5.8

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

Hazy IPA from a new client brewer located in a submunicipality of Dolembreux in the Liège province and operating in the kettles of 3 Florins, in itself a young and still largely unknown microbrewery. Thick and frothy, off-white, quite coarse and large-bubbled, hardly lacing, loosely knit head dissolving gradually into a thin and interrupted ring over a misty 'old golden' beer with apricot hue and fine strings of bubbles rising up from the bottom, turning fully hazy and deeper orangey-tinged further on. Aroma of ripe papaya, stale orange juice, strong band aid and other 'clinical' phenols, old urine even, ripe pear, soggy sandwiches, honey, fermenting apple juice, oatmeal porridge, armpit sweat, banana. Sweetish onset, fruity in an estery way and not so much from hops, banana, overripe melon and pear, minerally carbonation, slick body; rounded and soft edges of oat and sharper graininess from spelt and - almost astringently even - buckwheat join a soft bready barley malt core with a slight biscuity touch, all increasingly bittered by a rather earthy, floral and grassy hoppiness which does add a whiff of citrusiness somewhere, though not as brightly as any contemporary IPA should display - and sadly losing its battle against that strong and off-putting 'band aid' effect from overly dominant and unpleasant 'clinical' phenols. Ends dry, dirty and a bit 'dusty', with a leafy, earthy bitterness lingering - rather than the bright, tropical sweet-fruity aromas and mild bitterness a NEIPA should have. As I feared, these guys are clearly not up to the task (yet): this is nowhere close to a successful NEIPA, with too much bitterness, not nearly enough tropical hop fragrance, not enough creaminess, not the right carbonation and, worse than all these things combined, a very strong band aid effect that kept putting me off through the whole session. I would recommend these Lumberjack Brewers to learn to brew a technically solid beer first - do another blonde or tripel if you must, before dabbling into something as challenging and sophisticated as a NEIPA. Feels like it was concocted by some amateur in his kitchen - and frankly, I have not tasted anything by 3 Florins themselves so far, but this first glimpse of what their kettles produce, is not quite promising to say the least (but I admit I have no idea to which extent the guest brewers are responsible). Technically flawed and hard to digest because of those clinical odours: I cannot but give a meagre score here, I am afraid...