Tag Archives: belgium

Tripel Tasting Notes

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There are a million tripels around (I was a little surprised when I started looking at my notes and Untappd checkins and realized we’ve had two dozen in the last week or two). Truthfully, it’s not my favorite style. It’s inconsistent and has no unifying characteristics other than being strong and pale.  In theory, they should be roughly similar to Westmalle Tripel, but that’s a pretty loose standard. Many use pilsener malt that has a creamy sweetness, but not all. Most are lightly-hopped, but some have a lot of floral, herbal notes.  So I’ve generally been more interested in the dark abbey beers. Wind, on the other hand, generally likes tripels and tends to gravitate to them when she’s not sure what else to get.

But as I think about moving back to Florida in June, and being able to brew a batch of beer, I know we should brew something on the lighter side. So, since Wind likes them a lot and I do like some tripels quite a bit, we decided to try a bunch and see what we liked.  We’ve seen some American beer around (especially at De Bierkoning in Amsterdam), but we stuck with Belgian and Dutch tripels for this experiment, since there were a ton to choose from.  Hopefully, it’ll help us narrow down recipes when the time comes.

In general, we found them very drinkable, and agreed on our assessments of them. But, there were a few that only one of us liked, and a few that were standout cluckers:

  • De Leckere Razende Swaen (Raging Swan): this is local, and we’ve liked some of their beers. But it was too herby, and funky.
  • Muifelbrouwerij Broeder Everardus: this is a little bready and biscuity, with more aggressive hops than typical. The typical pilsener malt shows up in the aroma. But the flavor gets lost in the hoppy bitterness.
  • Hertog Jan Tripel: the best thing about this beer was the bottle (it comes in a squat, black earthenware bottle). It has a nice, rich golden color, but the flavor is bland and syrupy.
  • De Koninck Tripel  This seemed OK at first. But it has a lot of unfermented sugar and caramel. I wound up finishing Wind’s glass (she would have poured it out), mostly because I was trying to remember what it reminded me of. Alas, it was a bad batch of homebrew that had an incomplete fermentation, and mostly wound up sweet and overcarbonated.

The vast majority were very nice, and varied quite a bit. I’d divide them roughly into two groups: the boozy and the herbals.

Boozy (clean, simple, and with a definite alcohol kick):

Herbal (a wide variety of fruit, floral, herbal flavors):

There were a few tripels that we really liked.  We’ve been talking about doing a second round and trying these all side-by-side to really compare them closely.

  • Tripel Karmeliet: this is probably my favorite (and I think the first tripel I ever had). It’s sweet and light. Nothing overpowering. But very tasty.
  • Westmalle Tripel: this is one of Wind’s favorite beers. It’s sweet, boozy and creamy.
  • La Trappe Tripel: just a bit of sourness, and a bit earthy and herbal, but not too much.
  • Chimay Blanche (Cinq Cents): a little bitter and floral, but very balanced, with some creaminess.
  • St. Bernardus Tripel: rich, malty, meady and velvety.
  • Val-Dieu Triple: fizzy, and light, with some candi sugar like a dubbel.

There were also a couple of tripels that were split decisions. We’re thinking of adding these into the second round, too.

  • Brouwerij ‘t IJ Zatte: floral, rose and herbal. I really liked this, but Wind hated it. I even tasted some from her glass to make sure that we had the same thing.
  • Triple d’Anvers: Unlike De Koninck’s other beer we tasted, this was not terrible. It had a definite twang you don’t usually see in triplels, and was also very sweet. I didn’t like it much, but Wind thought it was pretty good.

Weekend Trip to Westvleteren

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Not having any luck trying to make a reservation, we decided to drive over to Westvleteren and see what there was to see.

The drive over was pretty uneventful, until the last few miles on narrow, winding country lanes.  We found the abbey pretty easily and pulled into a nice, mostly empty parking lot around lunchtime on Saturday.  The cafe (In De Vrede) was nice, more modern than we were expecting.  The food options were pretty limited, but good enough.  And of course, as much Westy Blond/8/12 as you wanted.  They were out of the apple tart, but luckily had the local delicacy — hommelpaptart (a pie made with hops).  I’m not a big hop fan, but I’m glad we tried this — very sweet and rich.

