Thick creamy beige head stayed well on an murky reddish orange body. Aroma of spice, orange, zest & Belgian yeast. Full bodied with a slight tingle & soft back. Well balanced tastes of brief malt to the fore followed by orange, bitter pith, spice & a heavy hit of Belgian yeast and a long hoppy tangy finish.

Pours black medium sized tanned head. Smell is mild coffee, not very intense. Taste is tad bitter, coffee, sharp, bit metallic. Very roasty, tad unbalanced. Mild stickyness ( too much roasted malts ) . Tad thin, high carbo. Meh...

Imported from my RateBeer account as De Laatste Drinker Dukus Bear (by De Laatste Drinker):
Aroma: 7/10, Appearance: 4/5, Taste: 7/10, Palate: 3/5, Overall: 13/20, MyTotalScore: 3.4/5

23/II/18 - 33cl bottle @ Kantien (Gent) - BB: 8/XII/19 (2018-204)

Clear dark brown beer, small creamy beige head, pretty stable, non adhesive. Aroma: bit sweet, alcohol, vanilla touch, sweet, caramel, some nail polish. MF: soft carbon, medium body. Taste: pretty roasted, sweet, banana peel, alcohol, spicy, pretty bitter. Aftertaste: bitter, roasted, dry, some cocoa powder, spicy touch.

Ghent is now home to a bunch of enthusiastic and creative young craft brewers (most of which do not have an own brewery yet) and it seems De Laatste Drinker, hitherto only known from Ne Veurvechter which is fine but not stellar, is now upping the ante with this spiced imperial porter. Found a bottle of this at some health food shop in Ghent, thanks Goedele for this one. Thick and moussy, very regularly shaped, creamy, deeply beige head over a near to black beer with hazy chestnut brown edges. Aroma indeed of strong cardemom seeds, embedded in hints of espresso, a lot of bitter black chocolate, toasted peanuts, brown bread, black peppercorns, toffee, leather, dried plums and an elegant touch of vanilla. Sweet onset, candied dates, dried banana, balanced by a sourish undertone of roasted barley; medium to softish carbonation, thick and creamy, full, oily mouthfeel. Very pleasant, deep, generous caramelly and chocolatey malt body, thick as it ought to be, perfectly balanced bittersweet with more and more coffee bitterness in the finish. This coffee aspect, aromatic and elegant as it is, becomes soon overshadowed by the cardemom, but the vanilla - which I was fearing would have disappeared completely, delicate as it usually is - comes up in the very end, eventually even quite pronounced, but in a genuine, subtle way, beautifully fitting in with the rest. Ends with this delicate spiciness, thick caramelly and nutty maltiness and warming, whisky-like alcohol. Bold, classy, rich and packed with flavour, I honestly did not see this one coming - if this is the direction Laatste Drinker is opting for, I can only conclude that he will and already does deserve his place among the ranks of Totem and Hedonis. One to watch - and to think that I normally do not passionately love cardemom, or even explicitly spiced beers in general...

Draught @ Tilburg Bierfestival 2017. Clear dark orange to amber color, average sized white to off-white head. Smell and taste malts, a bit alcoholic, orangepeel tart bitter. Hmm I don’t like it very much. Not really my kind of beer.

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.

Bouteille de 33cl, merci Tderoeck. BB 16/09/2020. Couleur orange, col beige. Arôme au nez assez moyen, étant donné la description, retrouve des effluves portant pas mal les marques d’une base BE typique avec un grain et levure renforcés. Houblonné reste aussi éloigné de ce côté ’extra hop’ pour n’apparaitre que finement fruité et fleuri tirant fort sur le noble. Palais est malté pils, cara pâle, avec un alcool qui se ressent bien, grains avec un profil de levure persistant en fin de bouche. Retrouve un aspect pomme verte voire caramélisée avec impression d’abricot. Le tout est collant aux lèvres, autre signe de sucré résiduel pour monter l’alcool. Fini léger sur l’amertume avec une pointe de citron.

Dark golden colour with lasting head. Aroma and flavour have pleasant caramel maltiness with well balanced hop dryness.