I get a little bit of peach, and I get a little bit of the grainy quality. But I also get this soap and this dirty spice that always turns me off of a lot of Belgian beers. A lot of Belgian beers, like low gravity to high gravity. I'm hoping that this thing will change my mind. Please explain the term dirty spice. Dirty spice. It's one of the spice girls. I was going to say, is this a knock-off spice girl's ban? Manchester. Or is Liverpool the dirtier city? Manchester is pretty dirty. Manchester. I don't want to say what it is because I'm always wrong. I usually get corrected. Sometimes I assume it's a slight skunkiness, but it could be the kind of old world hops that they're using, or it could be an influence from the yeast that's a little bit funky that I'm not used to in the clean American beers that I drink. These are yeast forward beers. They use old world hops like Styrian hops and stuff. Some of them are spiced occasionally, right, Roger? Sometimes they have coriander in them and stuff, so it could be a litany of weird flavors that Greg is lampooning. Yeah. This has no spice added to it, though, I don't think. No. But the Belgian yeast is known for producing spicy phenols, which might be what you're picking up on, clove and whatnot. That's exactly it. All right, guys. Hey, Roger, how do you say this? Westmalle? Westmalle. So we're tasting Westmalle Tripel right now. We're tasting triples today, and here's the music. You're listening to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast, and today we're gonna be featuring one of my favorite beer styles. We're talking all about triples. Joining me today are... I'm Greg, I do communications at Binny's. Hi, I'm Chris, I do wine and drink beer. Hey, it's Pat, I do spirits at Binny's and drink all the old man beers Roger asks me to. True. You're a fan of the oldest man beer in the world. Oh, it's true. All right, so this is a response to my old man, get off the lawn, constant beratement of the current state of beer. Somebody asked me recently, so what really got you into beer then? What was the thing that made you really excited, made you want to go in and try different beers? I've tried so many beers over the years, but I can really limit it to an aha moment when I tried a beer and went, wow, I really didn't fully realize that beer could be this way, could taste this complex, could be light in color, but so flavorful. And that was when I drank Triple Caramelite for the first time. I thought it was just your generic love of carbohydrates that got you into beer. Yes. Well, I mean, I had lots of influences. You know, I started home brewing at a very young age. So, I mean, I was definitely curious about beer and interested in it, but... Middle school Roger whipping up batches of sour style English porters in his basement. Hey, when you're a drummer in a bagpipe band, when you're in junior high, I mean, you get exposed to the beer scene pretty early. So this might tip how old I am, but when I was in eighth grade in science, I made apple wine. That was an actual legit project that I did in the classroom. And then they let me leave the school with it without any supervision. And of course, I drank it on the way home. It's pretty great. Back in pioneer days. That's right. It was a one room school house, the bell rang, and we made apple wine, damn it. You know what? When I got into the wine and spirits business, it was in a grocery store in a college town. And the nerds who would come in and buy brewing supplies for us, you just knew it. They're like, I'm making root beer. Well, so getting back to the beer at hand here. Roger credits Tripel Carmelite. Yeah. But what we're going to start with here, when we dissect the style of a Belgian style Tripel, we're going to start with the one that was one of the first and definitely the most revered, talked about, imitated. The beer that really put this style on the map is from the Trappist Brewery Westmalle, and it's just very simply known as Tripel. So that is a Belgian beer style that's probably best described in context to the other Belgian styles. It makes it a little easier to understand. So there's four Belgian beer styles that you'll see on our shelves that are often made at Trappist Breweries, Monastic Abbey Breweries, or just breweries that specialize in those type of ales. So you start with a Belgian style single, which are pretty uncommon. That's typically the type of beer that was, those were produced at the Monastery for the monks to drink. They're lower alcohol, more sessionable. They don't travel as well. Table beer. Yeah, the kind of thing you drink with dinner. And they're lower in alcohol, 4 to 5%, so they don't have the shelf stability that these bigger ones would. Belgian style double, much more common. These are going to be a big, rich, multi-beer. This was predominantly the style featured in Belgium that Belgian beers were famous for. They used very distinctive yeast strains that impart really fruity, spicy esters to the beer. They went on making those beers for centuries, but come the turn of the 20th century, people started to really fall in love with paler beer. Lagers really took off. Obviously, they came about in the 19th century, but people in Europe in particular were really starting to gravitate towards lighter in color beer styles. So what I enjoy is that the Belgians did not buckle and make a lower alcohol beer. They actually doubled down and made a stronger beer, but made it lighter in color. So the Tripel style is, there's not really a consensus on what this is referring to. The easiest explanation is that it's a reference to the strength of the beer. So a Tripel would be Tripel the strength of a single, which is kind of a misnomer. Hold on a second. Tripel, the biggest question people have is, what does Tripel mean? And we don't know. Yeah, we don't know. Lame. Michael Jackson, the beer writer, Michael Jackson's guess is that back in the day, casks of ale were marked with a marking as to their strength, like say it was marked X, a double would have been XX, a triple XXX and so on and so forth, really just If you look at the basic styles, I