6.5/10
—
Appearance 4
Aroma 7
Flavor 7
Texture 6
Overall 7
Hobby brew from - if I am not mistaken - a member of the Gentse Biervereniging originally brewed at Wilde Brouwers, also in Ghent; I am however unsure if this is still brewed there, as this hobby brewer has also worked with both Verzet and Broers. Anyway, I visit the city of Ghent a lot and have seen this name pass by regularly but I’m glad I can finally taste it in controlled circumstances - at home at my tasting table, that is. Comes from a 37.5 cl ’geuze’ bottle, bought at De Moor in Haasdonk, so almost thirty miles from Ghent city; older bottle, of about one year and two months of age. Lots of pressure on the bottle during opening but no gusher. Frothy, egg-white, audibly fizzing, very moussy head leaving a thin ’membrane’ of lacing and slowly dissolving, leaving behind a steady, thick moussy rim and thin patches of foam in the middle, over a lightly hazy, warm orange blonde beer with near-amberish hue, hazed by a ’fog’ of tiny yeast bits throughout; adding the sediment results in a very murky, ochre-tinged orange blonde robe, too murky actually to remain attractive to the eye. Aroma initially suffers a bit from the dreaded, ammonia-like ’lightstruck’ effect (skunked) so I guess it must have been sitting on this shop’s shelves for a bit too long, but I know from mere experience that this effect tends to fade away, and after this has happened and the beer has been allowed to ’breathe’ for a while, more flattering impressions appear: warm toast, dried apricot, egg yolk, banana but no overt bubblegum, unsweetened home made tomato sauce somewhere, fresh grass, bitter honey, dried apricot, fried turkey, cloves, dried orange peel, very slightly rusty and chicken soup-like oxidation already lurking in the background, sugared fried apples, cooked carrot, ginger powder, carrot, bread crust, sweet clover, old dry biscuit, dried wormwood leaves, hints of dry earth, gin, powder sugar, pineapple, cheap brandy, very vague burning rubber (DMTS?). Fruity onset, very ’Belgian’ in combining the banana ester (isoamylacetate) with residual sugary sweetness, but almost countered by a deeper but very superficial background sourishness of redcurrant, raw pumpkin flesh and green gooseberry, whilst adding some peach and pineapple notes; minerally aspects join a medium to strong carbonation, I guess the aim may have been to achieve a geuze-like sparkling effect, but this is a lot more coarse, impairing an otherwise smooth, bit resiny mouthfeel. The fruity esters continue over a ’soil’ of bread crust- and eventually soggy sandwich-like maltiness with a cleanly, sweetish caramelly edge to it, accentuating the somewhat resiny effect and becoming more pronounced and sweeter towards the finish - but before it gets the chance to become too sweet, gets overruled by an indeed (to Belgian ale standards) fairly generous amount of drying, effectively bittering, herbal, floral and earthy ’noble’ hops, with the floral notes modestly rising up retronasally but receiving stiff competition from a considerable amount of spicy - if not eventually a bit medicinal - phenols. Ends quite juicy with this spicy hoppiness alongside, facilitated in the end by a warming, notably young ’jenever’-like alcohol effect which heats up the back of the tongue but does not become obnoxiously astringent in the end. Yeasty phenolic notes go down together with the earthy hop bitterness and fruity esters. The intentions here were doubtlessly good: pumping up a classic Belgian tripel (or indeed Wallonian-style ’ambrée’) with more ’noble’ hops, resulting in something ’strong saison’-ish, which cannot be a bad thing; I did, however, happen to stumble on an older bottle, already showing the first signs of oxidation. I remember having a chat with the brewer at the Gentse Biervereniging’s Nieuwjaarsreceptie and he seemed to be a knowleadgable guy in terms of beer, so all things considered, I need to find a fresh bottle of this in order to rate it properly - I’m going to pay special attention to it next time I’m in Ghent, and will revert to this soon. As for now: deceptively dryish but actually a sweeter-side tripel distinguishing itself in that particular sub-sub-segment by a more generous, primarily floral hop dosage, tasted from a sample that was probably too old already. Nice first attempt from this Laatste Drinker, though.
Tried
from Can
on 02 Jun 2017
at 19:50