Green Flash Le Freak
22oz. bomber served into a tulip glass Pours a hazy, dull mustard yellow color. Less than a finger of soapy white head on this pour. This looks like an average Belgian IPA to me. It leans more towards the appearance of a Tripel, but there's nothing really standout about it either way. If you read my reviews of any other Belgian IPA style beer, you'll see that I vastly prefer beers of this style be an IPA first and foremost, as opposed to a Tripel or Belgian Blonde Ale w/ a more assertive hop character than normal. Le Freak is hard to negotiate on those lines. On the surface, it smells like a Tripel with some moderate hop character. But it also smells in such a way that it makes me think this might be an older bottle. There's no bottle dating, so I can't be sure. Judging just by the sensory details in front of me, this is a Tripel: soft banana esters, candi sugar, baked bread. The lemon and grass (not lemongrass) notes from the hops are there, but they are decidedly a secondary characteristic. And so I run into the quintessential problem of the style: the hops don't really add anything positive (in a harmonious sense) to the beer, and the underlying Belgian ale isn't interesting enough to warrant trying without the hops. add to this conundrum the fact that the 9.2% ABV definitely shows strong on the palate, and you have a beer that isn't my thing. Still, it is a better effort than most in the Belgian-first school of Belgian IPAs. That stylistic schism makes the mouthfeel on these beers hard to score too. If this is nominally an IPA then the beer is too thick. But it's mostly spot-on for a Tripel. I'm going to score it as above-average and call it a day. Overall, this is not the kind of beer that I'll likely revisit. I don't much care for Belgian IPAs that aren't IPAs first. To its credit, Le Freak gives a strong effort as far as that kind of beer goes.