La Binchoise Blonde Tradition

Brewed by Brasserie La Binchoise
Style: Belgian Ale
Binche, Belgium

Beer pours a clear, light gold color with star trails of carbonation rushing for the top. Small, frothy, white, mostly diminishing head. I like the way this smells. It seems subtle and balanced, but in a delicate and pretty way. The aroma has a trace note of toasted grain, moderate hop notes of apricot, grass and resin/pine, a moderate yeast note of soap, and moderately weighted miscellaneous notes of pear, orange zest, honey, alfalfa and a tinge of spice. The flavor is lightly sweet, lightly bitter and moderately acidic with a long, moderately acidic, lightly bitter finish. Grassy retronasal acts as a bit of grounding element for the initial sweetness of the aroma. The body is light, the texture is watery and the carbonation is lively. Not remarkable, but not bad.

75 cl bottel Color - Golden Amber Head - Light White Aroma - Hops, Fruit Flavor - Fruit, hops, Speicy Very Complex Beer

Hazy deep gold pour with a small, fizzy white head. Aroma of spicy citrus, floral hops, and orange zest. Tastes citric and very floral spicy with some hops. Some saisony barnyard creeps in as it warms. Notable complexity, and very easy to quaff.

The marionette is an amusing trinket. I don’t want to call it a toy, because it’s not. Puppetry is an art, and moreover an expression of a desire for control. But most important, it is entertainment. Unlike a movie it’s real and genuine. Unlike a play we can bend the marionette into anatomical impossibilities. Unlike reality, with puppetsg tragedy is comedy. A master puppeteer can lure us into thinking the midget dancing on his strings is real, but when the show is done and the stage is dimmed it becomes another lifeless figurine. La Binchoise has a glimmer of life, similar to the puppet whose arms and hands move with such a convincing elegance, but a closer examination reveals the cold eyes and the wooden grain of the skin. Similarly, in the Binchoise we see a beer with a bright white cap, and underneath that a faded, translucent bronze that confirms the blonde character. Altogether unexciting, but it’s an important look into the quality and taste of the beer, and it accurately pointed to the taste I expected. The finer quality and the more convincing vitality of the beer comes from the aroma; a lovely cloud of pears, honey suckle, grapes and peaches bound by their common sweetness. But here is where the brewer, as the puppet-master, lets the limbs dangle and the head bob, where the taste is flat and dull and the promise of a dancing, living thing turns into the mediocre ballet of a cumbersome toy. I honestly expected a light beer complemented with the same fruits I took in through my olfactory, but found a depressing wheat beer, hardly up to the taste of your average Hoegaarden. The drink is dry and wet at the same time, and slightly salty, especially in the aftertaste. It also has a sharp soapy quality, but there it fails where other beers like Orval succeeds. I also catch the slightest peep of banana, and a sliver of celery. Tragically La Binchoise blonde is more disappointing than it is bad. To me it’s a promise of a beer medley with good blonde qualities and some light springtime fruits, but delivers a palatably refreshing beer joined with an unengaging taste. It is when I take the cup to my lips that the puppeteer loosens the strings, and the mystique vanishes. The show may resume, but has lost the rapt attention of all but the children, who could care less about the art then the puppet itself, which they fondly call a toy.

has a nice citrus flavor to it with a hint of something sweet cant really tell but it is very nice another good beer in my mind

Pale yellow with non-lingering white head. Foggy. Citrus/koriander aroma wich carries on to the flavour. The citrus tones become almost soapy. Small body, fizzy.

Bottled. Hazy, pale golden. Sweetish aroma from banana; like a wit-bier. A lot of carbonation. Clove, coriander. Sweet, almost sugary.

La Binchoise pours a clouded dark yellow color and makes a thin offwhite head. Smells like biscuits and is very yeasty, has a strong whit-like quality. Mild citrus flavor, like a sweet-lemon, yeasty, bready, peppery spice. Light to medium palate, finishes rather dry. This is pretty good, its not my favorite Belgian pale by any means, it feels more like a whit in my opinion.