mean, there is some gradation that makes some degree of sense. It's not precise, but if you look at an ankle or a single, often it's three or four percent alcohol, and then the doubles are maybe six, seven. In the old way of measuring gravity in beer, it is thought that they were like three, six, and nine degrees essentially. Exactly. Then you get your quad on top of that. Yeah. Then you get the outlier of the Belgian quadruple, which to further confuse people, for the most part, those are darker, richer, heavier beers that are even stronger in alcohol. So the triple style, I think, is particularly interesting because it's so high in alcohol. They typically clock in around nine, nine and a half percent alcohol. But as we taste this Westmalle right now, I mean, it couldn't be lighter in body. It's so creamy. It's effervescent. It's almost like weightless on the tongue. Yeah, those beers are incredible. A big part of that and what's unique to these beers, and I think part of the reason that I really fell in love with these styles is that for the most part, at least traditionally, they were all bottle condition beers. So these are beers that are bottled with living yeast, and the carbonation that you get on these beers was produced in the bottle. So it's very fine and delicate carbonation. Oh, that makes sense. Much more mousse-like, champagne-like, tinier bubbles totally affects the mouthfeel of the beer. Yeah, you can't replicate that kind of carbonation without bottle conditioning. And you'll also note how hazy this beer is, especially if you gave your bottle. This beer is really hazy, yeah. Yeah, if you give this bottle a little tip upside down before you pour it, if you're into that yeasty burst. And going back to Roger's original initial point of how he got into beer and the beer seen today. I mean, this is a prime example, Tripel, of things that are ultra complex without being loaded full of fruit and all kinds of other stuff. This is where you can look to a real traditional beer to find something that is just layered and mind-bogglingly complex. Yeah, totally. That's a fantastic point. I mean, you taste this and the fruit flavors here are complex. You get some of that banana esters that are famous but in a restrained way, not kind of the over-the-top banana bubble gum taffy. You get the interplay of not just the yeast esters, but as we mentioned before, Pat was saying, you're using very traditional continental hops in these. So it's more of your earthy, herbaceous hop components, which help kind of give a drying character to it. The other secret to these beer styles is that a lot of them are brewed with sugar, which is very interesting. What we call Belgian candy sugar, but it's really just like a sugar syrup they make and add in. Yeah, this one is indeed. So to put a finer point on it, I think, as you were saying, the popularity of Pilsners and lighter beers led to this innovation. But if you look at the mashbill and the hops that are involved and ignore the relative strength, I mean, you've got Pilsner Malt, Steering Golding, Saws, Hops. I mean, very familiar sounding ingredients, right? Right. But it still has like a cream corn quality too. Where does it get that? Well, that would generally be considered a flaw in most beers unless it's in a very subtle way. That's dimethyl sulfide. Not usually cropping up in ales though. Usually it's a problem with lager yeast. Yeah. It's usually short time lagerine when it needed more. So this isn't like a DMS, but I get what he's getting at. There's a tang here. When you were talking about the clove component, I get like a white pepper flavor to this, which is kind of when you were saying dirty spice, it made me laugh. I often describe white pepper as a musty flavor to it, but I could see where the fruit and sweetness of this is making you think of corn, but it's not necessarily like if we were to give you a really shoddily made lager that was full of DMS, you'd go, oh, this is like cream corn slash cabbage. It's very, very different. By the way, that's a bad habit I have, is saying an honest perception in a product, and then a lot of times when we have producers on these episodes, they're like, whoa, how dare you? I'm like, just saying what I smell, man. I didn't mean to insult you. I totally agree with you, Roger. I don't think this is a DMS thing. Even though I'm describing weird flavors that I'm tasting in this, altogether, it really, really works. It's a combination of peachy, apricot, and then that grain quality that you're talking about, and clove. Yeah, this beer is so good. Before you finish all of your Westmalle, set it aside. Let's open up another one, because I want, as we work our way through different triples here, to be able to go back and compare a little bit. How many cups are we going to need here? You're going to need five, my friend. Empty out that coffee mug. The first thing I'd say about this beer, and it's true of the Westmalle too, but we neglected to mention, is the incredible light, frothy head that they produce. Quite amazing. I've got it poured in the official Tripel Caramelite glass, which let's be honest, this is pretty easy to fall in love with this beer because of the glassware alone. If you get the big glass is one of my all-time favorites because it will hold an entire 22-ounce bomber. By the way, Tripel Caramelite. Caramelite. Correct. I've gotten in bar fights over that one. Michael Jackson famously commented on this glass as being a bit showy. Very British thing to say. Yeah, of course it's showy. It's supposed to be. But beautiful globed glass, high-stemmed, Florida Lees on it. There's a reason though for how tall it is. If you see, unfortunately, you can't see right now, but volumes of thick, fluffy foam on top of this beer. Yeah, I poured a tiny bit in this stemless wine glass, and it's like two-thirds foam. The Lincoln Park Store was out of this in both sizes, but I was drinking heavily on Tuesday night, as I'm sure a lot of people were, and I found a De Dahl Dullet Heve Triple in my basement that is probably at least 12 years old or so. This beer is a triple, but it's famously, let's