Belgium – Page 9 – A Good Beer Blog

Assorted Low Country Fruit Beers

What better way to see in Canada Day weekend than sampling Belgian and northern French fruit beers. There is no rhyme or reason to the selection other than they are from within a couple of hundred kilometres of each other. Should this breaks rules it is because no one sent me the pamphlet with the rules.

Cantillon Kriek 100% Lambic: On the nose there is fresh cow poo or another barnyard note, vinegar and unsweetened under-ripe gravenstein apple. Cloudy naturalized cloudy pink with white rim and foam. Stomach souringly strong acid, cheesey tang, dry pin cherry in the mouth. Vineous if your wine has gone off. Hard to say likeable but one is told this is a classic. MADD could use this as their centerpiece of a temperance campaign if they could get it to the teens soon enough. 97% of BAers say very nice things. Nicer things. Here is the brewery’s website and what it says about this beer.

La Choulette Framboise: beer the colour of wild strawberry jam, blush and straw, with white foam and rim. A note of the La Choulette’s tell tale potato peel under true if dry raspberry from the vine…if they grew on vines. Some sub-astringent drying hop and warming as would be expected at 7%. Less sour than the kriek above but still there, on the dry side. BAers who love dry fruit beer are all over this one. Here, too, is the brewery’s website.

Darbyste: From Brasserie de Blaugies. Cloudy caramel ale under white foam. Quite a tangy fig aroma. Still dry but not nearly so dry as the desiccating fluids above. Acidic, juicy, lightly astingent, green fruit and round richness. But dry though without vineousness. Some light butter biscuitiness. 5.8%. Not offensive, not a wowser. BAers say this. Here, again, is the brewery’s home page.

Lindeman Pomme Lambic: compared to the above, this is fluid Altoid. Green apple sweet and that is about it. Rich and quite accurate apple and not at all unpleasant but that is about it. BAers frown with 14% saying no. After the above three, however, it is something of a welcome break from all that austerity. Here is something approximating the brewery’s website.

More as I pour if the guests stick around as I open more of these sour things.…OK, so I am not the guy to tell you why you should try some of these stark traditional ales. But man these are dry and acidic. I need a Rolaid and I am sure glad I picked up some saisons to try so I can get my love back for the brewers of this region.

Knut Goes To Italy

“…L’ultima creazione di Renzo…“

The city of Parma is quite sleepy on this spring afternoon. Actually, so am I, I got up at half past in the morning to get there, but that is not the point. The bus stop in front of the train station is largely deserted, too, but a young man from Ghana helps me to find the right platform. The 02:12 bus is not appearing, and not the 02:20, either. I give up and walk across to the taxi stand, and a taxi driver quotes a rate that is quite acceptable for a 20 minute ride, so I get in.

My destination is the Panil Brewery, located in the countryside to the south of Parma, where the flat landscape of the Po plain gives way to small hills. It is a pleasant drive. The poppies are already in bloom at the roadside, and the leaves are a dozen shades of green. The fields smells of manure from the cows and sheep that produce the Parmesan and Parma ham. It turns out that this is a holiday, so that is the reason for the bus not turning up. On Liberation day most things shut down (and a fair portion of the population had turned out to heckle the mayor, according to reports). And I will not go into who they were liberated from. The Italians?

The brewery is in the countryside within view of the picturesque castle of Torrechiara. It sits in an idyllic setting with a few tables outside the shop, a dozen hens of various colours walking feely around the premises. The place is quite deserted when I arrive, although the doors are open. In addition to the brewing, they also make wine from grapes from the area, which I take note of trying out another time.

After some time spent walking around calling out for assistance, I get help from Aba, a lady fluent in English. She tells me that the brewery is run by her sister and her husband, but that they are not around at the moment. She presents the range of beers they have – very much inspired by Belgian styles. There is a pilsener, a blonde ale and a brown ale, and there is a stout in the making which is not bottled yet. The most interesting beers in the range, however, are two ales aged in oak barrels and then again fermented in the bottle – triple fermented. One of them is a sour version of their Barriquée ale, which I have tasted before, the other is the September ale, which is brewed with grape juice blended in – a sort of beer/wine hybrid. She tells me that these beers are mainly for export and sale directly from the brewery, the locals tend to find them too extreme!

I buy as many bottles I manage to carry with me, and I really look forward to trying them out. While I wait for my transport back to town I notice a small restaurant around the corner. The next time I will probably make a day trip out of it and make some time to see the castle, too!

