7.1/10
—
Appearance 7
Aroma 7
Flavor 7.5
Texture 7
Overall 7
The latest beer to date that made it from BBP's experimental 'pool' into the mass consumption circuit - apparently an intentionally unassuming Belgian style blonde hopped with Magnum, Merkur and the famed Sorachi Ace. Bottle from the Delhaize Watersportbaan in Ghent. Medium thick, 'Brugse kant'-like lacing, off-white, disparately breaking but generally well-retaining head over a misty straw blonde beer with vague khaki tinge. Aroma of moldy lemon peel, raw radish, leftover dough, potato mash of four days old, lemonbalm, freshly crushed unripe gooseberries, oxidised green apple slices, lemon thyme, sweat, milk gone sour. Fairly crisp onset, green apple flesh, unripe pear and some green banana, some unripe pineapple perhaps, enlivened by sharpish, very active carbonation adding notes of sparkling water-like minerality; smooth, yet thinnish pale malt sweetish core, cereally and simplistic, with ongoing 'green' fruitiness, some very thin sweetishness (unripe banana) and growing aromatic hoppiness, the latter eventually providing retronasal notes of withering leek, freshly cut grass and indeed hints of lemonbalm (Merkur) and fresh dill (Sorachi Ace - but very weakly so). Finishes dryingly hop bitter but moderately zesty, simple and straightforward - this whole beer indeed feels very (read: sloth-like) 'lazy' especially considering what BBP has produced in all those years... Like Jopen and Heineken-owned Uiltje in the Netherlands (see Albert Heijn), it seems this brewery was intentionally aiming to come up with an ordinary Belgian blonde to sell through supermarkets to a large audience. If this was indeed the intention, I would have opted for a more citrusy, more bright and less divisive hop variety than Sorachi Ace, but I guess this is BBP's way to try and distinguish themselves from the macro brewers... This beer is okay, I guess, but I am not at all convinced that their strategy worked and frankly, they have done so many lovely things in the past years that this to me is an definite disappointment, even if technically there is nothing wrong with it. It kind of hurts to see even BBP, once one of Belgium's most diligent advocates of the 'new' global beer culture, succumb to the demand of the non-evolved average Belgian beer consumer.
Tried
on 14 Dec 2023
at 09:06