say, explosively carbonated. So I'm going to go down the hallway and open it over the bathroom sink. Just to make sure I don't make a mess of everything, I'll be right back. Yeah, the last time I opened a Dullet Heve, it literally shot out of the bottle in the air. There's a little bit of Brett in their beers, and they kind of take the artisanal thing to a liberties there, which can make for an interesting beer. It can be pretty intensely barnyard-y, but curious to see what that did after some aging. And that brings up a good point about these bottles. So people are really into aging beer these days. Unfortunately, they tend to age things like Imperial Stouts. Sometimes, Sours, but these kind of beers, a Belgian Tripel that's bottle-conditioned, these are the perfect type of beers to age. When you have living yeast in there, it can reabsorb oxygen, and it really is continuing to evolve in the bottle because of that yeast layer. So if you really want to see what aging can do for a beer where it's not just oxidative aging, where it's like something is really happening in the bottle, bottle-conditioned Belgian beers are the way to go. Not just Triples, but Doubles and Quads, and other Golden Ales as well. No doubt, Roger. I've aged a lot of Belgian Trappist beers over the years. I would say that the first duty of an age-old beer is to be bottle-conditioned. You can age other things, but nothing ages like bottle-conditioned beer. Pat's back. Did you towel off? Okay. So I don't know if this beer is safe to drink. So it's a 750, it's a green 750, and it's one of those corked and then capped bottles. As soon as I started prying the cap off, it started fizzing and foaming, and there's a cork underneath. Then as soon as I got the cap all the way off, the cork exploded out of the bottle. I didn't even have to use the corkscrew. The inside of the cap is covered with dark black slime, and the cork itself is black and rotten through. Look how excited these guys are getting. Yum. I'm definitely going to taste this beer, but it might make me ill. I've never seen a cork corroded that way, and I've seen some pretty funky wine corks. The beer didn't foam out of the bottle, it just totally shot this cork out into my thumb. I would suggest pour the first little bit out into something else, because there's going to be some gook in the neck probably. There's a piece of cork floating in it. I can attest that Chris has been into beer forever, and he has a crazy seller of stuff. He brought by a bottle of Cantillon to a dinner one time, and when we opened it, it looked exactly like that. It had that black sludge on the cap. I will say that I've had Cantillon's like that as well. I think the best tasting Cantillon's I've ever had have had mold on top of the cork when you take the cap off, in my personal opinion. Yeah, this one was in excellent shape, and it was probably 20 years old, if I recall, at the time. Well, this beard looks fine. It's got a really fluffy head to it, and the color looks pretty good. Looks fantastic. Yeah. How's it smell? Really showing up the triple carmelite here. It smells, I mean, it doesn't smell funky. It's kind of grassy and like hay-like, but it's not barnyard-y, I would say. Oh, it's notably sweet. It's got a, it's a real soft mouthfeel, but it's got this like sweet candy sugar distinctly note to it. Yeah. That's odd. Interesting. I don't think it's very good. Maybe it's because all the hops fell off at this point. Probably. D'Addal does make pretty hop-forward styles for traditional Belgian styles. You know, I love some of their other beers, and I age them a lot, a long time, but I'm not sure about this one. I've never seen a cork like this before. This is crazy. So let's talk about triple carmelite here. So this is famously often referred to as a three-grain beer, further muddying the waters of, oh, that's why it's called a triple. But what is cool about this, since it's a three-grain beer, is that in addition to barley, it has wheat and oats in it, which is part of what's producing an even silkier and smoother mouthfeel, and some of the haze to this beer is that besides the It's a little less hazy than the last one, but it's still pretty hazy. Yeah, definitely less hazy, and I would say still light on its feet, but that oat does add that slick mouthfeel to it, so it's creamy. It's creamy. This I feel is a- Sweeter. It's a little more citric in the nose. Totally agree. I was going to say that immediately. Orange and coriander is in there too, but I don't think there's spiciness in this. I mean, the notes are present in globs. Clearly. Yeah. I think you guys are spot on. I think also this is more to me floral and citricy, which makes it very gin like to me in a way. Whereas I just tried the Westmalle again, and the Westmalle is much spicier. It has more of a clove, white pepper component. This is more citrus, hay. But again, I think one of the stars of this beer is the mouthfeel. They manage to up an already creamy style and make it even more pillowy soft and smooth. Through the grain, is it like post-brewing residual sugar, or is it just body from the grain? I never completely understand that. It's the oats, I would say. Oats. Yeah, I would agree. Oats. If you drink an oatmeal stout or anything with oats, it makes the body very creamy and rich. Another thing I wanted to note, we mentioned sugar, but we should go into that real quick, because it can be a misnomer. Sometimes people are confused by it. The idea of why they use sugar is to actually just put something in there that is a easily fermentable sugar source that will completely ferment out and add some alcohol to the beer, but not weight to the beer. This improves what Belgians like to call digestibility to their beers. That way, I'm sure we've all had beer, like let's think of a big massive Imperial stout, like you feel full after you drink that, like it's big, thick, rich. It's high alcohol, but it's heavy. Yeah, a lot of residual sugar. Whereas these are paradoxically very high in alcohol, but they're very light in body. So the trick to that, like they do that with Duval is when we talk about that