Liefmans Goudenband

Brewed by Liefmans (Moortgat)
Style: Sour Ale
Oudenaarde, Belgium

Light hazed brown pour with off white head and lace. Aroma of brown sugar and easy hops. Sour and medium light brown sugar flavor. Medium bodied and refreshing pretty nice.

Pour hazy chestnut brown with off-white head. Aroma of prunes, cellar, wild fermenting and cookies. Ditto flavour. Very tasty IMO. Nice balance between the sourness and the more sweet malt flavours. Great beer!

375 ml caged and corked bottle from Dilly Deli. Poured a hazy dark brown color with a minimal frothy off-white head that mostly lasted with good lacing. Moderate to heavy earthy tart fruit and wood aroma. Medium body with a sticky texture and soft carbonation. Medium to heavy dark fruit flavor with a medium to heavy sweet & sour finish of moderate to long duration. This is a standout complex beer.

Sampled at Noogfest High 5, 1999 bottle. Pours mahogany with almost no head. The aroma is nice woody sourness, cellary funk, and some fruits. The flavor is dates, balsamic vinegar, some lactic acid, and a bit of lemon. Very, very tasty. That decade of age does some magic.

Bottle. Cloudy dark red colour with a beige head. Big pieces of yeast floating around. Sweet, sour & malty, balsamic vinegar, earth, berries, caramel, apples, oak, metall.

Holding a spot here with an impending rating.....for father’s day we are gonna open a bottle of Goudenband from 1999...a Magnum that was made for the 2000 New Year celebration.....more to come! I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it had been stored well. In the dark, upright, at a stable temp, etc. The cork popped well, but didn’t shoot off champagne style and had not shrunk or allowed the beer to oxidize. We had the bottle sitting up right in a bath of cold water to chill it, but not leave it ice cold. I was surprised at the lack of seamonkeys. It seems the sediment stayed on the bottom of the bottle during the opening and pouring. It poured with a moderate amount of head in a dark ruby red/brown color. The aroma was of heavy malt, bready yeast, stone fruit, berries, raisins, and caramel. It wasn’t as heavy on the palate as I thought it would be. The alcohol was certainly there. It was bottled at 8%, who knows what it had manage to add to that after 10 years in the bottle. FIrst it was sweet and cloying like molasses and dried fruit. Then it thinned out and as you swallowed it let off a little lactic burst like a wild ale, but not in the same forceful manner as something along the lines of Cantillion. Every sip was different, sometimes it was plums, other times it was cherry, apricot, bread, balsamic.... I could only do a glass and a half as it was playing havoc with my taste buds.......but in a good way! I am so glad I have more of this in the "cellar"

’07 bottle is shimmering red-brown, moderate beige head with little lacing. Nose is restrained Flemish, acidic but not total vinegar, also some berry, chocolate malt. The acidity is low in the flavor, very sweet and malty, some vinous warmth, more fruit notes. Very pleasant and balanced. Mouth is a little thin and sticky with minor carbonation. It doesn’t get to that next level, but it is a very balanced, very enjoyable beer. The sweeter malt elements make it stand out for me.