Working at a place as amazing as Hashigo Zake has its numerous benefits for a beer geek like myself, but perhaps the one bad thing is that I'm being drowned in a pool of super hoppy american pale ales. Well, its not that bad... but I fear my palate is getting too used to 80IBU+. I need to rekindle my love for the big sweeties: Belgians.
NZ beer importers Beerforce has recently imported my second favourite Tripel in the world: Tripel Karmeliet. This beast is amongst the best Tripels in the world, revered by beer critics world over (I assume). It is the second highest rated Tripel in the world according to THE beer website: Ratebeer.com.
I picked this bottle up at Regional Wines & Spirits.
This is an equal opportunities beer. Like many Belgian "abbey" beers it has a link to crazy religious people who lock themselves up and brew amazing beer. But instead of male Benedictine Monks this one is apparently the work of female Karmeliet Nuns. It's not actually brewed by the nuns these days. It is now brewed by Brouwerij Bosteels, the guys who make Pauwel Kwak. However they manage to achieve the quality of monk beer, so I'll assume the nuns would be cool with them doing it.
Just the aroma of this outstanding beer sends shivers up my spine. Seriously, I got shivers. I also slapped the desk and moaned a bit(beergasm).
I get a huge complex aroma of coriander, cloves and orange peel. It's like putting your nose in a spice rack. The flavour is like chewing on the same spice rack, but with a candy sweetness typical of high gravity Belgians. The 8.4%ABV is incredibly well hidden, with a nice clovey finish rounding everything off.
The thing that keeps this from being my #1 Tripel is that it doesn't hammer the flavours home. My #1 Tripel: Westmalle Tripel achieves this with higher alcohol and just more general awesomeness.
SPEAKING OF WHICH. I've got the inside word from Kieran at Regionals that Beerforce have more Westmalle Tripel on the water coming to us right now! I smell a taste-off.
I picked up another interesting Belgian recently from Rumbles Wine Merchant: Grimbergen Dubbel. This is an abbey beer, meaning it is brewed with the permission and supervision of Benedictine monks, not by the monks themselves. In this case the brewery is Alken-Maes and the monks are from Abdij van Grimbergen.
This one pours the traditional deep dark reddish brown of a dubbel. A very authentic aroma of banana, raisin and spice with an underlying sweetness. The beer is quite dry in the mouth, the 6.5% alcohol makes itself known. Classic dubbel flavours though, sweet and dark flavours mingle making a fruitcakey mouthful.
I'd say this has been quite the shock for my hop caked tongue tonight. Good thing as I'll need my palate in prime condition for all the crazy homebrew I'm going to be making from next month! More to come about that soon...
Op uw gezondheid!
