Haerlemsch Herfstbock

Formerly brewed at Haerlemsche Bierbrouwerij
Style: Belgian Strong Ale
Haarlem, Netherlands

Serve in Trappist glass, Tulip, Tumbler

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Bottled. Reddish brown coloured. Quite spicy aroma and flavour. Very nice and rather sharp herbal bitterness in the flavour.

UPDATED: JUN 26, 2005 (Bottle 30 cl) Muddy, dark orangey golden. rather neat off-white head. Pronounced acidity as with otther strong Dutch beers. Diacetyl and a lot of yeasty esters, without being unpleasant. Dry bitterness and very warming alcohol. OK but not overly refined. 050405

Bitter special. Bitter. The first couples of zips are nice, but afterwards it gets sickening. Quite brutal beer.

The aroma is very spicy with noticable cowberries. The color is a hazy red and it has a beutiful beige head though collapsing. The flavor is lovely; spicy and sweet. A nice beer. I wonder what went wrong with the beers the first four samplers have had.

First of all: appearance. Let's have a look at the bottle instead of the beer. A copied label, which is hardly readible, because of being copy #345. The beer itself pours a cloudy orange brown color, with a short frothy head, not the nicest of appearances. The aroma is of metallic malts, yeast and alcohol. It resembles my first homebrew project, which did not turn out too well. I can taste sweet malts, alcohol is quite well hidden, nice biologic solution Joris. The palate is thick, sticky, alcoholic. If anyone sees this in stores, leave it there. It's not worth the try.

Lactic and spices aroma. Cloudy, orange/brown color, off-white head, fair lace. Lactic but this is covered by all the spices, light sweet, light bitter, alcohol well hidden, medium body.

Explosive gushing, spewing forth the meanest grey-brown blobs of yeast (I hope!) I ever saw in such a small bottle. Stupendous yellow-brown head, full of... I wish I knew what speckles - then again, maybe rather not... Dark red-brown beer. Nose: lactic acid, phenoles, spices, flowery notes, cidery. Taste: vinous, but with a cloying-sweetish taint under the aggressive tarty-spiced malts. God, this is UNBELIEVABLE. Palate: thick. Ruined. The alcohol is partly consumed by the pediococci, I presume, who are now having a ball. This is third-in-a-row, it's getting obvious: these guys are amateurs, and ought not to sell before they get their act right.

Aroma has glue. Yeasty taste with glue, cream, chewing gum and alcohol. Hints of roasted malt. Full bodied beer, but too amateuristic to make a real impression.