Entropy is a bitch

"Voted 'Best Homebrewed Beer in Belgium 2010'" it says on the label of Hopjutters Mouten Kop. This bottle hasn't been sitting in my fridge quite that long, though it is a few months past its best-before. Such is the lot of Belgian beer in my house.

A modest 6% ABV, there's still a powerful whiff of hot sweet sherry and whiskey liqueur off it. A closer sniff of the highly fizzy orange body adds a bit of cereal complexity and, tragically, the ghost of a departed peachy aroma. It's not the sugar bomb I was expecting: the texture is quite light, attenuated nearly to the point of being sour, tempered by a breakfast-juice blood orange and pineapple fruit sweetness plus just a brief flash of toffee on the end where it doesn't quite belong.

From this jumble I suspect I'm not seeing the whole thing as the brewer, amateur or otherwise, intended. I assume that instead of the awful boozy aroma there's supposed to be a blast of citrus, and that the light toffee is meant to accentuate a massive juicy flavour. But that's just speculation. Whatever this beer was meant to be has been lost, like tears, in rain.