6/III/22 - 25cl bottle from Geers (Oostakker), shared @ home, BB: 22/VII/23 12:01, LA04220721B (2022-234)

Clear pale yellow beer, huge creamy soapy white head, extremely stable, continually fed by lots of small streams of tiny bubbles in the glass. Aroma: smells like a lager, malty, grains, bit grassy, herbal, hint of citrus, but no more than that. A bit faint. MF: lively carbon, medium to light body. Taste: good herbal bitterness up front, hint of lemon and grapefruits, more on the grassy side, slightly fruity. Aftertaste: dry, very bitter, grassy, tastes more like a decent German pilsener rather than an IPA or IPL...

33cl can from a trade with JefVerstraete, thanks! A almost clear yellow golden beer with a white head. Aroma of apricot, citrus and peach. Taste of apricot, grapefruit, bitter stone fruits, moderate bitterness.

lol

Bouteille 33cl, BB 15/03/2023.
Couleur rosée, col épais crémeux rosé.
Arôme oscille entre le fruité de la myrtille - grenade bcp plus discrète - rétro adouci de grains, retour herbacé du thym.

Palais garde l'approche d'une belgian strong - cela se ressent au niveau des malts - pâle, pils le tout est agrémenté d'un caractère fruité plutôt bien ficelé et qui change de l'habituelle 'rouge' belge.
Ici, une petite pointe de thym apporte un côté herbacé qui tranche bien avec le fruité. Cependant, le fini reste assez doux/sucré voire un peu trop et donne ce côté industriel au fruit. Fini trop sucré, quasi collant aux lèvres et qui tend à me rappeler les autres rouges sucrées.

Imperial lager - the craft beer equivalent of those dreary, cheap strong pale lagers aimed at alcoholics - as interpreted by this progressive Hainaut brewery. Medium sized, off-white, stable, lightly lacing head on a hazy peach blonde beer with deep, almost amberish tinge. Aroma of old biscuit, rusk, dried flowers, 'jenever' - even 'perzikjenever', fried tomato peel, dust, hay - clearly showing some signs of ageing already. Sweetish but clean onset, touch apricot, green melon, medium carb with minerally effect; slick caramelly and bit old cracker-like pale maltiness, more bread-crusty in the end, with sweet melon- and even mandarin-like fruitiness coming up. The hops provide a pleasantly grassy bitterness, but are quickly overshadowed by jenever-like booziness, which nevertheless - unexpectedly - behaves quite decently. Less harshly boozy than feared, an interesting idea to 'pimp' the utterly depressing Euro pale strong lager style, but still a bit on the crude side. Must have been better when fresh, too.

On notera la tentative intéressante de la brasserie du Borinage de réaliser une Imperial Lager. Côté résultat, je reste plus dubitatif. Mais pousser une Lager qui de base, n'est pas extrêmement aromatique ou complexe, peut difficilement donner un résultat plus accompli. Le visuel est sur un blond orangé voilé surmonté d'une mousse blanche de 3 mm. Le nez est simple, malté avec du fruit (abricot, pêche). L'attaque est sur un duo alcool, et épices. Le ressenti de l'alcool n'est pas à 10 %, avec un alcool qui manque de tension et d'énergie (comme il peut l'être sur des quadruple). La deuxième bouche est légèrement plus amère (cette dernière restant modérée avec 35 d'IBU, à noter l'utilisation de summit, hallertau blanc et mandarina bavaria) mais sans que les arômes se développent. On reste sur un ensemble malté avec quelques épices. Un concentré de Lager en quelques sort. L'arrière bouche, d'une corpulence mesurée n'apporte rien de plus. Le final prend tout de même un peu plus d'ampleur mais sans nous faire vibrer. Un alcool plus vivace serait nécessaire.

@ The Monkeys, Mons. Hazy dark amber colour, white creamy foam. Earthy, citrussy, yeasty with notes of tropical fruit. Rather bitter taste with an earthy character. Too much carbonation.

25/VII/21 - 33cl bottle from Geers (Oostakker), shared @ home, BB: 10/II/23, LB4100221B (2021-679)

Clear deep dark red brown beer, big aery irregular fizzy beige head, unstable, falls down quickly, bit adhesive. Aroma: good roast, sweet malts, caramel, some overripe banana, lots of chocolate. MF: ok carbon, medium body. Taste: very roasted, bit malty, pretty bitter, sweet touch, lots of alcohol, some caramel malts, coffee notes. Aftertaste: lots of dark chocolate, bitter, alcohol, caramel, malts, lovely stuff!

Spiced Belgian strong blonde (which to me is basically always synonymous with tripel to some degree, but I am sure many traditional Belgian beer drinkers will disagree on this), created for the catering business in Mons by Borinage, executed in the kettles of Ça Brasse Pour Moi. Slow gusher but with enough patience, it was no problem to open it without any significant loss. Audibly crackling, egg-white, thickly moussy, large-bubbled but tightly knit and very stable head resting atop a hazy orangey-peach blonde beer with ochre-ish edges - looking quite nice, in all. Aroma of spice bread and indeed some star anise (actually used), coriander seed (dito) and dried orange peel (also dito), over impressions of old peanuts, unripe peach, 'pepernoot' (all that spice again), apple peel, dried flowers, old 'herbes de Provençe' (strongly so), roses, faint hints of ginger powder, hand soap, ripe pear when warming up. Very fizzy onset, lots of 'foaming' carbonation but fine-bubbled enough to avoid painful stinging - yet still detracting from the fruity notes of dried apricot and unripe peach, remaining relatively restrained in sweetness; bready, bit peanutty and old-rusk-like maltiness, quite full, drenched in spicing with - luckily only light - spicy wryness towards the end from star anise and dried orange peel, while the coriander adds a touch of soapiness, and eventually gets the last word of those three added ingredients. The orange peel, however, brings some aromatic 'fraîcheur', while the star anise comes across as a bit astrigent in the end, amplifying the already quite confident, leafy, dried citrus peel-like, bit wormwoody hop bitterness. Some sweetish peach and pear fruitiness also linger in the end, while the alcohol remains well hidden. Quite a typical Belgian tripel, but with the spiciness taken up a notch and with a more confident, powerful hop bitterness than is averagely the case - a feature I have often observed in Walloon ales lately. Not too bad, in all, but I am quite sensitive to over-using the spice rack and this one at least flirts with it - and thus with imbalance as a result.

Double IPA hopped with two classics in the New World hop department, Amarillo and Citra; can from Drink Malpaix in Walcourt. Egg-white, moussy, membrane-lacing, dense and stable head, misty deep golden robe with pale orangey hue, initially clear but turning hazy with sediment - clearly the looks of an old school West Coast DIPA and nowhere near a NEDIPA. Aroma of dandelion, mugwort and other bitter weeds, unripe peach, old bread crust, dry hay, white pepper, rusk, touch green olive. Dry, unripe-fruity onset, green banana and unripe peach, medium carbonation; smooth and bit oily body, dry cereally and bread-crusty maltiness, grainy even, bittered by a leafy, old grapefruit peel-like, wormwoody hoppiness providing a lingering spiciness and rootiness that dries the entire finish. The alcohol remains perfectly hidden. Not very convincing if you ask me: this feels like a more-than-average dry and bitter tripel rather than a true IPA; this happens all the time in Belgium when brewers, big and small, attempt to create IPAs for the sheer marketing value of the term, but I must honestly say that I was expecting Borinage to pull it off. Work afoot here - but if consumed as a dry tripel or hoppy 'edelbier', you will probably be much less disappointed.