Wadesda #2
Brasserie de la Senne

 

 

This one was supposed to be a historically accurate witbeer & was developed together with a very respectable person within the Belgian beer community who really knows beer unlike me.

Rating from mid. 2012: 33 cl. bottle purchased split by 2. You should have seen the face of the guy with whom I split this when he was trying to drink this, wasn’t particularly thrilled with getting a glass of this :) Pours a very hazy golden & big white head. Smell is ? huge sweet orange peel, cold tea with lots of white sugar, cheap ice tea, stale Nestea, this is more like one of those canned Lipton tea drink, I don’t mean like the regular ice tea soda but the ones that actually had like tea in them & tasted like that with sugar & some weird additives & hippy stuff. Taste is cold tea, lots, very thick wheat, Nestea, spices, sweet camomile, herbal, herb. tea, that canned tea stuff described before, lots of bitter peel in the peal & the bergamot from Earl Gay, hell even Earl Gray itself, very long finish/ Body is too thick & too carbonated to really drink. Very aptly name Wadesda which means “What is this?” in dialect Flemish.

So this is a sour traditional wit beer, tastes like a blend of soda, tea & maybe beer. Close to impossible to rate or even put in terms of good or bad. Extremely odd. This doesn’t even taste fermented. A history lesson that I was glad to receive but a brutal one. I can understand why witbeer’s don’t taste like this anymore.

Pours a dull, burnt orange hue with a hazy clarity. Head is foamy and bright white. Nose is citrusy and floral - delicate with a kiss of tangerine essence as well as clove and coriander. Taste is sharp and slightly caustic with a medicinal bitterness at the finish. Spelt is present in the middle, as well as bitter citrus rind. Mouthfeel is light and lively with some acidity - finish is quite dry. Overall, the lingering bitterness of this beer kills it for me. The lactobacillus seems to have taken on a negative character in this instance.