6.9

Appearance - 7 | Aroma - 6.5 | Flavor - 6.5 | Texture - 7 | Overall - 7.5

The ‘basic’ blonde by this young and still very small microbrewery (4 hl per month) in southern France; thanks Craftmember for sharing. Large-bubbled, membrane-lacing, somewhat loose and open but edge-retaining head on a lightly hazed straw blonde beer with deeper ‘old golden’ tinge and visible sparkling. Aroma of ripe banana, sweet bread, breakfast cereals, fried apple slices, some pineapple, clove, honey, drying grass, halfripe peach, chamomile. Estery onset (more than the used US05 yeast strain typically produces) with banana, ripe pear and pineapple notes, fizzy and minerally carbonation, smooth body; grainy pale malt sweetish core, a tad bready but thinly so, some phenolic (clove) aspects and a mildly drying, grassy and florally hop bitterish finish, ending quite leafy and medium in length. Quite basic Belgian-ish blonde ale, no frills or high ambitions here; seems to be fermented a tad too warm, but drinkable enough as a go-to beer when chilled and consumed on a hot French summer day I guess – yet utterly boring when tasted at home on a gloomy Belgian autumn evening.