Lancelot Blanche
Brasserie Lancelot

A hazy yellow white beer with a creamy head.

Smell is full of grainy wheat with coriander and orange zest. The yeast adds a nice phenolic profile and gives the beer a fresh smell.

Taste is fresh and grainy. Raw wheat notes give the beer a 'wild' character with some rough edges. The beer has a typical sweaty socks and stock taste that witbier yeast can sometimes give. Probably because of the yeast. The spices add a nice depth and the coriander and orange zest are easily picked up. Body is medium and drinkability is good.

Beer bottle (33 cl.), first white french beer can conditioned (50 cl) tasted in 1999.

Appearance : pale yellow color, with white foam head.
Smell : fruity aromas.
Taste and mouthfeel: gently acidic.
Drinkability : a very light white beer and quenching thanks to its fruity character.

Pale straw colored is quite hazy. Creamy white head pops it's way to a film. Moderately strong aroma of coriander, fresh flowers, and wheat. The light flavor is mostly wheat with bits of citrus and candied roses. The finish is a bit rough with a bland alcohol taste that the delicate flavors can't cover. Mouthfeel is light and dry. Everything is just ok except the finish, which takes away from an otherwise decent beer.

Found in Moscow's largest discount grocer, the 1/2 liter can is silver and black, with a white ferret crawling through a dark circle surrounded by the name. The name, by the way, is Blanche Hermine. My French isn't good enough to tell is this is a different brew that just a Blanche. Ingredients conform to the purity law. Best before 3/7/07, I opened it on 10/15/05.

Pours a cloudy straw yellow hue under a short-lived one finger white head that manages to muster just a couple spots of lace before disappearing into oblivion. The nose is strong of wheat, coriander and lemon, with something much heavier (coal? tar?) lurking in the background. The mouth is very prickly and quite sticky, coating the mouth and tongue. The taste is light, of sweet spice and raspberry. A touch of bitterness prowls underneath, never really emerging but never really dissipating, either. Yeast is also here, but I don't find the wheat. It's a decent drinker, but a little bit off somehow.

Thick foamy head fading into an unctuous and velvety half-inch collar; the body has a very hazy pale golden color. The smell, wheaty and yeasty, showed great notes of spices and flowers (that almost get soap like after a while), coriander with a dry note of citrus, and something that I could best describe as an enjoyable smell of welding...
The taste is wheaty and gets slightly acidic with a strong citric character. The floral aspects that appear seem somehow artificial to me. Very round and soft mouthfeel, the brew melts in the mouth. The wheaty aftertaste remains nicely in the mouth. Enjoyable if it weren't for the acidic floral aspect that kind of ruins the brew by its artificial character.