beer, same thing, like it's this beer that's so easy to drink despite its strength. Because they add candy sugar and it totally ferments out. Yeah. I would also add that whatever the sugar source is, whether it's the grain or brewing sugar, rock sugar, these beers are pretty well attenuated. So the body is lean in that way too. So there's not a lot of residual sugar, even though there's a lot of sugar going into the mash. Although they do give you the impression of sweetness, but a lot of that I think is esters, the fruitiness. Yeah. What I think is ironic is that I'm sure Pat can back me up on this one. When you start, this is one of my favorite beer styles, yet one of my least favorite to drink, microbrewery, nanobrewery, locals interpretations of it, because they so often screw that component up. They're trying to make it- Yeah, they get the strength and the color, but they have this sweet, sappy beer. Yeah. They never ferment all the way. They probably don't use as much sugar as they should use. Could be a bunch of issues. It could be their yeast health. But they put all these fermentables in there, but they don't finish fermenting it and getting it well attenuated like Chris is saying. Yeah. I think that's the key to this style is it's big, alcoholic, and has huge flavor impact. But attenuation is key. You don't want the body to be too rich. Right. Okay, let's pop another one here. So the first two were from Belgium. This one is from Canada, brewed in Quebec. And they like to tout that this was the first, I don't know if it was literally the first, but it was definitely one of the first bottle-conditioned beers made in North America. Definitely inspired by Belgian brewing traditions. Unibrew set out to make these classic styles, and La Fin du Monde, the end of the world, is grown to become their most recognizable brand, and for good reason. It's a beautiful beer, super popular, and massively award-winning. It's the most award-winning beer ever produced in Canada. Okay. So, this and Golden Monkey and the Optimata from Spaten, are the three rites of passage for budding beer nerds when they drank too many and didn't realize what they were doing, and then ended up having a really bad day the next day. For me, it was Golden Monkey and also Optimata. I went through it twice. Yeah. I told him, that's great. That's very true. I would add Delirium in there. Delirium always gets thrown in that list. Yeah. But Delirium usually comes in one big bottle. It probably comes in a four-pack too. But Fendamon, what's it come in, a four-pack? Yeah. Yeah. And they're 12-ounce bottles. So you think, oh, it's just a normal beer. That's a very good point. Yeah. Leaves you wishing for the end of the world the next morning. Usually, what happens with delirium is that people have it on draft, and they just think like, oh, it's light in color and they have two of them and they're already drunk. And that's actually what that song, Son of a Bitch, Give Me a Drink was about, was the lead singer drinking too many delirium trimmins. Yeah. Delirium is actually a triple, but maybe. They go back and forth about whether or not it's a triple. But what you get a lot of in delirium is that banana character, which you get a little more of, I think, in this La Finde du Monde. Not a ton, but there's a little bit of that. And let's also make the distinction here that in some ways, both delirium and the Finde du Monde would be considered broadly Abbey Ales rather than Trappist versions. Right. And Carmelite as well. The only Trappist will be drinking today is Westmalle. The Trappist monasteries have to have actual members of the Trappist order present. That can take different forms. Chimay is probably the most well-known of the Trappist breweries. It's also extremely modern. Plenty of secular workers there. They have fathers there kind of in the background blessing it all. But then on the other end of the spectrum, we can have tiny places like Ackle, West Latteran that are still definitely pretty much run by brothers of the Trappist order. Right. I think Westmalle is pretty big too. Yes. Westmalle is pretty modern as well. An interesting thing that they devote themselves to producing this amazing beer yet they don't drink much of it. I always felt that was sad. They can maybe drink the Pater beer with meals, but Rochefort, for example, we've talked in the past about how much we love that brewery. I read in I think in Michael Jackson's book or another book that they really only drink things like the 10 or the 8 at holidays. That's it. I mean, that's crazy to me to talk about devotion to your faith and having discipline to make this beer for the entire year to drink it once or twice. Crazy. We're surrounded by temptation. Lefin Dumond, though, over here, is an outstanding beer that can be drank at any occasion. I do find it to be a bit heavier than the two Belgian examples we tried. And it says it's brewed with spices. And I think that really does come through. It's got a distinctly grainy, spicy fruitiness that's well balanced, but the spice is there. Yes. Bubbles are a little bit coarser, too. And it is bottle conditioned, too. Is it? Yeah. Yeah. So what we've been drinking today are all just bottle capped versions of these. But when a lot of these beers hit the US market for this first time, a lot of them were cork and cage. But yeah, the expressions we have are still bottle conditioned. And again, because of that, you got some good shelf life on this. So I don't know what your guys' bottles say. Mine says best buy March 29th, 2023. So this beer has got some legs. And I used to age their darker beers more often, but I found a Lefin Dumont that I accidentally aged, I think even past the recommended three or four year date that they do. And it was just phenomenal. Accidentally aged. Yeah. Most people, that's a Corona light in the back of the fridge. So yeah, I had it in the basement in my millions of boxes of beer that I don't get to. And happily, this is a beer that unlike the beers that Brof and I always open and go up, this is crap now. This was phenomenal. And again, these bottle conditioned beers, they're