Brouwerijen Alken-Maes Grimbergen Lente Hop / Houblon de Printemps

Grimbergen Lente Hop / Houblon de Printemps

 

Brouwerijen Alken-Maes in Alken, Limburg, Belgium 🇧🇪

Belgian Style - Strong Ale Spring
Score
5.71
ABV: 7.7% IBU: - Ticks: 11
Aromatic hops, a fine bitterness and a spring-fresh character are the basis of this seasonal beer. Grimbergen Spring Hop is subtle and refreshing. A full-bodied taste with a dry finish completes the picture. First brewed in the spring of 2015.
 

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4.1
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 3 | Flavor - 4 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 3.5

Pours clear golden with a diminishing, frothy, off-white head. The aroma contains (industrial) hops (as in: a chemical solution that should give the impression of hops), banana and peach (in a bad kind of way, not fresh or natural), sugar (lots), apple(cake) (industrial again), yeast, citrus and alcohol ('jenever'). It tastes medium to heavy sweet and light bitter (which makes an awful balance of cloying sweetness and harsh bitterness); the finish is astringent, dry and biting; slightly metallic. Medium body, watery texture, fizzy carbonation (effect of sparkling water). Just as bad as the Leffe Royale series, far from a craftsman brew. Avoid!

Tried on 07 Oct 2017 at 04:49


4.5
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 5 | Flavor - 4 | Texture - 4 | Overall - 4

33 cl. bottle @ Bowling Olround, Veenendaal. Clear golden with a small white head. Sweet fruity aroma. Very sweet taste. So sweet I nearly didn’t finish it. Nearly. Bad, overly sweet bland beer.

Tried from Bottle on 16 Aug 2016 at 15:51


5.4
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 5 | Flavor - 5 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 5.5

Straw blond with thin head. Flavour is sugary sweet and has some straw and apple. Not good.

Tried on 05 Jul 2016 at 14:02


5.8
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 4 | Overall - 6

F: huge, snow-white, average retention. C: golden, clear. A: malty, fruity, peach, honey, where is hops? T: malty, artificial honey, hint of peach, there is some bitterness but not much and not refreshing, grassy, hint of alcohol, citrus, medium body, good carbonation, nothing special, 0,33l bottle from Delhaize.

Tried from Bottle on 22 Mar 2016 at 13:12


4.9
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 5 | Flavor - 5 | Texture - 4 | Overall - 4.5

Imported from my RateBeer account as Grimbergen Lente Hop Houblon de Printemps (by Brouwerijen Alken-Maes (Heineken)):
Aroma: 5/10, Appearance: 3/5, Taste: 5/10, Palate: 2/5, Overall: 9/20, MyTotalScore: 2.4/5

15/V/15 - 33cl bottle from De Hopduvel (Gent) @ the Abeels (NL) - BB: 22/1/16 (2015-616)

Clear blond beer, small creamy white head, unstable, non adhesive. Aroma: very sweet, sugary, bit malty, fruity touch, some peaches, banana. MF: ok carbon, medium body. Taste: sweet start, bit malty, sugary, banana, pretty yeasty. Aftertaste: bitter touch, bit metallic, unpleasant medicinal bitterness.

Tried from Bottle on 15 May 2015 at 14:03



Ergens licht een toets van amandelen in de afdronk

Tried at The Capital on 16 Apr 2015 at 16:35


8

Pittig goud. Niet te bitter.

Tried on 03 Apr 2015 at 18:18


5.5
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 5 | Flavor - 5 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 6

Pours clear blonde not much head. Smell is sweet, bit malty, pilsner like. Taste is bit bitter, somewhat metallic. Sweet ( bit malty) . Chemical, weak mouthfeel yet much carbo. Sweet aftertaste

Tried on 22 Mar 2015 at 13:29


4.4
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 3 | Flavor - 5 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 3.5

The newest Grimbergen, trying to take advantage of the new ’hops forward’ movement sweeping through Belgium. Pours a clear and deep ’old gold’ under a creamy, lacing, yellowish white, irregular head. Aroma first and foremost reveals the cooked, boring smell of pasteurization; apart from that, I get corn (as in any cheap lager), simple floral and grassy hops not getting the chance to achieve what they are intended to achieve, lots of foam-stabilizing iron, wet newspapers, sourish graininess, industrial honey, damp and even lightly moulded cloth, plastic-like solvents and green apple-like acetaldehyde. I hesitate to take a sip but when I do, reluctantly, I get the same bullsh*t: way too sweet in the onset, not from fruity esters even but from white candi syrup, cloying and boring all the way through, medium carbonation, sourish touch from boring sourish grains as in a cheap pale lager, corn abounding as well as cheap, sweetish but artificially feeling malt adjuncts; finish, if any, consists of the lingering corn blandness paired with strong plastic-like solvents - adding ’fake’ bitterness - as well as indeed a stronger hop bitterness than usual for the brand, drying a bit, but remaining simple and grassy; the corn sweetishness keeps creeping through and - which makes it even worse - a wry chemical quality arises and eventually dominates the whole palate. It seems Heineken finally understood that the somewhat more experienced beer consumer in Belgium has gained a certain preference for more hop bitterness in general - a residual and late impact of the IPA movement spreading across the western world like a virus - but the execution of this idea has gone horribly wrong here. I regret buying this even though it was cheap: this is a completely industrial, awful, artificial concoction of a beer. Dear Belgian beer consumer, if you really want to get into hoppiness, please try a sincerely American-inspired IPA or anything of that kind, I’d be happy to share suggestions, but avoid this abomination. It has no place in this world - I even found myself pouring half of it through the drain, which happens only in severe cases.

Tried from Can on 20 Mar 2015 at 20:06