Jopen Koyt

Jopen
Brewed at De Proefbrouwerij
Style: Traditional Ale
Haarlem, Netherlands

Sampled from bottle. Pours a murky brown with no head or lacing. Aroma is of hard candy, prunes, flowers and spice. Flavor is worty with licorice, alcohol, and pepper. Balanced, viscous and well-carbonated. An interesting style of beer.

21 Jun 2005 - (Inge B&B, Haarlem) - Luscious stone fruit and malt aroma. Cloudy dark brown-red colour, the head and lacing could be better. intense fruit malt hop flavours, but also light. Lingering fruit flavour.

Glowing brown with hints of violet. Vibrant herbaceous and berry hints in the aroma, with big spice (pumpkin and cinnamon), fruit, bark, banana chips and alcohol. The malt and yeast are lovely and perfectly accented by the herbs and spices. I was expecting a cloying beer, but I ended up with something in perfect balance, with loads of fruit and spice and Christmas pudding.

Color is a very murky aged sherry and the head is small, dissipating quickly and leaving spotty lacing. Aroma and flavor are a very satisfying but more along the lines of a slightly simplistic Belgian brune than a true gruit beer. Very good overall, though I was somewhat let down by the marketing suggestions that this is an original recipe from days of yore. I docked them 5 overall points for this type of thing, in fact. Most specifically, I feel the lead-on that this beer is unhopped ("In the Golden Age of Dutch brewing, before hops were known, they used a blend of savory herbs, called gruit, to give a spicy aroma to their ales") is false. Do they have a special combination? Along with the profound caramel maltiness, there seems to be a strong hoppiness from the time the bottle is opened. The label later states this is "the strong version of the old gruit beer", which leaves a lot open for speculation. Not that this isn’t an old tyme recipe, but perhaps more like it would be from the late 1700’s or the 1800’s than the 1400’s.

(750ml bottle) Pours a murky brown body with a small beige head. Aroma of malt, caramel, raisins, herbs, and butterscotch. Flavor of dates, raisins, malt, plum, and spices.

Pours a cloudydeep amber with very little head. Aroma of sweet malt and spiced apples. Flavors are deeply malty with a vanilla note and a fair amount of cinnamon. Heavy body with no bitterness in the finish. Very interesting. Really soft on the palate.

Sweet hop malt aroma with cheeries and fruit. Clear red colour with poor head and lacing. Sweet cherry malt flavour. Fizzy palate.

Hazy chestnut-brown body with low carbonation and a minimal gray head. Pungent malt aroma with apple cider qualities, figs, cherries, herbs, juniper berries and cinnamon. Sweet malty, spiced apple cider flavor with low bitterness. Different and good, but not especially intriguing.