September 2014: Shared 330 ml bottle as Petrus Gouden Tripel, at local tasting. Golden colour, white head. Pleasant aroma of spicy Belgian ale yeast, hints of kandij sugar and hops. Fizzy mouthfeel. Medium dry flavour, some spicy notes, decent hops, but not particularly complex.

Sample from bottle at Mandag i Annen, Cardinal, Stavanger. ABV is 8.0%. Blonde colour, large white head. Aroma and flavour of Belgian ale yeast, mild spices and white kandij sugar syrup. Moderate hops.

Tap. Bronze with garnet color, almost clear, pinkish-yellow foam. Aroma: sweet and sour, cherry and cherry jam, oak. Taste: sweet and sour, cherry jam, a little oak, quite good.

The latest in this series so far, a series surfing on the lasting popularity of cycling in Belgium, having kicked off with a basic blonde version back in 2010 already and only now beginning to expand. Vichy bottle from the Carrefour supermarket in Sint-Denijs-Westrem. Towering high, snow white, cobweb-lacing, very pillowy and foamy head slowly receding over a misty old golden beer with ochre-ish hue. Aroma of ripe banana, brioche bread, cheap calvados, industrial honey, green apple, something persistently cinnamon-like almost overpowering the obligatory coriander seed, white bubblegum, field flowers, grass, withering rucola, pineapple, pear, clove, rainwater. Sweet onset with a lot of banana ester (isoamylacetate), bubblegummy though this could admittedly have been even worse, with side elements of pear, pineapple and green apple; lively carbonation with minerally effect, piercing through a slick, smooth, cereally core doubtlessly 'filled' with white candi syrup - feeling too slick, too slender and bit 'empty'. Honeyish residual sugars sit on top of this and linger till deep into the finish, creating a general effect of overt sweetness; some phenolic clove passes by meanwhile, along with a light floral hoppiness (chamomile) but too little actual hop bitterness to my taste even for a 'commercial' tripel. An apple element (likely acetaldehyde) persists too, combining with the very obviously present, yet not overly harsh alcohol into a somewhat calvados-like effect in the very end. Boozy though tolerable as such especially seen the genre to which it belongs, but also too sweet, overcoriandered and too banana-forward - in other words, tasting like many other of the more 'macro-oriented' tripels in Belgium, and that includes Bavik's own Petrus Tripel. The existence of the latter makes me wonder what the 'raison d'être' of this completely redundant new tripel is, other than making money out of cycling amateurs who enjoy the cycling season in the Flemish Ardennes with a glass of tripel...

Bottle at De Gouveneur Maastricht clear gold colour lasting white head. Aroma isn't great. Flavour is ok. A Belgian blond beer. Spicy hoppy finish. Not much malt in the mouth . Spicy hops. Yeasty aroma. Its ok. Nothing amazing but it's ok. A Belgian blond i have drunk so many times. Some are better than others.

Bottle from Drankenhandel Leiden. Spicy peppery Belgian yeast, malt, light fruity, alcohol, hint of noble hop. Moderate bitter and medium sweet. Good Tripel.

can @ supermarket (antwerp)