Your fanmail to Frank Boon arrives here.
ABV: 5%
Origin: Lembeek, Vlaams-Brabant, Vlaanderen
Website: www.boon.be
Date: 7 September 2000
Another review from the archive written for the pioneering Oxford Bottled Beer Database (OBBD). I’ve left it uncorrected — so please read it in that historical spirit. This particular beer is something of a mystery as I’ve never been able to find another reference to it since and haven’t been able to confirm the ABV. I suspect it was a one-off strong Faro that Boon racked into cask for a CAMRA festival. If anyone can shed any light on it, I’d be grateful.
This seasonal line from the renowned lambic brewer based in Lembeek, Frank Boon, was on sale at the Catford Beer Festival 2000, emerging foaming from a cask and having to be left in the fridge in a jug to settle. It’s an extremely unusual beer that seems to be in an idiosyncratic category of its own, probably best described as an intensely-flavoured cross between a brown ale and a Faro (it bears some similarity to Boon’s highly distinctive ‘double Faro’, Pertotale).
It had a sourish, hoppy bouquet, a fine bead, and a whole spectrum of intriguing flavours in the mouth, from brown sugar on the tongue through fruity, sourish hints of cherry and blackberry to a long finish alternating between sweet and refreshingly sour, with hints of herbal hops. The sourness indicated a lambic presence, but I’d suspect there was a more conventional dark ale in there too, as well as spices and some sort of sweetening. If you like your beers dark and interesting, you’ll love this.
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