The missing link

I hadn't even twigged that I missed it. The Toer de Geuze didn't happen as planned in 2021 but there was still a commemorative Megablend by the participating brewers for that year (and very good it was too). But the event continued without me in 2022 and, while I had been beer shopping in Belgium last year, I hadn't been looking for Megablend 2022, so was serendipitously surprised when I noticed it for sale at the Lindemans brewery shop during the 2024 Toer.

Opening it back home, I was armed with the knowledge that the 2019 and 2021 versions were two of my all-time favourite beers, but also that the 2024 one wasn't quite up to the same standard. Peering at the list of contributing breweries, I see that Eylenbosch and Kestemont, who were part of the 2024 edition, did not contribute in '22. How has that skewed things?

It's a very very nice beer. The keynote is cleanness. There's no funk, and a restrained earthy minerality. A twist of lemon juice makes for a natural-tasting sourness while the bricky nitre spice flashes briefly like olde worlde photographic apparatus before fading out of the picture. Nothing hangs around on the palate for long, and that's despite the untrifling 7% ABV. "Bland" isn't a word I should use around beers like this, but compared to other recent vintages, it's the washed-out grey sheep of the family. 

For me, this does represent the middle phase between 2021 and 2024 which I had been expecting: extremely tasty, well worth getting hold of, but not quiiite up with the best of the best. I don't for a minute want to seem like one of those nothing's-too-good-for-me elite-calibre geuze blowhards, but Megablend may be the one pin on whose head I'll happily dance. I hope they pull things back together for the 2026. They owe me.