De Lepelaer Beemster Blond
De Proefbrouwerij

Tasted at the Quinn's, Camden Town, N. London. The beer is contract-brewed by this Belgian brewery for the Dutch De Lepelaer micro-brewery based on the latter's own recipe. Coming in a traditional 330ml slim brown glass bottle, this beer is bottle-conditioned, BB 22/09/2007, served lightly-chilled in a tulip-shaped sniffer.

A: pours a cloudy honeyish-amber colour, with a huge rocky head with pretty good retention; lots of yeast-flakes dance with livey bubbles in the beer, due to extremely unsettled yeast sediments in the bottle, but not overly unpleasant.
S: yum~~ extremely perfumy fruit-esters expand in the air, with juicy apricots and sweet citrus-fruits leading the way, yet an intense and deeply flowery hoppyness (reminiscent of aromatic American hops) provides a strong support at the back, making a rounded and utterly perfumy nose; a closer sniff reveals a much milder note of banana-ish, sharp and rough yeastiness, plus a buttery note and slightly honeyish malts underneath... Utterly pleasant and quite complex.
T: a lightly sour-sweet fruity and thin banana-ish palate upfront leads to a restrained but chewy, strangely grainy (a bit "plastic") malty undertone... I can't quite describe what makes of it, but it reminds me of wheat-added farm-house beer like Biere de Garde or else... A "very dry" hoppy aftertaste (for a Belgian beer) is completed with some light spicy flavour from the yeasts, leaving a tangy, tangerine-peel like lingering aroma deep down the palate.
M&D: the lively-carbonated body turns smoother bit by bit as it goes, but falling a bit thin in the end which I find is the case with quite a many Belgian-style pale ales, esp. those having a sour-sweet fruity and sugary aftertaste at the tail. Besides, the yeasts have left a stronger-than-necessary imprint on the texture, clouding the "supposed" flavours a bit. All in all, although the palate doesn't quite live up to the promise of the aroma, it still shows every bit of element of a quality brew.