Thai stout flavoured with cocoa, from a can my girlfriend brought all the way from Thailand - cheers to Goedele! Thick and frothy, yellowish beige, cobweb-lacing, pillowy, stable head over a very dark mahogany brown beer, virtually black but not entirely. Aroma of toasted brown bread, wood ashes, cocoa but only in a bitter and unsugared black chocolate kind of way, hints of liquorice, black pepper, iron, dried tree leaves, old tea bags, coffee grounds. Dry and clean onset, very classically dry stout-like with little to no sweetness (other than perhaps a very light caramelly malt sweetish touch); hints of burnt currants and ashes in a fizzily carbonated but somewhat thin body. Roasted-nutty, toasted-brown-bready middle with growing coffee grounds-like bitterness, supported further by something iron-ish and herbal hops, which stretch out long into the finish; slightly powdery with nice ongoing roasted bitterness, probably enhanced by the cocoa, which otherwise remains all but invisible. I would, in any case, not have been able to pick it out if I had not known of its presence in advance, but other than that, this is a very decent dry stout - though I find the "wintery" element on the label difficult to associate with a tropical country like Thailand...

Geuze made by Boon for Prik & Tik, the ubiquitous beverage buying group erected in 1984, now dominating drinks stores all over Belgium; this one contains very specific proportions of one, two and three year old lambics with the two year old constituting the larger part (62%). Praiseworthy in this case is that these proportions are detailed on the label - and that apparently the bottles were only released after four years of maturing at the brewery. Gusher so be ware when opening. Medium sized, off-white, tightly knit, slowly breaking and receding but otherwise well-retaining head lacing in small dots over an apricot-golden robe with metallic orangey tinge, lots of visible sparkling and also lots of small, pale beige protein flakes being carried upwards by the sparkling and then swirling down again like snow - a sight I was not quite expecting to be honest, and probably related to the gushing. Aroma of lime juice, unripe orange, lemon rind, dry old wood, horseblanket, pickled cucumber, wet concrete, dried nettles, touch freshly fermented farmland, rainwater hint, wild lingonberries, wood sorrel, dusty dry earth. Lemony and very lime juice-like onset, sour in a good way - crisp, citrusy and bright, with some green plum, gooseberry and wild unripe blackberry accents ensuing, in a well-carbonated environment - though perhaps just a tad less 'champenoise' than I am used to from Boon geuzes. Smooth core, bready, under a 'green' citric sourness with lactic edges, lemony flavours and woody tannins unfolding fully in the finish; retronasal horseblanket funkiness and slight petrichor and earthy aromas appear there as well, adding some complexity. Unripe stonefruit, gooseberries and lingering lemon flavours make for a dryingly tart, crisp ending. Lovely geuze blend by Boon - differing from others merely in its specific percentages of the different ages of the lambics involved, thereby illustrating how subtle variations in taste can be achieved by tinkering with those, as for me this one has a more crisp lemony character than other Boon geuzes I had before. Refreshing and bright, the somewhat lesser looks due to these protein flakes are easily forgiven.

Pastry stout, or in this case dubbed a porter, brewed with malted barley, oats and rye, flavoured with cocoa nibs as well as lactose, as befits anything 'pastry'. From a trusted source - among England's finest - so this cannot go wrong... Thick and dense, pale mocha-beige, creamy, pillowy head slowly receding whilst leaving shreddy lacing over a black robe with hazy burgundy edges. Relatively restrained (for style) aroma of dry caramel, dark rye bread, toasted beech nuts, vague salmiak, dried out oatmeal cookies or even some granola rather than marshmallows - though the modern version of those does subtly pierce through here and there so I get the point, light vanilla, ovomaltin, cold cappuccino, touch of artisanal cola (not coming close to the original), fig compote, fried autumn apples, Conference pear, ferrous spring water. Fruity onset in a 'darkish' way, hinting at fig, ripe pear and mangosteen - but I get no guava; sweet alright, but more from the added lactose than from residual sugars, which are in fact quite limited here. The lactose, as usual, does bring about a creamy mouthfeel, very round and soft, as a marshmallow melting on your tongue indeed - but I get very little actual marshmallow flavour and I am not sure if that is a bad thing or not... Vague impressions of cola, marmite and blackberry jam linger over a caramelly, brown-bready and eventually dark-chocolatey base, picking up cappuccino-like roasted bitterness in its tail but no sooner and never in a truly 'mouth-filling' way - which in the case of this very accomplished brewery obviously means they want to stick to the original porter experience without 'descending' into stout. Instead, the lactose accentuates the sweetening effect of both the caramelly malts and the cocoa nibs, keeping things firmly in sweet territory itself as well, though not in a sticky, annoying way. Blackberry-ish sourishness helps to counter that, as does a deeply buried leafy hop bitter element and that 'late' roasted bitterness I mentioned above. In that sense, I find this pastry porter to be cleverly structured and highly drinkable - Siren has done more impressive things in all those years for sure, but this is everything you would expect from the premises given on the label, in a very smooth way (oats help too there), without exaggerating the intended marshmallow sweetness. Balance really is key here: you expect cloyingly sweet and that is what you get, in the end, but nowhere over the top like in so many other pastry stouts and pastry porters. Lovely beer from one of the - admittedly many - founding fathers of postmodern English craft brewing.

The first geuze by Odilon, a new lambic blendery in the historical "lambic land", drawing its lambics from established producers (sadly without disclosing which ones); apparently dedicated to the retirement of this parents, the blender seems to have been inspired by 3 Fonteinen's Pension Blend, created for a similar occasion (the retirement of the great Armand Debelder, who sadly is no longer with us today). Egg-white, coarse and quite large-bubbled, medium sized head requiring a bit of forcing to be formed - which should not be the case with a geuze; it breaks and dissolves over a misty deep golden robe with pale orangey glow but very little visible sparkling. Aroma of wet wood, fermenting plums, unripe nectarine, purple gooseberries, grape skins, rhubarb, dead autumn leaves, crabapples, medlar, green garden weeds, old leather, very old rosé wine, minerals. Tart onset, bit puckering at first, lemon juice flavour mingling with impressions of unripe nectarines, guelder-rose berries, sour grapes and wild apples, with an element of fruit-sweetness within as well as a counteracting element of wryness - but in any case very estery, with only softly tingling carbonation, nonetheless managing to establish quite some minerality. Vinous body, the puckering effect slowly fading into a more (very old and oxidized) wine-like finish where lactic-tart dryness meets woody tannins and this ongoing stream of sour, yet colourful fruitiness. Retronasally, some Brett effects join in, as in wet old leather, damp hay and horseblanket; a certain Parmigiano-like cheesiness lingers too, along with this pronounced but very fruity sourness and an aspect of freshly cut bitter weeds (no doubt De Troch at work again). Interesting flavours for sure, but structurally something seems to be a tad 'off' here, with too much lemon-like puckering sourness in comparison with the other flavour layers - and, more importantly, too little effervescence for the intended style, making it almost seem like a 'loerik' (everybody in the lambic world knows this Brussels dialect word for 'lazybones' thanks to Cantillon so no need to explain further)... Maybe this one needed more time in the cellar, though I doubt if that will help establish more effervescence. The key flavours are there, but not in optimal proportions either so for me, this one scores notably lower than that other geuze Odilon has produced so far.