From the Cellar: Unibroue Terrible

It's been a while since we pulled one out of the cellar for this blog, but with the weather getting colder there is no better time to dive into the big monsters that tend to lurk in my stash o' beer than now.

A bottle of Unibroue Terrible has calling me for a few years now, so let's check it out.

Unibroue are out of Canada, and until the American craft beer explosion they were easily one of the best brewers in North America. Hell, they probably still are. Specializing in Belgian-styles, they are matched only by brethren like Allagash and Ommegang. Hard to go wrong with anything they make.

This three-year-old bottle of Terrible pours the color of mahogany, with a thin, fizzy head that disappears almost immediately. Smells of black bread, dark sugars, and a hint of plum and grape rise from the glass. There is a candy sweetness to the aroma. Medium body, dark sugars, and very little alcohol despite coming in at 10.5%.

Age has treated it well. There is a softness here not common to ales. Whether through aging or because it was fermented on lees I don’t know, but it makes this beer drink wonderfully. (Lees is the leftover sediment from wine making, mostly dead yeast. In beer making, this is known as the trub.)

I paired this with spicy Asian cuisine and it was fantastic. I suspect it will go well with any bold meal.

Terrible has a lot in common with Trappist ales, especially after spending some time in the cellar. It drinks wonderfully smooth. TOO smooth, maybe, because it's hard to tell that it's a whopping 10.5% ABV. Since this comes in 750ml bottles, that means you should either take a few hours to sip it down or split it with a friend, otherwise you’ll be in trouble.

Unibroue Terrible is a fantastic beer when fresh, and after about three years in the cupboard it remains a fantastic beer. A little less "hot," a little creamier, but still delicious from start to finish. Thumbs up to laying a bottle of this down.

Quick Sips: Monk’s Café Flemish Sour Ale

Before every other brewery in the American craft scene was pushing out half-hearted sours, there was Monk's.

Sours have been surging the last few years, but let’s be honest: Sour isn’t for everyone. The acidic, tart bite of a sour beer is heaven in a glass for those who enjoy the style, but can be puckeringly off-putting for those who don’t.

This beer, though, this is a sour for the masses. Brewed for the legendary Monk’s Café in Philadelphia, this Flemish red ale is only mildly sour, with a nice, fruity sweetness that does a fine job of balancing the beer’s acidity and gentle vinegar qualities. It’s a brew that goes especially well with a meal (a salad, spicy fish, or chocolate make great pairings), but that also stands up nicely on its own. There are few traditional sours as approachable as this one. It drinks so smooth and easy even your finicky friends will find themselves enjoying it. If you’ve never had a sour beer before, this is a great place to start.

The beer is widely available in bottles, and of course can always be found on draft at Monk's Cafe. 

NOTE: Portions of the preceding originally appeared in The Philadelphia Weekly.

Quick Sips: Weyerbacher Merry Monks

They say there is nothing like your first time. Well, my first time experiencing Weyerbacher's great beer was with this one right here, so you'll forgive me if I cling to it with some degree of nostalgia.

Not that Merry Monks needs it.

In 2010, Weyerbacher took home a Bronze Medal in the World Beer Cup for brewing for Merry Monks, a Belgian-style tripel that just might be the brewery’s best beer.

That’s saying something, too, because most of their lineup is outstanding. This deceptive brew has a distinct spicy character thanks to the yeast used -- for the uninitiated, this is typical of many Belgian yeast strains -- and the aroma gives off hints of bananas and faint pepper and cloves. It pours like liquid bread and tastes like it, too; very Earthy with a bit of spice, a touch dry and not at all sweet. The monks are probably merry because this beer’s 9.3% ABV packs a punch yet it drinks like a brew of half the strength. Proceed with caution!

But definitely proceed. There are few American tripels better than this one on the market. Hell, I'll risk credibility by saying that it even gives mainstays like the legendary Westmalle a run for its money.

Portions of this review originally appeared in the Philadelphia Weekly and appear here with permission.