We took the kids outside and let them run around to blow off some steam after being cooped up in the car all morning.  There’s plenty of open space around the cafe for kids to play in, and there’s a nice lane nearby leading around the back of the abbey property to a grotto/shrine.  It was nice to be out in the fresh air and relatively natural surroundings.

We were back at the cafe at 2pm sharp, where there was a bit of a line at the small shop that sells cheese, soap, a few other items the monks make, branded glassware, sweets, and (if you’re lucky) gift packs of beer.  It’s not the two cases you get with a reservation, but 4 bottles a person is a lot better than what you pay in shops around here.

We also headed down to Poperinge, and had some of the local beer — not IPA, but more of a mellow, tart pale ale.  We stayed at a fantastic and reasonably-priced hotel on the old market square, and even found a very nice playground tucked in behind the main buildings.  So we expect to make a few more trips over to Westvleteren in the next few months, whether we get reservations or not.

Geuze and Kriek

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We hadn’t had much geuze back in Florida.  Our local shop had three kinds (Lindeman’s, Oud Beersel, and Girardin), and we tried them all.  But there just wasn’t any more to be found.  And we’d had even less kriek — we’d tried some fruit beers (frambozen perhaps) and didn’t like it much at all. So we came into gueze and kriek with pretty open minds (which is to say, pretty ignorant, since I didn’t really understand how different lambic is until I started reading up on Geuze).  But I’d heard great things, especially about Cantillon, so I was excited to find a geuze section at Bert’s.

We’ve grabbed a few bottles each time we’ve been, and found a wide range among the ones we’ve tried:

  • My least favorite was probably Boon’s Oude Geuze, which was very strange — it started tart, but then fizzled into a mildly sappy blandness.
  • I’ve also had a geuze that was sweet enough that I think it must be sweetened (Mort Subite).  Didn’t like this nearly as much as the others.  Though I can imagine wanting this in the warmer months, since it was very much like cider.
  • Timmermans Gueuze was sweet and mild, with subdued tartness and some apple and Champagne.

We were having so much fun with the gueze that we decided to give kriek another chance, and found them pretty interesting and more consistent:

  • Boon Kriek and Delirium Red were both pretty sweet (the Delirirum more so), with just a little sourness.  The cherry flavor was less pronounced than expected, with these beers mostly being more mellow than geuze.
  • Cantillon Kriek was nicely tart, though again not overly fruity (despite rich red color).  It seemed more similar to their geuze, and not as sweet.
  • Girardin Kriek 1882 was the outlier (and probably my favorite) — it was much less transformed than the other kriek (still sharply sour like the geuze).  It also had a noticeable cherry flavor.  So it was more like two complementary notes side-by-side.

I haven’t been able to find any straight lambic, which I’d really like to try.  Cantillon makes a lambic called Grand Cru Bruocsella, though I haven’t seen it yet.  There are also several other fruit-infused lambics (apple, raspberry, pear, etc.) and faro (sweetened lambic), which we might try if the mood strikes us.

Busy Signal

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So I’ve enjoyed being able to find Westvleteren beer at Bert’s Bierhuis in Utrecht.  It’s a lot less than you have to pay on Ebay in the US, but still not cheap.  So I’ve been calling Westvleteren each time they have an open slot.  So far: no luck.

Their phone lines are constantly busy.  My cell phone can’t call international numbers (haven’t figured out how to navigate the Dutch phonetree to turn that on).  And Westvleteren doesn’t allow anonymous numbers, so Skype is out.  So my only option is my landline, which is a phone that I think is older than I am, with clunky buttons and no redial, currently on a short cord in the living room, with a wobbly base sliding around as I try to punch in the, by now memorized, 12-digit phone number for Westvleteren (00 32 70 21 00 54, at least I don’t have to dial all those zeroes on a rotary dial phone).

To relieve the monotony, I get a couple of different kinds of busy signal.  About half the time, I get a busy signal right away.  The other half of the time, it rings for a bit and then gives me a busy signal (I wonder whether these are the times when a bunch of people are all trying at the same time, and some other lucky bastard gets through instead of me).  Occasionally, I misdial because the phone is sliding around or I don’t get the buttons pushed all the way down.  But the result is always the same: busy signal.

So next weekend, I think we’re going to just drive out there and see what there is to see.  I’ve seen blog and forum posts saying their cafe sometimes has six-packs for sale.  And since it’s the middle of winter, I figure the tourist traffic is going to be as low as it’s going to get.  So you never know, I might get lucky.