just going to keep getting drier and drier until the yeast has literally nothing left to eat and then it dies. Of note that, I don't know if you guys notice, I have an 11.2 of LaFindumon because I didn't need to drink a 750 of everything today. And it's capped and then it has foil over the cap that's glued on. Except it's a screw top. It's a bottle conditioned screw top. That's wild. I don't think I've ever seen another one of those. It's the hosers up in Canada. They can't resist. Boulevard used to do bottle conditioned screw caps back when I started drinking. So yeah, you're right. I don't know what spices they add to this, but it's hard to tell where phenols and actual spice begin and end in a beer like this. But I'm definitely getting an orange peel note, a coriander, and maybe some cardamom on the finish, and maybe even a little cinnamon. I don't know. What do you guys think about that? I think we need to have a You Don't Know Spice episode. I don't know about the cinnamon. I get a nutmeg quality to it. Chris is going to relapse. I was avoiding saying that one. I think there's probably some allspice, maybe, in this. I get kind of an allspice note. Jim Blow the horn. I think this is simply dried orange peel and coriander. I don't think there's anything else in here. That could be. Have you guys ever been to this brewery or to Quebec? I have been to this brewery, actually. It's a big industrial brewery. They actually brew for Canada. I want to say they brew Pabst there as well, but it's a pretty cool brewery. It's this big industrial lager brewery that also makes these gorgeous Abbey ales. It's pretty cool. It's in Quebec City, which is an awesome city. It is amazing. Quebec City with like big wall. It's like a walled medieval city in North America. It's crazy. Yeah. If you want to go to Europe without going to Europe, Quebec City is the place to do it. Yeah. Quebec City is awesome. I keep trying to tell my wife that, but she insists on buying plane tickets to Europe. This is amazing place. You should definitely go there sometime. It's beautiful. Yeah. I don't know if it still exists. Did they have the 4K Fourchette restaurant? It's just awesome. I ate at 4K Fourchette. I had lamb testicles there. Nice. Though it was like a mystery dish and we're like, what are these? The waiter goes, how do you say lamb nuts? Okay. Jim Blow it again. Beer, beer, beer, beer, beer. Pat's talking about eating balls. Yeah. I was there for a big beer festival, big outdoor festival called Festa Beer Day Quebec. No, that's the kind of food that needs to come with a warning label. Mystery food like the dish. There were little meatballs. It was good. Literally, little meatballs. Yeah. I was in Australia having dinner at Penfolds once, and they were serving some really nice food, but there was a lamb's brain that were deep-fried, and it was absolutely delicious, but there were a few people in the group who were a little hammered, and they're popping in these little nuggets in their mouth going, oh my God, this is so good. As the same thing, the waiter's like, they're like, what is this? It's lamb's brain, and one guy's like, oh. So one thing I will say, Unibrew deserves some props for really emphasizing food and beer. They might not really talk about testicles or brains, but they've put out cookbooks, their website has some really cool recipes, and they have lots of really good food and beer pairings, as well as cheese and specifically cheese, charcuterie and beer pairings. They take all that very seriously, and I know that can be intimidating to some people, but there's a great primer on it through their resources. Unibrew has a great website. If you're interested in putting out charcuterie plates with a couple of interesting Belgian ales, you'll find everything you need on Unibrew's website. Yeah. That's exactly why I brought up 4K for a shot because the food's great. It's a French Belgian restaurant and they cook with the beer, pair the beer. It's fantastic experience. So this beer, we haven't really been talking about the alcohol, but this beer clocks in at 9% ABV, and the other ones we drank were basically in the same realm. A lot of people's experience with the style would be either Le Fin du Monde or our next beer. Our next beer is made in the US, and this is really kind of how a lot of people fell in love with the style or grew to curse it, as Greg wisely pointed out. Yeah. This beer comes in a six-pack, which is really- It is insane, it comes in a six-pack cans now. Yeah, I know, even more dangerous. This is wrong. Yeah, so you can drink your Belgian-style Tripel at the beach? How can- people don't even stand a chance. Twenty-three-year-olds are going to pick up this six-pack of cans and pound four of them, and then be like, I got to go lie down. It gets better. That's why we have neo-prohibitionist movements in the United States. You know how the big new package size is 19 twos? Pretty soon Golden Monkey is going to be available in those. Stovepipes of Golden Monkey? No way. A 9.5% alcohol triple to the face. Yeah. You know what my Metro train commute really needs in the late afternoon? Yeah. An Imperial pint of Belgian triple. Yeah, that and also a working bathroom in the car. Yeah. So here's one caveat. I'm going to be the obnoxious beer nerd on this beer. Victory admits that they've been tweaking this recipe over the years. This has been out for almost two decades at this point. And I personally feel Golden Monkey is a little different now. I think they kind of made it a little more accessible. Also a little bit more estery though. So I'm curious to see what you guys think. It's still an excellent beer, but... It's really banana-y now. Really banana-y. Wow. Of course it might have been before. I don't believe it was before. And there's like a white pepper quality on it. Roger, do you know back in the day, Victory was one of, at the time, I believe, three breweries in the United States that used exclusively whole-cone hops and not hop pellets. It was Victory, Sierra Nevada, and Deschutes for a very long time. Do you know if they're still doing that? And they only ever used