Quick Sips: Ommegang Hennepin

It sounds ridiculous to someone who has never had the experience, but there are beers that can capture places and times in ways that few others things can.

Ever step out onto a grassy field or fresh farmland and been invigorated by the lush, clean, Earthy smell of the air? That’s Hennepin (a beer I have touched on before). It’s made by Ommegang, America’s best brewers of Belgian styles – though that’s kind of cheating, what with being owned by Duval and all – and it is one of the definitive examples of the elusive saison style. Saison is a broad category, but the basics are that they tend to be pale, musty, and have some herbal spice kick. This beer is exactly that to perfection. Hennepin is effervescent but complex, easy drinking but strong (7.7%), and so good it will leaving you pining for the glorious taste of horse blanket … which sounds gross to most, but those of you who get it, get it. And if you’re a city dweller who has never gotten out to the country and can’t understand why “fresh farmland” is awesome, I’m sorry for your loss 

Almost all of this review was taken from the Philadelphia Weekly and is used here with permission.

Lost Abbey crashes a beer tasting in STYLE

The Lost Abbey is an excellent went coast brewery known for their top shelf Belgian-style and sour beers. Their brews only became available in my neck of the woods within the last year or so, and based on what I've had so far they're well worth seeking out. Since hitting my state, I've been known to sip a fine Lost Abbey brew while engaging in some board gaming fun.

But no amount of board gaming is as cool as what happened to a group of beer geeks who had gotten together for a Lost Abbey tasting. As the host explained on Reddit, their goal was to gather some of the brewery's rare beers in one place so folks could get a chance to taste beers they otherwise might not have been able to get.

What they didn't expect was for Tomme Arthur, Lost Abbey's head brewer, to show up at their door with some of the brewery's most sought after beer in hand.

Check out the video by Lost Abbey:






The sound you hear is hardcore beer geeks weeping with envy. That is incredibly cool of the folks at Lost Abbey to do. Even just showing up would have been a treat -- brewers are fun people to talk to because they love talking about their craft -- but to bring those ultra-rare beers is just icing on the cake.

Makes me want to go get me some Lost Abbey beer.

Quick Sips: Weyerbacher Verboten

It's no secret that I enjoy Weyerbacher's beers. While the excellent Troegs and Victory get all the attention when it comes to great Pennsylvania brewers, Weyerbacher has been very quietly been brewing beers that are often their equal. Their wildly inconsistent packaging probably hasn't helped them in that regard (though I'm glad to see it has undergone a complete redesign). Don't judge a book by its cover sounds nice in theory, but in practice we all do it.

Anyway, here we have Verboten, a sometimes overlooked beer in the Weyerbacher roster, passed over for more popular offerings such as Double Simcoe IPA and Merry Monks. This is a Belgian style pale ale, brewed to style. It's got a vibrant, fruity aroma with hints of lemon - and of course, the expected bready smell of Belgian yeast. When it hits your mouth you feel active, palate-cleansing carbonation and a light body. There is some up front sweetness, but it's offset by a slightly more American-style hop profile.

A little fruitier than pale ales out of Belgium, a little more in the way of hops, but overall a fine take on this traditional style. Give it a try if you enjoy beers like Leffe Blonde and Ommegang BPA.

Quick Sips: Rodenbach Grand Cru

While IPAs continue to be the mainstay of the American craft beer movement, sour beers are trending upwards as the fashionable style of choice. That's in part because ardent beer geeks are looking for different different different, but also because sour beers are frickin' delicious.

The granddaddy of sours is Rodenbach, who have been doing traditional Flemish sours since 1821. They're also the most visible and easily available sour beer in the U.S., so if you want to try the style you'll probably start here or, more likely, with their classic red.

The Grand Cru is the big one. The beer pours a mahogany brown. It looks rich and complex ... and it is. The aroma is very sour, like cranberries and sour cherries stored for a few years in wooden barrels. Tones of red wine are present in the mix.

The taste is nuanced and layered. It is tart throughout, with a big sour finish. Not completely mouth-puckering, but close, especially as you work your way through your glass. A little bit of malt sweetness balances out the sour, and hints of oak at the end smooths out the edges.