[Ed.: Check here for the Beer Advocate’s take on these brews. Check here for more of Knut’s travels. Click here for Knut’s own blog.]

Belgium: Goudenband, Brouwerij Liefmans, Oudenaarde

Light tan foam over fairly lively chestnut ale, this Flemish oud bruin has a tangy vinegary sweet aroma. This beer is far less sharp than my previous Flemish experiences of this sort from Rodenbach Grand Cru yet bigger than the other Flem I have known Petrus Oud Bruin. There is a creaminess with all the acidity that is really surprising. “Vineous” may work with other examples of this style but this one is clearly ale, even if quite tart. If you go with it, it is also quaffable…maybe if you transpose from fruit juice as it is somewhere between granny smith apple and pineapple juice just in terms of tartness. But, with all that, there is also cherry and oak and vanilla and maybe the best Pepsi you have ever had as well as even dried fruit like prune and fig and molasses. Yes, as complex and balanced as a fine wine if you need to compare.

This is perhaps the best chance you will have to taste what a medieval ale was like. $4.95 for a 330 ml at the LCBO. Try one and a half in a hefeweizen glass if you can. BAers generally on board.

Book Review: Beer in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

Finding this, for the beer nerd who also likes book with footnotes, is something of a moment, a wee glimpse of nirvana. The author, Richard W. Unger, is a professor of the history of the medieval period from the University of British Columbia who has also written texts about shipping and brewing from the perspective of pre-1800 Holland. Serious writing about a topic that deserves a serious approach.

What can I say about this? First, it cost me 75 bucks at the World’s Biggest Bookstore in Toronto. Like any academic text with a short run and a limited market, it is not a cheap book. And, if you do not think you are going to find something interesting in the discussion of the effects of 15th century taxation policy on North Sea coastal trade, well, maybe this is not going to be the book for you. But if the idea of a seventeen and a half page bibliography of source material on medieval brewing – not to mention thirty-nine pages of endnotes – is your type of reading, well this is the book for your next holiday weekend.

Really, Beer in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance is not so much about beer as the effect of the hop on trade in beer which caused the first industrial revolution in beer through the southern North Sea trade routes from roughly 1350 to 1550 – the second being triggered by the porter boom of roughly 1760 to 1840. The main concept is quite simple actually. Hops preserved beer. Once beer is preservable and can last more than a few days, long enough to be moved, then it will be moved and sold for a premium price as a luxury item. After it comes to be understood, it will then be copied as a local product which over time drives out the previous locally made unhopped ale. Later, it loses out to the next following luxury items as well as a general economic downturn both of which conspire to lowers its central role in the economy.

Unger traces the development of trade in beer largely with a focus on the Low Countries through analysis of tax records, municipal by-laws, guild creation, shipping records and other evidences of the huge role beer played in medieval society. He does so aware of the vastly different context in which beer is places in contemporary culture. This the first paragraph of the book’s preface illustrates that distinction neatly:

The mention of the history of beer always brings a laugh or at the very least a snicker. The histoty of beer for most people is not a serious topic of study. It seems to them frivolous and hardly worth more than a few diverting minutes of anyone’s time. Beer, after all, is a drink for leisure, for young people, generally men, and associated with sports and student life. That perception of beer is a case of historical myopia, of an inability of many people at the beginning of the twenty-first century to convince of a world different from their own. The prevailing presentism makes it difficult for many to comprehend a world where beer was a necessity, a part of everyday life, a drink for everyone of any age or status, a beverage for all times of the day from breakfast to dinner and into the evening.

Not to worry that you will not appreciate how this detailed focus on a relatively short period as Unger leads you into the medieval with a description of fermented drinks of preceeding periods and also carries on after the main discussion showing how innovations in the gin and wine trades as well as the tropical beverages of tea, coffee and cocoa replaced beer in may social settings and therefore in the economy.

I may add a bit to this later but suffice it to say if you enjoy a good read about the history of beer and have read more popular histories like Beer: The Story of the Pint or Man Walks into a Pub, I would say it is time to take on this more purely academic text.

Belgium: Three Saisons for Hogmanay

What to sip for for the New Year, for Hogmanay, as we wait for the baby in the sash to kick the old bearded guy with the staff out of the room as we wait for the odometer of life to click over one more digit?

