The beer pours a rather surprising, deep golden color. I fully appreciate that “Blonde” can have a spectrum of meanings, with SRMs falling across a wide range, but this is very deep gold. Head isn’t great, and retention and lace are poor to be frank. Also, photographs can be deceptive, but this beer really is as dark as the picture here suggests.

There’s a kind of cereal, yeasty nose about it.

Tastes are quite grainy, and there is definitely some lightly bitter, drying pepper in there too. There’s a bit of an odd bitterness in the mid-palate and ending, and also in the aftertaste. A little out of place hop profile? It’s a little American adjunct grainy for me. A touch macro; a touch Euro strong lager. Not great. It gets slightly better on warming but this remains very grainy and slightly macro feeling.

If I’m honest I don’t care much for this. All the Ardennes beer so far have been good, but this misses the mark for me. I don’t think it’s a great example of the style, and I don’t think it drinks very easily.

The weakest Ardennes beer that I’ve had so far, and by some distance. They’ve done some nice things, but this isn’t one of those. On-tap at the brewery? Maybe different.