Overall a tart, tasty jaunt into the world of sour beers. A perfect introduction to the style or a nice comfort beer for old vets.

Quick Sips: La Trappe Isid'or Trappist ale

It's no great secret that I have a fondness for Trappist beers. They're considered some of the best in the world for a reason. I've made my way through every Trappist beer available in the United States (no, I have not had the elusive, difficult-to-get, available-at-the-brewery-only Westvleteren 12) and have rarely found them lacking. Even those that didn't thrill me were still top beers worth savoring.

So needless to say, I wasn't surprised when the La Trappe offerings I had were good. But I was surprised they were so off-the-charts good. Because damn. Wow. This was some fantastic stuff.

Wonderful aroma with all the banana and yeast you expect from a Trappist beer, plus some nice spicy notes. It was heady and herbal and inviting. Once poured (it generates an active, lively head) it drinks with a medium body and tastes of raisin bread, herbs, and pleasant sweetness balanced perfectly with mildly bitter hops. Hints of dark fruit tantalize throughout, though aren't as rich as, say, Rochefort's beers. All in all, this is like a delicious banana bread in a glass. Wait! If you've had this awful banana bread beer, please don't let the description dissuade you; the La Trappe is divine. This really is delicious.

Highly recommended. Got mine in a gift pack that included four bottles -- two of these and two of their Quads -- along with the lovely glass pictured at left.

Incidentally, the photo above won Beertography Photo of the Week on the beer photo blog of the same name. Cool! Go check them out.

Quick Sips: Timmerman's Kriek

A Kriek is a Belgian lambic beer fermented with sour cherries, making for a fruity, slightly sour, slightly sweet concoction that will make you wonder if you should call it "beer" at all. Rest assured, it is beer ... but it's probably the sort of brew the average beer drinker in America has never imagined existed, much less tasted and enjoyed.

But don't let the word "sour" fool you. Timmerman's is far from sour. It's just tart enough to counteract the sweetness of the cherries, but it fails to even slightly pucker the mouth. The beer pours a rich red color (click the image for a larger view and noticed how red it is at the edge) with a hazy pink head. The visual cues suggest this will be fruity, and it is.

Arguably too fruity. Fruit-laden variations on lambics such as krieks and the framboise style can be delicious without making you feel like you're drinking candy. They remain a beer, albeit a beer that challenges your preconceptions of what a beer is. Thanks to the light body and active carbonation, though, this one drinks more like a heavy cherry soda. The cherry sweetness is candylike. Very little in the way of malt or bready aromas or yeast. This is pure distilled cherry sweetness disguised as a beer.

It's tasty in its own way, but I'm not sure I'd ever want to have more than one.

Timmerman's is fairly easy to find and fairly affordable, so if you're interested in trying out this style it'll be a snap to locate. You won't be tasting the best of them, but it'll get you started.

Creating a Christmas beer for the ages

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What do you suppose the above has to do with brewing a Christmas beer? Let me tell you.

Seasonal beers and Christmas beers in particular are an annual traditional in the world of good beer. Better breweries put out seasonal beers a few times a year, and Christmas beers are a major part of that.

With that in mind, I set out to make a beer for the holiday season. Something to drink and enjoy when the weather is cold, holly hangs from the eaves, and pumpkin pie tastes best. I also wanted something that would LAST. Something that could be enjoyed both this holiday season and next holiday season ... and the one after that, and maybe the one after that.

I settled on a Belgian dark style, which, as anyone who reads this blog knows, I love.

The base of my recipe was the Raisonette Trappist (PDF warning) recipe courtesy of Brewer's Apprentice in New Jersey. It's based on Raison D'Etre by Dogfish Head.

I added a small amount of brown sugar to slightly boost the alcohol content, then added cinnamon and freshly ground nutmeg to the mix to give it some winter spicing. The beer fermented for one month, then I let it mature for another month in a big glass vessel ... cleverly disguised so Mr. Eric would let me keep it in the living room:

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This process started in June. Yes, I was planning out my Christmas beer that far in advance.