What better than saison, one of the great ale styles. One, Hennepin, from Ommegang of Cooperstown is one of my favorite sips out of central New York state and actually available at better gas stations in the Albany region for under five buck a 750 ml. [Ed.: …just imagine…] The other two are both made by Brasserie Dupont of Tourpes, Belgium. The simpler 250 ml of Saison Dupont was picked up at the LCBO for the merest farthing while the organic Forêt was at the Finger Lake Beverage Center (right about here) probably for the best part of ten bucks. Forêt says that it is made of 100% organically grown hops and barley, that it was made without pesticides or chemicals (a broad claim if ever there was) and that it was made from filtered artesian well water. That is a lot of talk. One hopes it is for the best. All three are bottle conditioned.

Michael Jackson notes in his early work The World Guide to Beer that saison is a style from south central Belgium which makes it a geographical neighbour to northern France’s slightly funkier bières de garde like La Choulette. To my mind, saison is a celebration of the finest pale malt grown south of the English channel, full of fruit and soft water, perhaps earthy where bières de garde is pungent. Let’s see if my pre-conceived notions are in fact accurate.

Saison Dupont: 8 pm. New Years In Scotland has come. Very nice. Rich and round with masses of dry palt malt. Lively antique gold ale under replenishing white foam. Fruitier on the nose than in the mouth. There is a pronounced graininess to the malt with only the slightest nod to pear fruit perhaps. The yeast is slightly soured milky. There is hop which is dry, twiggy or maybe even straw-like because it is not like twigginess of Fuggles, devoid of English green or German steel.

Hennepin: 9:30 pm. Much fruitier than Saison Dupont, not as bone dry. Golden straw under light white foam. Pear and apricot juicey with some light sultana notes later. Soft water but with a stoney aspect like Riesling. Some nutmeg spiciness to the yeast but primarily creamy. There is a bit of burlap as well but it is a hearty tone that works with the juice rather than something divergent and discordant. One of my favorite brews.

Forêt: 10:30 pm. Golden straw under white foam. Again, drier than Hennepin but a notch fruitier than Saison Dupont. The aroma is burlap and malt, richly earthy organic like early turning spring turf. Quite remarkable. Not so much morish yet pear juicey nonetheless with lots of bread crust, the mustiness (but not dairy sour) of cheese rind with a notch of the potato peel you get in a bières de garde like La Choulette Noël. Hops mainly straw but also some twig and green. A very complex beer.

All in all a worthy session of sharing with folk who say things like “ugh, that tastes weird” and “potato peel?!?!” Saison and bière de garde are not so much an acquired taste as the point of inquiring into the love of ale. There are few other food or drink experiences where the elemental or primal is so undervalued – perhaps sherry but I have bought a half bottle of sherry for many times what a double of saison would cost.

Quicknote: Celis Grand Cru, Michigan, USA

This beer is from the Michigan Brewing Company but formerly was brewed in Austin Texas by Pierre Celis who had immigrated there after played a key role in the restoration of the entire Belgian white beer style. The brewery has a Flash time-line on all that history and here are three beer blog reviews of white beer and here are four more.

This ale is an example of a high-end white at 8% rather than the roughly 5% you would get with, say, your basic Hoegaarden. It pours fairly still, golden with a snow white head that disipates to foam and rim. The initial effect is definitely Duval mixed with Hoegaarden. There is the thickness and lipstickiness of the Belgian candi sugar and the heat of a Belgian golden strong beer like Duval as well as the corrianger-orange of a white. There is also pale ale grain, as opposed to just round maltiness, as well as balance from the cloy-cutting by the bitter if recessed hops. It would be interesting to compare this ale with others of this small style. I would buy again. BAers give it a 98% thumbs-up rating.

St. Veronus, Peterborough, Ontario

So we went to Peterborough yesterday to see old friends and we had lunch at St. Veronus, a cafe/bar with a subtitle: “Belgian beer temple”…truer words were never writ. We are now looking for jobs in the Peterborough area. Unaccustomed to great selection, great service, reasonable prices, care and attention to interesting beer and fantastic food selection am I in a Canadian beer spot that I kept mentally making US exchange rate calculations as I browsed the menu and the beer lists. Then I would shake my head and say…this place is actually in Ontario…and Ontario is in Canada.