German malt for a long time. Like none of that Midwest malt. Only imported German malt for a very long time. That's probably why they tweaked the recipe. Yeah, probably. But yeah, I would say as evidenced by Hop Devil and Prima Pills, very hop forward versions of the styles. May they rest in peace. I don't have a definitive answer and if they still do, I know until at least very recently, they were still kind of talking about that. But I don't know if within the last few years, they started to supplement certain styles, especially some of these more modern takes on IPA. I'd find it hard to believe that they're using completely whole-cone on those. Whole-cone, yeah, it'd be hard. It would be hard doing all these hazies and stuff with just whole-cone hops. I mean, I visited Sierra Nevada, their Carolina Brewery just a few years ago, and they still are using the lion's share of all their hops or whole-cone. If they ever used anything else, it was very sparingly and again, like in crazy styles that demanded it, I believe. I mean, it might have almost been no beers. I think they were, they're very committed to it. And they advertise that a little more, but I think it's kind of interesting, you know, it's style dependent, I think. And again, you could make an argument for some of these American ones. It probably doesn't matter to do that. Whereas like with these much lower hopping rates, more delicate beers, it might be more appropriate to commit to that. But yeah, let me just say there's nothing wrong with a hop pellet. No, nothing at all. Yeah. So what do you guys think of the beer? So the Golden Monkey, I feel, is a little bit sweeter than the other ones. Definitely. It's a step back. It's sweeter, it's more angular, it's like more... The alcohol comes through in a more sharp tone. Like it's notably strongly alcoholic. I think it's the weakest of the bunch so far. Yeah, less complex in the spice. And then I actually tasted it against the Westmalle just as a comparison. It's not even fair. Westmalle is so much more graceful and complicated. Yeah, this is not nearly as refined as any of the beers we've had so far. And it does have added spice. I mean, you go back to the Westmalle and all that spice is phenolics. And here it's not. I think we're kind of splitting hairs here because if you handed me one of these, I would love it and I would pound it. But it's being juxtaposed with some really amazing... We just tried some world classics like this. Just I don't think it quite stands shoulder to shoulder. Right. I mean, a lot of things can taste delicious in isolation, but side-by-side comparisons are important. And I think this one shows the difference of what we're dealing with here. When you're talking about Belgian styles, like double, quad, triple, I usually think of triple as being the hoppiest style going back to that hop discussion. However, the IBUs in these beers are not particularly high by modern standards. I think it shows more hop character because it has less dark malt character. Yeah. Really. Like in reality, yes, there are higher IBUs in a quad just because it has to maintain some balance, but perceptively the hops are totally drowned out by the sugary malt complexity. And this beer, because it's just a little lighter and drier in body, those hops are going to shine through a little more. I agree. And you definitely got the delicacy of the hops in the nose too. But they're not particularly bitter beers, although the hops are more accentuated than most. In flower qualities and in floral qualities and in herbal qualities. Not for nothing, the last three bottles were bottle conditioned. I kind of doubt that mine was canned conditioned. You know, that's a good question because- It can be done. Originally, Golden Monkey was in 750s and it was bottle conditioned. Then they put it in 12 ounce bottles and it was sort of implied the 12 ounce bottles were, but I don't know if- It doesn't say anywhere on the bottle. So I'm thinking that this is not, just if nothing else, just from the way the mouthfeel is. Also, it's interesting that they tell you that it's a Bilsner malt and that it's a Tet Nang hop apparently. But they know where on here do they say what the added spices are. That's to Chris's point, that's just like a Pilsner malt, Bill. I wrote down some of the IBUs, guys. So interestingly enough, of the ones we've tried so far, Westmalle clocks in at the highest at 37. Wow. That's like old school IPA high. Unibrew is 19, and I couldn't find the TripCarm stat, but I got to guess it's around 20. Yeah, I would guess so. When we were talking about the comparative nature of this, what we probably should mention now too is, I often talk about keeping beers within their weight class as far as price goes. So let's talk about price for a sec. So one of the great things about Golden Monkey is that you get a six-pack of these for $12.99, which is pretty incredible value. It'll get you drunk. Danger zone. The literal definition of bang for your buck. Yeah. Unibrew is right in the same boat with Lefin Dumond. The Cork and Cage used to be like nine bucks, but now you can get a four-pack of Lefin Dumond for $9.99. I mean, that's ridiculous. That's so crazy. That's such a high-quality beer for $10. So nobody's drinking these, huh? I mean, it's not, yes, they're hazy, but not the hazy in the right way. People who are interested in pairing beer with cheese need to be drinking more triples. Oh my God, yes, especially bitter and salty cheese. Like these are like the ultimate cheese pairing beer. Yeah, like you get some stinky soft French, you get hard aged English style stuff. Like these are the ultimate in cheese pairing. Honestly, I'm sure Chris, I defected Chris on this, but we may have been remiss in not mentioning the fact that the other main product of a lot of the Trappist Abbey's are cheese producers. And there's some very fine Trappist cheeses made in that funky wash rind style that goes perfectly with a beer like this. I know Roger's a fan. Yeah, the wash rind is too much for me, but these are one of those beers that- You know, you don't need to have Chris' acumen when it