Leffe Radieuse – Independent review of this dark abbey beer: if you’re a newcomer in Belgian beers, taste it!

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This evening a Leffe Radieuse had accompanied me. What a great company!

Leffe Radieuse is without doubt a very balanced beer and one of my favourites in the Leffe-gamma. Yes, you read it well: there is not only one Leffe. You have 5 kind of Leffe beers:

• Leffe blond
• Leffe Dubble
• Leffe Triple
• Leffe 9 degrees
• …and this Leffe Radieuse

Leffe Radieuse is made of water, hops, coriander, mais, and yeast. The colour is gold ‘automn’ brown. You can taste in this complex beer some fruits (citrus, banana), herbs (coriander). You should drink it at special courses, not the ordinary ones. Or just at a beautiful evening. A tip: drink it very cold, I like it the most when it’s standing in the fridge for a couple of hours, in a medium cold glass. The foam is creamy, very nice.

There’s one negative point I must give to this beer. It’s a 100% subjective one. The beer is made by the international economic top player brewery Inbev (merger from Belgium Interbrew and Brasilian beer company), who had bought the leffe beer. So I’m also tasting this aspect of standardisation/mass-product in the Leffe. Like so many good brewery’s/monastery brewery’s, Inbev have bought them, and closed them. So, the production is now in Leuven, a total different part of Belgium, for ‘industrialisation’ reasons. What a shame!

In the past, the Norbertine canons of the Abbey in Namur (Namen) were brewing this beer. The first Leffe has been made in 1142, and the water of the river ‘La Meuse/de Maas’ was been used for the delicious abbey beer.

But industrialisation closed maybe some very charming and historical past, but not the quality of the beer, which is still very good.

If you are new to the field of Belgian beers, I can certainly recommend Leffe Radieuse!

• Brewery Inbe, Leuven. Originally: monastery in Namur.
• Price of Leffe Radieuse on the market in Belgium: 1,4 EUR/bottle
• Sense:(some) herbs (coriander), mild, citron
• Taste: character, fruits, aftertaste a little bit strange
• Volume of Alcohol: 8,2%
• Creamy foam
• Score: 8,1/10