I was overwhelmed at the outset when I realized what lay before me. I did not know what to order for a first drink so I just wandered around the two room cafe taking pictures. I mentioned the fact of this here website and, without shifting into a higher gear of service in any respect, the extremely helpful staff answered any number of my deer-in-headlight questions. They even allowed themselves to engage in a little beer porn for the camera as illustrated below. I settled on a Rochefort 6, a new beer to me. At 7.5% it was off their “new arrivals” short list. It was heaven. From recollection malty, a tad burlappy with even a little chocolate perhaps. Others had various lambics and Gueze as well as a very nice Barbar honey ale which I got to sip. Loverly. Just look at the bar fridge – now that’s real shock and awe.

Despite the excellent price and variety of the beer, however, it was the food that actually made the visit. St Veronus offers a selection of grilled thick sandwiches with thoughtful ingredients that match the beers very well. The best I thought was the cheddar, slow cooked onion goo and slow cooked apple goo sandwich – it has an other better name but whatever it is called it was scoffed down by a seven year old in mucho haste. For my second sip, I had a local micro, Church-key Northumberland Ale. I did not get a six of that when I visited the brewery last winter but I will next time I go. It was a full malt-fruit forward rich pale ale under what must be the best beer handling conditions I have met in Ontario. And only 4.50 CND for a 500 ml pint.

Definitely a first of many visits.

Belgium: Six Lambics

There are a few times my good wife is very pleased with this hobby. One is when there is Guinness in the house and one is when there are lambics. These historic vestiges of a Belgian need to capture summer fruit are made without added yeast…because the valley of the Senne is loaded with airborn natural yeasts. In the winter when these beers can be made, the windows at fairly musty unsanitary breweries are opened to expose open wort vats of straight gueuze (or geuze) or fruited lambics in traditional flavours like cherry kreik or black current cassis and the beers undergo spontaneous fermentation after which they are casked. This handy web page will likely tell you more than you need to know about the process.

One difficult thing about them, particularly the fruit beers like the raspberry – or framboise – by Mort Subite that I reviewed last March is that they really can come across as only an incredibly concentrated take on the fruit. One friend recently exclaimed when trying her first cassis: “the children would drink this for God’s sake!” Well, it is sort of the fruit juice the Lord made. The other difficult thing is buying something that calls itself lambic, is a wee bit cheaper only to find out that it is a syrup based brew and not the real deal with fruit gurgling in the ale through fermentation. I try to stay away from those. But let’s see how these work out:

Lindemans Kriek: This pours a bright red with brown tones with a whipped mousse head of pink. There is lots of cherry flavour but also a rustic hoppiness cutting through. It is a sweet cherry flavour but, as it to be expected from the style, a vineous sour tang to the beer.Lindemans lambics always seem to have more to them for me than others, something twiggy or a veracity to the fruit like you get when it is your hand that does the picking. This is especially the case when you drink them at room temperature. This 375 ml bottle from Vlezenbeek, Belgium probably cost 5.99$ USD so it is pricy but when you think about the real costs that go into production, it is not unreasonable. BAers rave.

Chapeau Exotic: Pineapple beer. Not this
sort of pineapple beer but still pineapple beer. By Brouwerij De Troch in Wambeek, Belgium. As still a beer as ever I have had. It smells like a jube-jube of a slightly overripe pineapple husk. There is fairly true pineapple flavour…truer than the aroma…but do you want that in a beer? Sharp acidic effect in the mouth like the real fruit. You know…I don’t think this is a syrup based lambic. I think some Belgians actually import pineapple to make this. What a weird world it is. 1.5% alcohol, too. Really weird. Advocates are rightly unkind. Thankfully only a 250 ml bottle. Hey…they make banana beer!Update: Having noted that the label on my bottle is not the label I see elsewhere on the web and noting the 1.5% alcohol content which would not sustain shelf life…I am wondering if the LCBO has been fobbed old stock? Look at the advocates comments. The ones who rate high say the head was huge or at least it was highly carbonated. Those that do not found it flat. Hmmmm….

Belgian Pêches: By the Lefebvre brewery at Quenast, Belgium.At 3.5%, a whopping 133% stronger than the last one. A lightly pinked straw brew with a little cloud to it sits under white foam. The smell is pure ripe fruit. As with both of the previous beers, there is a orchard reality to the fruit, the flavour is textured and maybe a bit over ripe compared to grocery store stickered facsimile. The one advocate calls this syruped but, for me…ok…I dunno. The body is light otherwise and no real hoppy flavour. Hey – there is actually an ingredients list: water, malt, wheat, hops, yeast, peach juice (20%), sugar, flavour…FLAVOUR!?!? What the heck is that supposed to be? Ok – it’s got to be a phoney. Yet I have been offended by other lambic phoneys more.