comes to cheese. Just pick a couple of different cheeses and try them with a tripel, and nothing's going to be that far off. You're still going to really enjoy it. I think they also are a complete no-brainer as a- like you can think of tripels, they're often described as an aperitif. So they go great with appetizer courses, salad courses. The driver mousse of the beer world. Yeah, they pair famously really well with seafood. Oysters is a very popular, raw oysters like on the half shell and triple is a classic combo, but steamed seafood like clams, crab. So the champagne of the beer world. Yeah, that's fair. I suppose that's fair. Yeah, steam your mussels in triple and then drink it with it. That's what you need to do. Oh my God, I had that at Wicked Weed once in Asheville. So good. That's a great town. That's a great beer town too. Yeah. Great beer town. All right. It's got nothing on Chicago, my friends. Unibrew kind of paved the way for Belgian style beers in Canada, but kind of right behind them were two breweries in the US, Brewery Omegang and Allagash Brewing. So Allagash made a triple, and in an effort to show American ingenuity and not just be so stodgy and old man-esque, I had us try, instead of just normal, Allagash Tripel. Greg's about the house of 750 of this. Also, it's worth pointing out that Allagash is from Maine, and Maine is really just Canada, too. Yeah. That's true. This is the only one we had on the shelf was the fifth of Curio. You're measuring beer in fifths now. Talk about old man. I'm looking for a quart of genuine draft. I'd be curious to see what the date is on that, Greg, because those have pretty much phased out. Now Curio is available in four packs and at a great price. Basically, you get a four pack for the same price you used to pay for a 750. Well, that you can space out your good time over a couple of different days. The date on mine is 1-15-20. Oh, my four pack I got at Marcy Street here. I say fresh as hell because it's about as fresh as I think Alagash Curio gets. Bottled on July 23rd, 2020. Yeah, that's pretty new. Yeah. Yeah, that's what mine is as well. So Alagash Tripel is a very beautiful triple produced at Alagash Brewery in Maine. And then Curio spends not a long time in Oak. Again, this isn't something that I, you know, if you're used to bourbon barrel-aged stouts and stuff, that's not really the idea here. They want to impart some bourbon character, but they still want a freshness to this. So they age it in bourbon barrels for just seven weeks. So just shy of two months. And then when they take it out, they blend in some fresh tripel as well. It's terrific. It's fully curio. It's got such a strong coconut character to it, I think. And I'm very sensitive to that personally, but like that American Oak lactone character is just like large and in charge here. It's so good. It's not on balance, but it's like that is such a standout flavor for me in this beer. Oh, no doubt. It's huge. Coconut from the bourbon barrel is very prominent. But it's so much better than when people add coconut and you just get like suntan lotion. To Roger's suntan lotion rant with added coconut. Yes, yes. We've all heard this before. Now, hey, of note though with this, my only knock on this beer is this is a particularly boozy beer. This is 10.4 percent and it really wears it on its sleeve. And this is like, it's like a sharp booziness to it. Like really sharp. More so than Victory Golden Monkey. That's why Greg just punched the ticket and he's loving this ride. Yeah. There's a nuttiness on this one. We're back to a really fine body. The head is a lot smaller than the Belgian ones that we tried. But it's that light, graceful, sweet, a little bit spicy. It's so light on its feet. This beer is awesome. If you told me this was 10.5 and you handed me a glass, after I drank the entire glass, I'd be like, uh-oh, because this is a ninja of a beer. Also, I guess it's worth pointing out, we're tasting Curio. People can always go into the episode notes or binnys.com/blog to see what we're tasting. We have links to the products and stuff. But Curio is like something that your aunt keeps in a cabinet. But this is like French Canadian, so it's C-U-R-I-E-U-X. This is a beer that I fell in love with. And I think part of the charm of this is that it introduces some dessert-like quality to the style, where I think this pairs so well with, because it has that coconut character. Dude, this beer with a coconut cream pie, I'd eat an entire pie and drink two four-packs. I mean, it'd be ludicrous. Screams coconut cream pie, pineapple sundae. Like, it's so, so good. Pineapple upside down cake, you know, like a more caramelized tropical fruit that's got a heavier caramel to it, where this provides like some light palate cleansing quality in a dessert. Like, that's awesome. Oh, I want one of those so bad right now. It's got the dessert sweetness to stand up to those pairings, Greg, but it kind of scrubs the palate a bit, honestly. I disagree, and as soon as I say this, you're going to agree with me. You're talking about matching flavors and complimenting flavors, and I think you want to go contrasting. I think you want fried, crunchy and salty. Oh, that would be really good. That's that kind of classic fried chicken and champagne pairing that Kristen Ellis used to love. It would be awesome. Fried chicken would be awesome. Compared to champagne, champagne is mostly dry. This is a round sweet depth to it too, so that when it goes with salt, it's literally like salted caramel. We could do a whole episode on pairing terrible for us foods with alagash curio. Well, I don't know if you guys have the rest of the four pack each, but I got a fifth to go through here. My wife does fry a mean chicken. We could have a fried chicken night at my house. So that is our lineup today. Here's a couple of honorable mentions of other triples that in the interests of us, our palates not being blown into smithereens or us falling out of our chairs. Other triples you should consider are Chimay White or Sink Sons, classic. St. Bernard's. Yes. St. Bernard's Triple is unbelievable. Strafe Hendrick, the