King Of Hearts / Hertenheer Blond & Bitter
Brouwerij Het Nest

 

Note: The Description^ lists this as 6.5%. The bottle I have (fresh from Belgium), in the place of the big heart on the lable seen in the photo^, is marked: 'Nieuw recept [ie New recipe] 4.8%'. ...Dropping the ABV% by a quarter is liable to make my experience different from people who rated it at 6.5%.

Blind-tasted except for the beer's name and brewery/country, zero reviews below read (yet!)...
L- Pours straw colour and slightly hazy, it is bottle-conditioned and the sediment lists easily near the end. !cm white creamy looking head. ps @+10mins, holds well.
S- Belgian spice/aromatic notes.
T- Wohhhh-k, pretty dry, hoppy and contemporary (think: NEIPA) on the front. Malts are shy so the hoppy-dry aspect holds into the finish.
F- Carbonation is high in the mouth. The beer comes over as thin/light.
O- It comes over as a contemporary/hipster beer, big bright hops'n all, but thankfully it hasn't OTT citrus/fruit notes. The bold flavour dominates over the relatively light body. I can finish it but it'd doing very little for me.
Review/scoring all done, now the reveal, I get to read the bottle lables to see what I missed! ==> Ingreds: include sugar as well as barleymalt, the sugar likely for the bottle-conditioning?
330ml bottle BB: Sep-22 Euro2.60 Bought from BeerMania/Belgium as part of a large pick-your own consignment to London.

 

Poured from 0.33l bottle into flute glass.
L: Turbid dark amber color with a massive white foam head.
S: Citrus, weak soarness, caramel.
T: Bitterness, grapefruit, pleasant aftertaste. Reminds me belgian IPA.
F: Medium body and carbonation. Great balanced.
O: After al it's nice belgian ale. My be it lacks some more dimensial taste.

Colour clear, amber with a medium-sized, white foam. In the aroma, we have sweet fruit, oranges and peaches, grassy hop notes. Taste the typical Belgium, oranges, peaches, delicate herbs and ... sophisticated bitterness. High, not too long but intense, grassy, maybe a bit of "Perfume". Saturation high, a little tired.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A: The beer is dark golden yellow in color and has a moderate amount of visible carbonation along with clumps of yeast floating near the bottom of the glass. It poured with a finger high white head that has good retention properties and consistently left a short head covering the surface and some lacing down the sides of the glass.
S: Moderately strong aromas of Belgian yeast are present in the nose.
T: Just like the smell, the taste has lots of flavors of yeast along with bits of pale malts and strong notes of spices, the later of which are most prominent and stand out in the finish.
M: It feels medium-bodied on the palate and has a moderate amount of carbonation.
O: With all of the yeast, this beer feels a little heavier in body compared to what you would normally expect from a Belgian Pale Ale. I liked it because of the extra yeast.

Brassy colored and opaque, with dark streaks of copious sediment, and a big head that quickly dissipating like a layer of soap; nice flowery scent with grass, herbs, but quite muted; nice bitterness, not hugely complex, like a slice off the bitter end of an Orval; very effervescent in the mouth, with a touch of metal setting everything a-tingle, and I think that's a good thing.