Lindemans Gueuze: From Vlezenbeek, Belgium. I yapped about gueuze earlier this summer but only found this example a few weeks ago in Ithaca at the Finger Lakes Beverage Center. A fine white foamy rim over deep straw brew. This is a drier version of the style than the other two, juicy and maybe a bit cider-ish. More pear juice than apple in the fruit – maybe passion fruity, too, but have I had a real passion fruit? Have you? I’ve had a kid’s juicebox with the words “passion fruit” on it…and is it passion fruit or passionfruit? But not like added flavour. It is all coaxed out of the pale malt. Brightly acidic as well. Just 4% so the kind of beer your mother may like…ok, the kind of beer my mother likes. Plucky Belgians. But BAers seem to want more. More acid. More barnyard funk from the wild yeasts. Is there anything the advocates won’t demand?

Mort Subite Gueuze: By Brouwerij De Keersmaeker in Kobbegem, Belgium. This is one of the ones I yapped about last time. By the way, I have instituted a policy hereabout of benchmarking which is a fancy way of saying I get to repeat myself to figure out if any of this makes any sense. If you are going to be paranoid, I say you better do the checking up on yourself by yourself. It is sweeter and a bit richer or rounder in body than the Lindemans with a bit sour under it all. Less like cider, less brightly acidic, more barnyard perhaps. Still only 4.5% but that is three times that somewhat insanely odd pineapple thing above. The head was a nice off white and quite a rocky mousse of it all, the beer ever so slightly lighter in colour. There must be some quite beefy gueuzes out there as, again, many advocates find this comes up short.

Lindemans Cassis: This is the best of the bunch. Very fruit forward true black current flavour. Not sweetened like black current juice but full of the twiggy real berry flavour. I used to have 20 old bushes behind a barn I owned and this is the essence of a clear summer evening’s picking at the height of the season. There is a huge pink/purple lace-leaving mousse head over purple ale. Really lovely. Underneath, creamy yeast and French bready wheat framing the black current. Aged green hops accentualte the fruit. The finish is astringent. Wonderful.

A good introduction to the style. I am going to make a point of learning more and more.

Two of the Gueuze

Happy was the lad, then, who came across these two examples of the Belgian style gueuze, which has been described as follows:

Gueuze – a word derived from gueux, or begger – is a blend of lambics of different ages, bottled with a champaign-type cork to undergo a second fermentation. It ages well.

“Beers of the World” by G. Delos (pub: CLB, 1994) at page 82

Miachael Jackson in the first edition of his World Guide to Beer describes lambics as follows:

These spontaneously fermenting beers are produced by traditional methods in only a very limited area…called Payottenland, and its atmosphere is held to contain micro-organisms which promote the fermentation of beer without the assistance of the brewer. (at p.117)

So they are rightly called “wild beers”. I have never had a gueuze before though I have had a fair number of the fruit lambics like the little raspberry number I reviewed a couple of weeks ago as well as the cherry version called kriek… including one instance with the brew 19 years ago leading one Parisian barkeep to suggest that we Nova Scotians and the lads from Gascony ought to take out discussions out into the street. But I digress.

So a little pitter-patter of excitement welled up when I saw there on the LCBO shelf not one but two examples of gueuze. Apparently not as much excitement as the guy ahead of me who I was told bought 30 or 40 – which, pushing 4 bucks per 375 ml, was a sure sign of dedication. I was familiar with the line Mort Subite by Brouwerij De Keersmaeker to the west of Brussels so I popped it first. It smelled like a late harvest Riesling or Gewurztraminer white wine as I poured. Fresh, light and only 4.5%. It is brightly acidic but not tannic. I expected more of a sparkling beer but it still effervescent. It is like fruit juce without all aspects of the fruitiness – or perhaps sort of a cross between apple juice and orange juice but not in any forefront manner. Despite this fruity zing, the water is quite soft leaving a very moreish mouthfeel. There is a light bit of the oak cask in the finish, some green antiqued hops as well as the barley, wheat and corn. It is incredibily tasty stuff and quite unlike an ale or a lager. Beyond lovery. Beer advocates have trouble with this one but I think you have to consider that Belgians do challenge. Recently, commenting on someone who gave obvious offence taking the defence that they were merely being “ironic” – despite the implication of cynicism that word connotes – I suggested that such a use of irony was not unlike the defence of a brewer of a bad batch claiming “it’s not off…it’s Belgian!” You have to expect the new and strange from the Belgians and when you do it is wonderful.

