Chapeau Mirabelle

Brewed by Brouwerij De Troch
Style: Lambic - Fruit
Ternat-Wambeek, Belgium

(Bottle 25 cl) Just what I’ve always been dreaming of: a beer made with juice from cherry plums.... Hazy yellow with an absent head, rather flat with a cloyingly sweetness. Yes, it does taste like fruit, and perhaps even cherry plums. But this is more pop than beer. 310797

sparce foamy white head that shrinks to a layer that looks like soap suds. body is a very cloudy butterscotch color. aroma is fruity sweet like shampoo for teenage girls. also a little sour like unripe plum skins. body is almost flat, yet slick like simple syrup. flavor is a little tart, but quickly overpowered by a sweetness that is wrong. bad yeast + some kind of fake sweetner + artificial peach flavor - not even plum. now I have a tummy ache.

Cloudy yellow. Many bubbles but no sediment. Light fruity aroma. Sweet, with some sour taste at the end. A good fruit beer, but it is the least lambic like of any of the line I have had.

It pours hazy and brownish yellow, with very minimal head. The aroma is definitely mirabelle, with a slightly rotten fruit smell (not bad), something reminiscent of a still summer day. The flavor is very sweet, some candy sugar, little or no bitterness and a very faint sourness. Palate is great because it manages to convey carbonation with very little or no actual carbonation, ie only through balance of tartness.

Bottle - corked and capped. Pours a clouded peach. No head save the small white bits of foam and bubbles lingering about the edge of the glass. Nose is sweet but a bit non-descript. Obvious fruit notes, light tartness and light wood. Taste is very sweet and cloying. Strong sweetened plums, big sugar notes, light wood, and some mild tartness. Body is light and sticky with on mild tartness and almost no acidity. Not really even that dry at all. Finishes with more sweet sugary plum notes, light wood, minimal; tart fruitiness and big syrupy notes. Very sweet. A dessert "beer", to be sure.

Hazy orange colour with a small head. Aroma is sweet and fruity as expected. Body is fizzy and slightly syrupy. Flavour of sweet candied plums with a short, surprisingly dry finish. I only had a few tastes of this from a friend’s glass - he is a self-admitted non-beer drinker who prefers "girlie drinks", and he quite liked this. I thought it paled in comparison to the Cantillon Fou’Foune and Choulette Peche that I was drinking, but considering the bad things I’d heard about the Chapeau beers in the past, I thought it was OK, just not the sort of thing I would drink regularily.

Undated bottle. Label seems faded and dry, and the cork was wet on top. As I removed the cork, there was no pop. The pour was mostly still. Aroma of light table sugar, a bit of sweet plums and raisins. Some dry oak mixed with syrupy pils malt and more residual candi-like sugar. There is a distinct tartness in the nose, and for that I’m happy. Some redeeming lambic quality at least, though it is mostly restrained and easygoing. It appears a murky, lifeless, green-yellow-brown, with no head and only a smattering of bubbles. Flavor is sweet at first, with some corky/yeasty funk, quickly moving in to dry, oaky wood and light sugar. Finishes thick, sugary and gritty, like there are sugar granules in it. But for all of the sweetness, I can’t deny to being a little charmed by the plum juice flavor. Enough oak and light yeast make their way in to keep it interesting, and by the end, I am only slightly put-off by the over-sugared body. Slick, dead, still body does not create much interest, but there is a bit of action from the oak dryness. Hints of bygone carbonation are slightly noticeable.

The low rating on this surprises me. I’m not a fan of lambics but this wasn’t bad. Had a sweet plum, prune nose, almond. Thin texture but lively carbonation. Flavor was a bit tart/sour, plum, sugar. Not bad.