It Comes in Crates!

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I spent way too long trying to return empties today.  Our grocery store, Albert Heijn, has a nice machine that counts the bottles, randomly rejects a few, and then spits out a receipt you can exchange for cash at the checkout stand.  Except today it wasn’t working.

So there was a line of people with bottles and such to return, and a handful of Albert Heijn employees gamely trying to fix the machine — testing all sorts of bottles, peering inside, and even rebooting it (I sometimes apologize on behalf of all programmers at times like this).  In the end, a little glass cleaner in the right place fixed things and we were all able to get our empties turned in.

Though watching a couple of guys returning crates of bottles reminded me that I can get crates of Westmalle Dubbel and Tripel now.  We’ve been mostly buying one or two bottles of different things, and trying lots of different things.  But Westmalle Dubbel is one of my favorites, so it was nice to get a crate (though I was cursing myself as I lugged the crate home in the snow).

Now my only problem is I want to keep the crate instead of turning it in for refund…

Kafé België and Bert’s Bierhuis

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We went to Kafé België in Utrecht for lunch and a few beers today.  The food was great café food, but not a lot of selection.  This continues the trend of really outstanding food we’ve gotten at cafés.

The beer selection was impressive — they had 150+ bottles (see pic), and a dozen or so taps.  They were dominated by abbey beers, but there were also a few saisons and other styles.  They even had some American beers (Bud, Anchor and Flying Dog).  We were glad to see some saison and Flanders red on the menu, since we hadn’t seen any since we got here.  One of the beers we got was contract-brewed for them specially, and our waiter called it a DPA (Dutch Pale Ale): a milder, less hoppy cousin to IPA.  It reminded me a lot of Swamp Head’s Big Nose: lots of aromatic hops, but not a lot of bitterness.  Though it wasn’t as full-bodied and malty as Big Nose.

After lunch, we strolled down the Oudegracht to Bert’s Bierhuis.  This is a great beer shop owned by the same people who run Kafé België.  The selection is great, and very well-organized by region and style.  It was nice to see the beers I’d seen back home lined up, with all the other beers from the same brewery next to them.  There were a ton of beers I’d never heard of before, and hard-to-find things like Westvleteren 8 and 12.  We got as many bottles as we thought we could lug back to the train station, and they threw in a free totebag.

I’m definitely looking forward to coming back to both of these places, and sampling many more of their broad selections.

First Week in the Netherlands

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We’ve been in the Netherlands a week, and we have a few bottles to show for it.  The family we traded houses with thoughtfully left a few bottles for us, and our local grocery store also has a handful of Belgian beers.  We have found a wine shop up the road that has a somewhat wider selection, so we’ll be checking those out soon.

We mostly enjoyed the Belgian dubbels and tripels from Westmalle, Leffe, La Trappe, and Duvel.  We hadn’t had any lager in ages, so it was interesting to try Heineken, Grolsch, etc. again.  A few of the lagers were surprisingly good: Grolsch’s Herfstbok and Kanon were both pretty drinkable, and Brand’s Sylvester winter beer was good, too.  But most of them were the same old lager I don’t like much these days (though I did manage to choke them down somehow).  The only total loss was Heineken’s Oude Bruin — I don’t know if it was spoiled or if it was supposed to taste like cough syrup, but it was our first drainpour in some time.

Belgian “Research” Project: Second Round

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I continue to make progress on my project to sample a wide variety of Belgian beers.  Here’s another set of notes:

Orval Trappist Ale

Interesting Trappist beer in cute glass bottles with dolphin heraldry. Very luxurious head, took a while to pour a small bottle (11.2oz) into a pint glass. Very light and sour, with a bit of resin in the finish, from dry hopping.

Chimay Grande Réserve (Blue)

Probably the first Belgian beer I ever had was some Chimay Tripel a friend brought to a party many years ago — I found it very strange and unpleasant.  My tastes have changed over the years, and I knew that I’d like the Chimay Blue much better than their tripel.  I was not disappointed: this beer if very sweet and smooth, with a hint of dryness and mild earthy hops.

Girardin Gueuze 1882 (Black Label)

Intensely sour, with a little fruitiness and funkiness.  More like Champagne than an average ale, both because of the effervescence and because of the rich layering of flavor and aroma.  Definitely confirming my intention to find more gueuze to try.