So, after two months of letting this big bastard age, it came time to get it into bottles. The first goal was to get it into something special. If it's going to be a long-term beer, after all, why not make sure the bottles are long-term, too? So, I bought some gorgeous bottles that will help say, "This is a special beer."

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Cool bottles, and the sort of thing that will look great when you break 'em out at the holidays -- which is the point. But out of the five gallons typical with a homebrew batch, I only put three gallons into bottles. The other two gallons became the subject of a pair of beer experiments. Those experiments started like this:

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Golden raisins to your left, sour cherries to your right, plus a little bit of oak for good measure. (The oak is meant to simulate aging in an oak barrel.)

I racked one gallon of this Belgian dark onto 6 oz of golden raisins. I can't imagine how that will turn out, since the Dogfish Head "Extreme Brewing" book recommends that amount for a full batch! The other gallon was racked onto 6 oz of tart cherries. Both got doses of nutmeg and cinnamon again, too.

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However they turn out, I'm excited about the possibilities. They could each be very offbeat, very special, very delicious beers. Or both variations could turn out horrible. It's possible, but hey, they're experiments. And isn't being creative part of why we home brew in the first place?

Going big with Westmalle Trappist ale

Trappist beers sure do get a lot of respect. Beers like Chimey and Rochefort are some of the most highly regarded in the world. Among the rare few beers that can call themselves Trappist beers is Westmalle Abbey and their famous Westmalle Tripel. It may look like an approachable beverage (click the photo at left for a larger version), but make no mistake, this is a BIG BEER.

Tripels (sometimes spelled "trippel") are an acquired taste, and this one is no exception. Looks light and fluffy and drinkable, but one gulp and you realize it's a sipper.

A common misconception with beer is that color tells you how "heavy" it will be. People think dark beer = thick beer or heavy beer, but that just isn't the case. For example, Guinness is a low-alcohol beer with about the same calories and alcohol content as Miller Lite, Bud Light, etc. So while Westmalle Tripel looks light, it drinks like a lead weight, with lots of body and a robust 9.5% ABV alcohol content.

The taste is sweet but not cloyingly so, a touch spicy but not in your face. The beer lacks all the dark fruit flavors of Belgian darks, but does have lighter fruits in the aroma. They're especially noticeable as you let the beer ease into warmer temperatures. Dominant is a "bready," almost pastry-like taste. The beer has very active carbonation -- all that head in the photo was generated with a gentle pour -- and foams up quite a bit in your mouth. I drank this while eating a pasta dish with a mild cheese and the beer completely overpowered the food despite a very clean taste.

Excellent beer, but you know what? I'm going to piss off the hardcore beer folks when I say I like American tripels better than this one. It's sacrilege, I know, but the aggressive hopping of beers like Flying Fish's Exit 4 are more appealing to me, adding balance to the weight of a big beverage like this. They're Americanized, highly hopped, very spicy, robust, full of flavor. And, for me, more desirable.

No, you're not supposed to say that about one of the most praised beers in the world -- BeerAdvocate rates it an A-, a notch over the B+ for Exit 4 -- but there it is.

Which isn't to say you shouldn't give it a try if you spot one and enjoy Belgian styles. It'll run you about $5 to $6 for the bottle, but the cost of entry is worth it because you'll experience a heady, challenging beer unlike most you'd normally be drinking.

Tasting some history with Rochefort's Trappist beers

Note: This post originally appeared on my main blog.

For centuries, Trappist monks have been known for their outstanding brewing abilities. Monks in Belgium brew beer not only for their own consumption -- they are hearty, healthy beers -- but in order to pay for their way of life. Some of these beers are among the most sought after in the world, most notably beer from Westvleteren, which can only be purchased at the abby and only in small quantities. Others, like the world famous Chimay beer (brewed at Scourmont Abby), are widely available and are among the world's most praised beers.

