Beer #32
Gesundheit.
This little 33cL bottle tells a tale of the beer-brewing gnomes of the Ardennes, which I’m guessing is something the brewery just made up themselves. If not, this doesn’t appear to be a Galloway legend sort of thing: there’s no claim to ancient secrets or odd ingredients, it’s just a nice little golden ale, and gnomes are pretty neat, don’t you think? All hiking through the mountains in their funny hats, brewing their beers, tiny and odd and just keeping to themselves. How could anyone not like a gnome.
I don’t have the recommended La Chouffe glassware, so I used a snifter. It’s a cloudy, golden beer, and it smells right away like a Belgian, thick yeast and citrus. The taste is a little more crisp than I expected. It’s got a bit of a bitter bite to it, and some sharp spices milling about in the malty, yeasty base. I’m bad at playing guess-the-spices, so I’ll just say it tastes orangey and peppery, and there’s a witbier kind of taste as well, so coriander and maybe clove are also likely suspects. It’s a pretty nice beer, and, like the sight of a gnome, gone all too fast.