Du Brabant Aristophanes
Style: Milk Stout
Brewed: Du Brabant, Belgium
Tested: Bottle, September 2016
After being one year in Belgium I am getting more and more
critical to local brew masters. On one hand, they certainly represent a very
high level of craftmanship and are more than capable to prepare various
blondes, doubles, triples etc.; on the other hand, they seem to have brutal
problem with interpretation of any non-Belgian beer style. With a very few
exceptions, most of Belgium-brewed stouts and pale ales are simply bad. You
will notice, that there is a local branch of pale ale existing - called Belgian IPA (put a sparkling water 1:1
with any double IPA and it is similar), probably because this is as close as
they can get*
Still, even after one year, I will still try some local stout
or IPA, just to see, whether there is a progress or stagnation.
This time the winner was Milk Stout from Brasserie du
Brabant. Just to make sure that I got everything right – that beer was standing
for a while in my beer cupboard, and I have also cooled it a little to obtain a
proper temperature. No shaky, normal opening. And… after opening it literally
blow up. Like a bottle of champagne. Bugger, I thought. A Stout that explodes?
Not good.
Indeed…
Rather brown than black, no head at all (which is funny
giving the level of carbonation). Muddy look. Aroma is almost no detectable,
with a lot of imagination there could be some buttermilk or candy. Same is with
the taste, mostly sweet, malt and yeasts. Hops undetectable. A brilliant
example of wrong style interpretation. Let us just do everything as we did
before (including Belgian yeast, that commonly results in that levels of
carbonation), try to minimize the change and it it will be dark we will call it
Stout…
Please, stop doing beer that you do not understand. People
may really believe that Stouts are a kind of soft drinks for kids. Simply
horrible.
* Second option is that local Brewers know their market and
Belgians are not interested to try new tastes. Really possible, Belgians are a
kind of closed minded when it comes to beer.
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