So on to the St. Louis by Brouwerij Van Honsebrouck N.V. – the maker of Kasteel quadruple reviewed here last year. It is slightly cloudy and a little bit of an orange tint to the light butterscotch hue. In the mouth it is also fresh but bigger, perhaps sweeter with a drier oaker finish. I could not do better than to repeat the words of Naerhu, a contributor at the beer advocate’s reviews on this beer from Osaka Japan:

White fluffy head on any amazing amber body. Light aroma of red fruit, maybe rasberries. Very lightly sour and pretty sweet. I can hardly imagine this to be a gueuze as sweet and friendly as this is. Where as gueuze normally tastes like how a unclean barnyard smells, this is bright and cheerful, zesty and clean. Very enjoyable.

That being the case, perhaps these two examples of gueuze do not exemplify the style at all. Any input on this point would be very useful for its own sake as well as comment on the LCBO itself. Have they picked only two easy beers rather than great examples or the ur-gueuze? Are they treating us like gueuze mooks or possible future connoisseurs? Neither had any sediment which does raise questions when it comes to Belgian brews.

Gueuze. We can add more examples as the days turn to months and the months to years.

Belgian Dark Strong Ales

This is a very pleasant pastime this comparison of Belgians which is already into its third month. To say pacing is required is more than stating the obvious. These are big big beers with two of today’s selection coming in at over 10%. Good reason to have a get together.

Just as one observation on the photos I like to add to these posts, this was a very hard grouping to shoot as the paint on the Terrible by Unibroue is actually mirroring silver while the bottle is black glass. There was no way around using the flash, which I do not think provides you with the best photo of glass. So that being noted, here are my notes on the three examples of this style I have gathered:

Gulden Draak: A true Belgian, 10.5% 330 ml from a variety six-pack from Van Steenberge sold during the pre-Yule rush by the LCBO. The first thing you notice is the malty heat from the dark candi sugar – tastes of fig, pepper and prune. Also, it is surprisingly juicy very nice, grapy and there is a bit of milk chocolate truffle in the centre. Unlike a dubble there is no burlap or oaken notes or orange peel and spice. This is all about the malt, like a barleywine stripped of the English hops. The yeast is prominant as well, butter pastry and cream. It is all like a tart of prunes with whipping cream dolloped on top. The hops balance rather than cut the malt, providing structure but it is all about the malt. Advocates say yeah.

Dogfish Raison D’Etre: An entry from Dogfish Head of Delaware in the USA, this beer is 8% and 12 oz. sold by the single bottle at the LCBO. This one is lighter and somewhat reliant on the addition of grape juice to the beer but the result is surprisingly similar to the Gulden Draak. The yeast is bready rather than pie crusty and the hops are even more subdued. The rich core is more about dried apple more than prune. With its fairly soft water profile and relative simplicity it is still very pleasant. I am coming to think that these beers are also like Scotch heavy ales without the smoke of the barley and that northern strian of ale yeast. Soft blankets of malt. Some advocates disappprove citing poor head and thinness yet it was awarded American Beer of the Year 2000. Can’t we all just get along?

Unibroue Terrible: Canada’s entry is again fantastic – lush, juicy and more-ish. Amazingly, at 10.5%, there is no heat. I am recalling that Terrible is less complex as well than the Unibroue’s Trois Pistoles, their other Belgian dark strong ale. [By the way – imagine a brewer in North America selling two Belgian dark strong ales. I hope Sleeman knows what it bought.] There is some orange but it is more as juice than peel. Big malt but the least signs of dark candi sugar than the Gulden Draak or Dogfish. A little figgy, a little leathery, smooth. Some dried cocoa like a can of powder for baking – dusty and light. Perhaps a recollection of black cherry. The yeast is milky rather than butter or cream – not rich and it adds to the juiciness. Hops again are structural rather than bitter. BAers approve as all but one.

I see that this style is just all about the capacity of belgian pale malt if concentrated. These are beer‘s beers. This is what beer imagines it could be if it only put its mind to it, think of the big picture.