beerfestival Marlou 2019

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

Friday 1st Feb 2019; 7th Pre-Brugge Bier Festival International Beer Swap, De Bierboom. This is one of the many bottles that landed on my table for me to try, it is OK to take a decent sized sample (within reason) because there are so many beers to share. Red hue to the hazy dark brown body, beige head that tried to hang around. Sweet and malty throughout with an aroma that told you what to expect in the taste; caramel and milk chocolate. It was fine, but there are so many good Dubbel Beers in Belgium already, this one doesn't quiet reach the heights of those.

Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7

2 February 2019. At Brugs Bierfestival. Cheers to tderoeck, 77ships, Jerre, Kevin & Anke! Hazy dark brown with a lasting, thin, foamy, tan head; little lacing. Aroma of caramel, candy even, raisin, candied plum, dough, brioche, toast, peanuts, milk chocolate, licorice. Taste is medium to heavy malty sweet, quite some caramel backed by accents of candied fruit, dough & milk chocolate; light to medium herbal bitterness counters that dominant sweetness, vague hints of green tea & cinammon battling with a spicy & yeasty character (coriander, clove). Dryish, herbal hoppy finish, but maltiness prevails with caramel & candied fruit, and a dash of warming liqueur alcohol. Medium body, creamy texture, fizzy to lively carbonation. Straightforward Belgian Dubbel that is agreeable to drink.

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

Imported from my RateBeer account as Remise Dubbel (by Remise 56):
Aroma: 6/10, Appearance: 3/5, Taste: 6/10, Palate: 3/5, Overall: 13/20, MyTotalScore: 3.1/5

2/II/19 - sample @ Brugs Bierfestival, BB: n/a - (2019-197) Thanks to the Belgian ratebeer crew for sharing todays' beers!
Clear dark brown to purple beer, creamy beige head, stable, bit adhesive. Aroma: very malty, lots of banana, sweet, caramel, hay, grains. MF: lively carbon, medium body. Taste: sweet start, lots of yeast, floral, soft bitterness, somewhat roasted. Aftertaste: ripe banana, malty, grains, hay, cow fodder.

Imported from untappd on 02-05-2020

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

The follow-up to Remise Tripel, again huge thanks to the brewer for filling me up a bottle straight from tap and to Christine for keeping it aside for me. Irregularly shaped, moussy, bubbly, thinnish, pale greyish beige head, quickly dissolving in the middle but more or less stable on the edge, over a lightly hazy, very dark but still fully translucent burgundy brown beer with deep ruby red hue under bright light. Aroma of molten candi sugar, candied dates, caramel sauce, banana mush, wet earth, honey, treacle, chocolate milk diluted with rainwater, pear syrup, some solvents (wood glue, varnish), liquorice, freshly fermented farmland, soaking wet brown bread, raisins, ginger powder, coriander seed, hints of beef broth, 'jenever' and even vague brandy. Sweet onset as expected, residual candi sugar sweetness but not too cloyingly so (strangely less cloying than in the tripel), actually relatively well balanced with estery sweetishness (banana, peach, stewed blue plum) and a deeper, dim sourishness underneath; carbonation is soft, which obviously has to do with the fact that this bottle has not been conditioned the way a dubbel would traditionally have been in this country - but for once, this feels as a relief, as many bottle-conditioned Belgian dubbels are overcarbonated as a result, distracting from the real flavours (which isn't always a bad thing now that I come to think of it, but anyway). The brown sugariness lingers over a slick, bit resiny, very smooth and supple, caramelly and cereally, lightly bready malt sweet body in the middle, while spicy phenols are released (the old Belgian cloves again) and a fairly confident hop bitterish character develops, with a leafy, earthy and slightly floral character, supported by a slightly soapy coriander touch. After all this has passed, though, a 'jenever'-like alcohol effect remains, not as harshly so as in the tripel, but still a bit wry and obnoxious and a bit too much so for its own good - and for a 7% ABV beer in general. The earthy, soil- and even somewhat manure-like yeast effects remain hanging around in the nose as well, but after swallowing, a pleasant breadiness lingers too, back in the throat. Not a bad attempt as such: very, very classical and stereotypical of course, this is a dubbel that could have been brewed in the exact same manner forty years ago, but seen that this was the brewer's intention and this brewpub is not about innovation whatsoever, this passes, apart from a few points of criticism. Quite badly hidden alcohol is one of them (though not as dramatically so as in the tripel), the 'stinky' earthy notes in the nose is another - and a tad less residual brown sugar sweetness would probably be an improvement as well. Can be successful locally in the Beringen region I assume, but from a nation-wide perspective, this would doubtlessly go lost among countless of other, similar sweet and earthy dubbels.

Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 4 | Overall - 6.5

The newest beer by Remise 56, a new brewpub in Limburg, an unfiltered pale lager with slightly above average alcohol strength. Huge thanks to the brewer for filling me up a bottle straight from tap - and to Christine for bringing it to me. Medium thick, eggshell white, hardly lacing, moussy head, quickly dissolving in the middle but well-retaining on the edge, over a cristal clear (in spite of allegedly being unfiltered), pale straw blonde beer with warmer golden hue, with some thin strings of visible sparkling here and there. Aroma of cold camomile tea and dried 'immortelles', straw, white bread, wet white paper, dry muesli, damp kitchen cloth, grass, fainter hints of green apple peel, sugarloaf, pear and moist white pepper. Neutral, indeed purely pale lager-like onset, sweetish 'cereally' but also 'green' graininess with a sourish edge, softly carbonated, slick and smooth, a tad oily. Minerally side notes accompany a simply continued sweetish-and-slightly-sourish graininess with a rounder cereally note in the middle, vaguely metallic around the edges as well, leading to a 'greener' coloured finish in which a floral, grassy hoppiness comes through, providing retronasal impressions of old dried field flowers and straw, as well as a late but in this case effective and welcoming, spicy, slightly wormwood-like bitterness on the root of the tongue, pleasantly lingering in the throat after swallowing. Feels quite genuine and sufficiently hopped to deserve the 'Pilsener' moniker (as opposed to standardized, industrial pale lager) and free of flaws, which is anything but simple for a small brewery, technically speaking - though the question arises if this is actually brewed on the spot, as bottom fermentation (as this beer clearly is) is not that self-evident for a small artisanal brewery... Whatever the case, this qualifies as a very old-fashioned kind of 'Belgian Pilsener' the way they were made forty or fifty years ago by more producers than is the case now; the hop bitterness is well-developed in the finish, almost reminiscent of larger scale northern German Pilseners, an 'eastern' influence that can be felt in some other old school 'Limburgian' lagers as well. In its respective style, this performs a whole lot better than the tripel, that much is clear. Not a beer for geeks obviously, but worth a try for those on a trip in Limburg passing by this new brewpub and in that sense certainly recommended over the familiar industrial pale lager brands.

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

The first beer from this new brewpub in Koersel near Beringen (Belgian Limburg), still in the process of becoming available bottled, but the brewer was kind enough to offer a sample from tap and bottle it for me - many thanks for that, and to Christine for fetching me this, along with the two other beers from this brewery. Lightly and irregularly lacing, medium thick, off-white, moussy head, slowly dissipating to a thin veil in the middle but retaining on the edges, over a deep and warm, very pure 'old gold' coloured beer, clear but with small flakes of yeast floating here and there. Aroma of banana-flavoured candy, apple juice and ripe red apple, chewing gum, melting powder sugar, hard caramel candy touch, plastic, damp cloth, dry cookies, young 'jenever', coriander seed, fainter impressions of frying oil, Turkish delight, children's coughing syrup, cloves, raw potato juice, freshly cut grass, field flowers, very old white dessert wine, faint and gradually diminishing DMS (cooked green cabbage) and, somewhere, a very vague touch of bitter garden herbs. Fruity, sweet onset, lots of residual white candi syrup sweetness, even cloying a little bit, very heavy on the banana and bubblegum ester, apple-like acetaldehyde almost equally strong, peachy and pineapple-like aspects somewhere but also in a 'candied', notably sweet kind of way; carbonation is soft as expected - this sample not having been bottle conditioned - with a very slick, bit resiny, oily mouthfeel. The sweetness continues over a very cereally, resiny middle, a bit grainy on the one hand and caramelly on the other hand, while some soft spicy phenols (cloves, very vague liquorice) develop retronasally. Finishes with a dash of soapy coriander, something plastic-like, a late and brief floral and grassy hop bitter accent and quite a lot of not very well masked, somewhat wry, wodka-like alcohol - while that residual sweetness remains, and lingers in my throat along with that astringent alcohol for quite a long time. I can imagine this working well on a local level, served cold to 'day tourists' with their meals, but for me, this did not work out too well, very sorry about that: the alcohol should be much better hidden, a more confident dosis of bittering hops would not hurt, the DMS (however faint) is there, and this amount of sugary sweetness is over the top even for a classically conceived, old school Belgian tripel - or 'edelbier', with which this beer seems to have more in common than with 'true' tripel. I nevertheless wish Remise 56 a lot of success, and I will be happy to revisit this beer after a prolonged period of bottle conditioning, as bottles of it are on their way.

Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 5 | Texture - 4 | Overall - 4

Draught Small white rim over metallic golden beer. Rosewater, frangipane, alcoholic nose. Sweet and old bread, oxydized, old grains, solvent. Light, slick, chemical filled impression. Awful.