Jack-Op
Brouwerij Boon

 

BB 17-08-06. Litle head staying well and opalizing orangebrown head. Nose is sourish, obviously bretty, cherries overall fresh but strangly sour. Taste is dry, citric sour and overall empty and tasteless missing a barn or some horsesweat. No this is just a empty brew, sour and pale in taste. Something else but to me just sour alcohol water with carbondioxide.

This beer has (or had) a special relationship with the students of the university in Leuven. In earlier days when studying was still something for the elite, students where poor. The money they got from home didn’t last them trough the month. And in those days (no TV, radio, computer games, game console, internet,…) these students spent a lot of time in the local café’s. Away from the books, they went to bars for the common people, these where the cheapest. And in those days boys and girls where strictly separated from each other. Girls couldn’t go out. So the café that had a beautiful daughter serving, had the students. The cheapest beers you could get in those days where Peeterman and Bruine, The more classy ones Jack-op and Münich. A small brewery from Werchter, not so far from Leuven brewed this. It was brewed using the remains of ingredients for other beers. We are also talking about a romantic period, when it was considered politically good for students to intermingle with the local population. Students from Flanders that had never spoken a word of Dutch came in contact with the common man.
Up until today this beer has remained ‘the’ student beer for the traditional club students (not same as fraternity). But this too is fading, it has become very hard to find a café that has this one on the menu.

I poured it in a Belgian Pilsner glass. It always gives a rich development of the head. It’s very creamy, fluffy and white. As you drink it leaves rings on the glass.
The colour of the beer is copper with mediocre CO² activity bubbling through.
It smells hop bitter and fruity Lambic sweet. The sweetness does not have an artificial feeling, but it is full and authentical. Citrus sourness, It reminds me a bit of the Timmermans Agru’m.
The taste is very fresh, crisp. Mainly a Lambic/Geuze sourness. Actually (it just pops up in my mind here and now) if you’re into Geuze, you should have no problem with this one. Very full bodied and creamy. First signs of malt in the background. The beer might have something caramel sweet likings, the malt is grain like.
The aftertaste is slightly more bitter. The citrus takes over and the Geuze sweetness gently fades away. It also becomes drier. (I know out of experience that after tens of these it really dehydrates the throat.)

Apart from the tradition around this beer, I have really fallen in love with this one. I would die if Inbev would decide tomorrow to stop brewing my Jack-op, sorry! Our Jack-op!

Ut Vivat, Crescat, Floreat!