Not too long ago, I had a chance to have the three beers of the Rochefort Brewery, one of the only seven true Trappist breweries in the world. This beer has been in production since 1595. So yeah, it's a piece (delicious) history.


Rochefort makes three beers, simply called 6, 8, and 10. They're relatively similar in style, with increasing levels of alcohol (from 7.5% ABv to 11.3%) and complexity being the major distinguishing factors. These beers are consistently among the top ranked beers in the world. Do they live up to the hype?

Absolutely.

Pouring the 6, the first thing you notice is the gorgeous color. It's closer to a deep orange brown than you see in the picture above, not unlike a forest floor in autumn. The 8 is similar, showing the brown of autumn leaves with just a faint hint of red. Not thick black like a porter, not golden brown like a brown ale. Brown like Mother Nature. It's quite beautiful. The 10 is a deep, murky brown with hints of red at the edges but otherwise totally opaque.

All three beers are bursting with carbonation, too. Even with a gentle pour they jump up with two or three fingers of head. So all in all, these beers are wonderful looking.

When I first opened the 6, though, I wondered if they'd meet expectations. I expect a world class beer to have a world class aroma, but at first I felt slightly underwhelmed by Rochefort 6. Maybe it's the big IPAs and Imperial Stouts I've been drinking this winter, almost all of which fill the nose with heady aromas, but this left me unimpressed. Smelled heavy with yeast, very sweet with hints of caramel. Not unpleasant, but also not alluring.

The 8, on the other hand, had an active and complex aroma. Hints of figs and raisins and just a touch of caramelized pears, with the damp, uplifting smell of a forest stream bank in the spring. Yeah, I'm serious. If you can imagine what a walk through old Europe would smell like, well, it smells like this.

The 10 was the most difficult to judge in the aroma department. The aroma is boozy similar to a big barleywine style ale. (Think of Sierra Nevada's Bigfoot.) If you pay close attention you get some hints of figs and caramelized apples, but the big, malty alcohol smell dominates. It's certainly a STRONG aroma. Whether or not it's a good aroma depends on your tastes. As it warms, the aroma mellows a bit, revealing wafts of malt and raisin. Much more pleasant closer to room temperature.

The taste of each was just as complex and nuanced. The 6 got better with each sip. It tasted like a rich pastry bread in beer form, all sorts of bready and malty and delicious. A little sweet but subdued; caramel flavors but in perfect balance with everything else going on in the beer; touches of raisin and the like. By the end what had started as a decent but not mind-blowing beer turned out to be a stunner.

The 8 was more complex and yet oddly more subtle, too. The taste isn't overpowering or explosive. It starts innocuous, a slight gulp of beerish liquid riding on the heady aroma, but the middle quickly broadens into Earthy, vaguely nutty flavors with malt, caramel, molasses, and touches of fig, raisin and plum.

If it's got a fault it's that the 9.2% ABV is more upfront than many crafts manage to accomplish these days. It's not an invisible alcohol. While the Rochefort 6 drinks so smooth it's frightening, you can TELL this one is a big, potent beer. In these days of 10 percenters that drink like they're 6 or 7 percent, I'm sorry to say that this is a minor setback.

With the 10 you get nutty caramel and pumpernickel and other Earthy brown breads in the taste. It starts mild, then expands into a yeasty burst of pleasingly musty flavors before finishing with an alcohol-laden shimmer of mildly sweet breads and dried fruits. Like the 8, it also has a big, strong alcohol taste. A BIG alcohol taste. Many American crafts manage to meet or even exceed this ABV without the alcohol coming to the fore. Not here. Here it wants to arm wrestle you. American craft lovers have been spoiled with easy-to-drink big beers; the Belgians aren't playing that game. This is not for the faint of heart.

(With both the 8 and the 10, I suspect they age WONDERFULLY and will taste less boozy and more complex after a year or so. I'll find out in about a year; I already have a bottle of each stashed away.)

All in all these were incredible beer experiences. They'll run you $5 to $8 a bottle, but if you love great beer it's well worth treating yourself, even if only once.