St. Bernardus Wit

Delicious — a perfect hefeweizen. Just a little touch of honey adding sweetness but not overpowering.  I want to see if I can find any of the other St. Bernardus beers around town.

Delirium Tremens

I avoided trying this beer for a long time — I didn’t take it seriously because of the silly pink elephants on the label.  What lager should be: sweet and light, with a little sour reediness that almost reminds me of a pilsner.  The overall effect is closer to a cream ale than your typical tripel.

Delirium Nocturnum

If you’re going to have one beer with pink elephants on the label, you may as well have another…  This is the sister beer to Delirium Tremens — this time a dark, strong ale. Very fruity, with a strong similarity to DT (same pilsner/cream ale taste, which is a little incongruous in a darker ale). But sweet and malty, too.

Belgian “Research” Project: First Round

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Between my local beer shop and a few other sources, I’ve managed to find several of the beers on my list.  Here are my impressions of the first batch:

Affligem Dubbel

I picked this up at the beer shop when I went without my list.  It’s wasn’t on a lot of top beer lists, but it does have a good rating on BeerAdvocate.  This beer is a lot like an English brown ale, with earthy overtones and a nice mild sweetness. It started out a little bland and underwhelming, but quickly grew on me. It’s sweet, but not cloying, with some fruitiness.  Solid.

Westmalle Dubbel

Giant sticky malt with lots of fruit, sugar, biscuit, etc. — much sweeter than the other abbey ales I’ve sampled.  A nutty body and a little darkness in the finish.  Didn’t like this as much as the Affligem.

La Trappe Quadrupel

This is the only Trappist brewery in the Netherlands.  Definitely one of the better heavy abbey beers I’ve had. Not too sickly or overwhelming. Definite subtleties with spiciness and nuttiness.

Rochefort 6/8/10

We picked up one bottle each of the 6, 8 and 10, and tasted them back-to-back. In a word, disappointing.  The 6 was very mild, with a lot of carbonation, and some mild earthy flavor, a little sweetness, but not much else.  The 8 and 10 definitely had a bigger alcohol kick, and a little more malt, but were pretty similar.  These are all very highly rated online, but we didn’t find much to justify that.

St. Bernardus Abt 12

Sweet and highly carbonated, with some caramel, toffee and light mineral notes. Very smooth and complex, with the typical fruitiness and spiciness.  Better than Affligem.  Made in a small town not far from Westvleteren, so maybe a day trip is in order.

DeuS (Brut des Flandres)

Sweet and very effervescent.  Lots of champagne flavor, but not dry like brut champagne (despite the name), more like a demi-sec.  Everything about this beer made me ready to love it.  It was definitely packaged and promoted as a special, one-of-a-kind experience.  But it managed to be just OK.  It was good, but not fantastic.  Not enough to justify the hefty price tag.

Westvleteren 12

Quite hard to get (the monks only make enough to support themselves and only sell it in limited quantities at the abbey), so I was hoping it wouldn’t live up to the hype. Alas, it was fantastic.  Lives up to the “best beer in the world” moniker quite well.

The Platonic ideal every other abbey ale I’ve had has been clustered around. Rich and earthy malt with fruity and spicy notes, plus some creamy chocolate and biscuit too. A little dry bitterness in the finish. Packs a decent kick at 10% ABV.  Exceptionally smooth and textured.

Belgian “Research” Project

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We’re going to be living in the Netherlands for a few months next year, so we’re planning on taking advantage of being next-door to Belgium to sample some hard-to-find brews and maybe visit an abbey or two.  Belgian beer is a domain roughly as complex as French wine (see e.g., A Beginner’s Guide to Belgian Beer).  So I thought I’d do some “research” before we went.

Background

I have had a couple of Belgian beers before:

  • Tripel Karmeliet and Maredsous 6/Blonde: I had both of these in Oakland on a business trip, and was really impressed by the complexity and maltiness.
  • Chimay Tripel: I picked up a bottle of this shortly thereafter (when I couldn’t find Tripel Karmeliet or Maredsous locally).  This has a lot in common with those, if maybe a little spicier.
  • Saison Dupont: I tried this after my not-so-gentle introduction to Saison, when I saw recommendations online to start with a milder variety like Saison Dupont.  This struck me as almost Champagne-like, with a ton of aroma and flavor I didn’t associate with beer at all.

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