5.6

Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 5 | Texture - 4 | Overall - 6.5

20 June 2025. “Iets voor den Erwin” @ Dracuna. Cheers to the whole GBV crew! Bottle from Hopduvel.

Old cold coffee, coffee pads, toast, blackcurrant, damp chestnut, mouldy leaves. Infected berries in the taste clashing immediately with a fizzy carbonation, some coffee pad, mouldy chestnut and dust. Earthy hops in the finish, lingering coffee dregs and sour berries. Ongoing fizzy carbonation. Hardly any redeeming qualities other than "it was worth the try and there's worse out there". But still, so messy and infected.

6.3

Appearance - 7 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 5.5 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 6

The ‘original’ modern Ghent city brewery, Gruut, now housed adjacent to the renewed Baudelo park in Ghent, has a longstanding habit of creating unique one-offs under the ‘Maîtresse’ flag; I had several of these in the past years, but honestly I have no idea at all how many different ones have been created so far, must be many dozens, but even the brewery itself was unable to provide an exhaustive list upon request. This is one of several stout-inspired variants so far though admittedly the 'Maîtresse' mention is not present; whatever the case, it is flavoured with chestnut, not such a crazy idea as it may seem, seen how Italian microbrewers have been dabbling with this ingredient already in the late nineties (with various results). Thanks nathanvc for sharing this one. Medium thick, rocky, irregular, pale beige, ‘plastery’ lacing head over a dark bronze beer with mahogany-brown glow. Aroma of wild blackberries, elderberries straight from the bush, wet old caramel candy, beech nuts rather than chestnuts, forest floor, brown bread crust, milk gone sour, dried mushrooms, dark green tree leaves, old coffee grounds, old liquorice candy. Estery onset, lactic too so clearly infected – by the added chestnuts, I presume; again impressions of wild blackberries and elderberries, vague pear, fizzy carb, smooth body. Caramelly core with brown-bready edges, notably nutty too in a ‘dirty’ way – again, wild beech nuts and hazelnuts harvested from a damp forest floor in autumn rather than the sweetness I was expecting from chestnut. Quite dirty, messy finish, very earthy, ‘mouldy’, with bitter coffee grounds and earthy hops mingling with that ‘milky’, dull put persisting sour effect. Infected, dirty and leafy ‘sour stout’ of sorts – unintentionally sour, that is. This should have been clean, oily and bittersweet but feels nothing like a present-day stout of any kind, more an infected, homebrewed attempt at dubbel… Clearly this could not have been the intention. More often than not, these Gruut one-offs are weird, technically flawed and missing their target – this is one of those cases again.

5.9

Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 5.5

Draft at waterfront ale house. Poured a coppery brown. malt & yeast etc. A bit of a schlog but not bad.

6

#historical LCI

6

#gruut #historical

5.6

Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 5 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 5.5

Bottle at home. Aroma is grainy malt, bread, yeast, spicy notes. Flavour is moderate to medium sweet. Curious touch of creaminess there. Body is medium. Fairly bland, there is much better Belgian Blond out there.