among Belgian beer lovers in general, though, but it is not my cup of tea.