Shared bottle at Cardinal, Stavanger. Pours hazy dark amber with dense off-white head. Aroma of caramel, dark bread, red berries, anise, pepper, yeast, cinnamon, boiled vegetables. Tastes sweet and slightly fruity-sour with balancing bitterness. Medium bodied.

330 ml bottle, Cardinal Pub & Bar, Stavanger. ABV is 7%. Gusher bottle, as typical for this brewery. Orange to amber colour, hazy with yeast floaties. Huge and coarse head, which eventually dies out completely. Probably infected. Yeasty aroma, smells infected. Better after a while in the glass, some dark dried fruits. The flavour is better, malts, caramel and brown sugar, but not too sweet. Some dark dried fruits again. Might be a good beer if they get control of the yeast in the bottle.

330ml bottle from Auchan. Pours a lightly misty gold, moderate white head. Aroma bears a light vanilla cream sweetness. Taste is is coconut cream, vanilla, harsh spice with some faint metallic notes on the finish, but tempered a by its soft sweetness. It’s ok I guess.

French spice beer with hemp, a clever way of trying to convey the idea of a marihuana beer without actually containing any THC, the chemical compound responsible for the psychoactive effect of the female flowers - a concept I have seen before (see e.g. Cannabier by Belgium’s Hopperd brewery) - thus handily getting around any legal objections concerning its production and distribution. Bottle under high pressure, but no gushing; towering high, bath foam-like head even with very careful pouring, loudly crackling, egg-white in colour and inches thick at first but eventually diminishing to some loose patches of bubbly foam in the middle and a medium thick, bubbly, loose head around the edge of the glass. Lightly hazy ’old gold’ colour with tiny, translucent bits of yeast everywhere and strings of small but lively bubbles here and there on the edges. Sharp aroma of a soapy, strong, bittersweet spiciness which much closer resembles gin spices (juniper berries!) or even gale than anything ’weed’-like, freshly cut nettles, pineapple, old abbey cheese, stewed red apples, melon, angelica, powder sugar or even some vanilla sugar, sweetbread, yellow kiwi, bread crust, baker’s yeast (subtly), ripe Doyenné pear, dry cookies, sweet sparkling white wine, fresh ginger, honey. Sharply overcarbonated onset, very minerally and unnecessarily souring, numbing the tongue completely at first, hiding an otherwise fruity profile, with a lot of sweet banana-flavored bubblegum ester next to hints of unripe plum, apricot and raw pineapple, subtly sourish but more sweetness than sourness, accentuated by residual white candi sugar sweetness sticking just a little bit to the palate. Mouthfeel is obviously coarsened by the strong overcarbonation. Pale malt sweetness in the middle with a sharper grainy edge, bready accent too, becoming stronger as the sediment is gradually added, enhanced by bready yeast effects; the white candi sugar and isoamylacetate sweetness lie on top of this and continue well into the finish, only to be countered by a lightly peppery, grassy and mildly earthy hop bitter touch in the end, but more so by that dominating, soapy, angelica- and juniper berry-like, perfumey spiciness in the end, both retronasally (strongly so, almost bath foam-like) and in pure flavor (as a soapy, resinous effect lingering after swallowing, becoming even wry and unpleasant in the very end). This may be spiced with hemp in some form or another, but honestly, I do not get anything even remotely cannabis-like out of this beer’s aroma or taste; there is a very strong spiciness for sure, dominating an otherwise stereotypical Belgian style blonde background, but it seems to have a lot more in common with juniper berries and other herbs or spices traditionally used in gin. This feature puts this beer close to e.g. Palm’s Arthur’s Legacy Hop(e)less Ginny and the like - and since I am one of the seemingly last people on the planet to utterly dislike gin and thus gin-flavored beers, I cannot say I enjoyed this beer. This gin-like spicing lends the finish a wry, unpleasant, astringent effect - not to mention the issue of the overcarbonation, even for a beer based on the ’Belgian blonde’ standard. No serious off-flavors or obvious technical flaws here (implying I may give this brewery another chance if I encounter one of their other beers), just not my cup of tea in terms of concept. Spice beers, explicitly advertized as such, rarely carry me away, I’m afraid: spices have always been used in beer of course and I have nothing against them per se, it’s just that when a beer is effectively profiled as a spice beer (usually themed around one single spice or herb), many brewers tend to go over the top and instead of adding it as a subtle hint, allow it to take over and overpower a beer which is otherwise fine in numerous cases. This one does just that - and, I repeat, with gin spicing rather than anything cannabis-related, in my experience.

Tåkete lys brun med lavt hvitt skum. Lukter sitron, korn og fudge. Middels fylde. Fruktig, søtlig, maltig smak. Kort.

Many thanks for this gluten-free beer to kevnic2008. 330ml bottle from Saveur Biere. Piwo ma spora i ciagla narastajaca piance, grubo ziarnistej. Utrzymuje sie dosc dlugo. W zapachu suszone porele i brzoskwinie. Smak mocno przegazowany, zbozowo melasowy, troche jakby syropu na kaszel. Wyraziste glownie slodowe ale dla mnie niezbyt smaczne. Dzieki tej piance piwo zalapalo sie na naciagana trojczyne.

330ml bottle. Murky, yellow-ish dark golden colour with small to average, frothy to macropore, half-way lasting, minimally lacing, snow-white head. Slightly fruity and minimally dusty yeasty aroma, hints of old yellow apples. Taste has notes of unfiltered apple juice, a minimally peppery spicy, yeasty touch.

Bottle from Saveur Biere. Clear yellow with a white head. Aroma is sweet, malty, herbal and moderate hoppy - grass. Flavor is medium sweet and moderate bitter. Dry and moderate bitter finish. 250916

F: white, big, hard to average retention. C: gold to light orange, hazy. A: malty, light fruity sour, apple, hint of basement, spicy. T: malty, peppery, apple, cellar tones, peach, medium body, white sugar, good carbonation, for Saison to sweet but not bad balanced overall, 0,33l bottle from Carrefour somewhere in west-north France.