Brawry de Hofmoen. De Hofman. Their Triple. De Hofman, sorry. Another great brewery, phenomenal. It's in the center of Bruges. It's a beautiful brewery. They have this awesome beer garden. You should all go to Bruges. Like Colin Farrell? Good reference. It's a movie in Bruges. Is it a good reference? Yeah, it's a wacky movie. Allagash, you should try their Tripel next to Curio, so you can see what a little barrel aging did. And then Unibrew makes a beer called Don De Deux, Gift from God, which is absolutely named, because it's a beautiful beer. They call it a Tripel Wheat. I would argue it's very akin to somewhere in between like a Lefin Dumont and a Tripel Carmelite. It really doesn't get enough love. It gets totally overshadowed by Lefin Dumont. Doesn't it have some barrel aging in it as well? Some portion of it is barrel aging or something? No, it's a normal offering from them. Like you can get a four pack for 10 bucks, which is just unbelievable. Can't emphasize enough as we roll through the prices here. So Westmalle, I think major props go to the originator of the style essentially. That's going to set you back 5.99 for 11.2 ounce bottle. So it's a small artisan produced thing by the Trappist Monastery. So it's a little more expensive. I would interject, totally worth it. Yeah, for sure. Then you're looking at Triple Caramelite. Triple Caramelite is available in four packs for 19.99. So about the same price point is that. And then the Unibrew, I mean, just cuts the price in half, which is just a tremendous value at 9.99. Can't emphasize enough what a great deal that is. Golden Monkey is about at the same price. You get six of them for 12.99. And then Curio, Barrel Aging again, the four packs have reduced the price quite a bit compared to what it used to cost, but that's going to set you back around 16.99 for the four pack. So I mean, we used to sell 750s of that for like 13 bucks. So no, for the 750s are 18 bucks. What? Yeah. Dude, it's a barrel-aged triple. Yeah, it's a barrel-aged triple and the- That they blend other triple back into. Yeah, I think- It's worth the price of admission, don't get me wrong. I just had it in my brain that it was cheaper for some reason. I agree. I think that beer is worth the price for sure. All of these are phenomenal beers that are worth trying. And I suggest that you try them like we did. This is a great way to get to know the nuances of beer and how much things like little changes in recipes, the yeast strain, the amount of conditioning that goes into the process. I will say with Westmalle, that's a very labor intensive process. A lot of the other breweries weren't as transparent as Westmalle, but I know from reading Michael Jackson's Beers in Belgium that with Westmalle, you're looking at a three-part fermentation essentially. You have the regular primary fermentation, then you have a secondary one that's five weeks long, then they filter it, put it in bottles, re-yeast it, and let it sit for another three weeks. That's before it even goes to market. That's before it gets shipped. These are a labor of love if ever there was one, and they're a pleasure to drink, and there's something that we really hope you give a try and realize. This is going to change your mind about what beer is and what beer can be. Totally. A labor of love indeed. It's just like John Coltrane's brilliant Love Supreme, an ode to his god, and the monks are definitely making an ode to their god with these beers. I think they're fine. They're not too corny. I keep religion out of my beer, all right? You love the curio, I can tell. Oh my goodness. It is dangerous. That's a great beer if I've ever tasted one. Honestly, if this came from a Lithuania and it was- And if it was $1.39 a pint. It had a questionable label on it. Yeah. Yeah. Plastic bottle. Not that bad. I mean, they could get it in the glass and get it here for like $12 a case. Yeah. So they introduced this in I think maybe 2004, 2005. I had a friend on the East Coast who just went absolutely nuts about it and got me a bottle all the way back then before it was in this market, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, I was pretty blown away back then, but it's still just as good. It really is. I thought you were going to say, and I have it right here. I'm going to open it right now. Here's my 16-year-old bottle of Curia. Yeah. You can't put it past me. You know that. I was going to ask if you had any vintage triples in your cellar, Chris. I feel like Belgian wise, you tend to age sours, but- I do age a lot of sours and maybe quads more than triples, but triples are very worthy. I probably have one or two. I might have some ancient Sanxant and maybe some Westmalle. Hey. I have Michael Jackson's must read book for Beer Nerds in front of me, The Great Beers of Belgium. We promise to do a boozy book special in the future, where we're going to talk about some of the books that we care about. This is one of my must reads. If somebody wants to take a beer seriously, wants to take Belgian beer seriously, wants to take their career in beer seriously, you have to read The Great Beers of Belgium. Roger has a different edition. I have a table side as well. There's a whole chapter here on Westmalle. He makes a note of saying that they still use a direct fired brew kettle, which is, as Roger can attest to, exceedingly rare in the world of beer. Because it's not efficient and it's hard to control consistency. When you directly fire, when you have just flame hitting the bottom of your brew kettle, you tend to have a lot of caramelization of the wort in the brew kettle in the boiling process. And it gives a little fuller body sometimes. So it's interesting that they do that. So thanks again for listening with this. We encourage you to try all these beers. Obviously, we're very passionate about these. This is a style that we've loved over the years. And like Chris brought up a while ago, I think everyone's looking for big flavors right now. And this is a classic example of big flavors in a classic style. So really seek this out and give them a try. Please continue to buy Belgian triples so that we can, too. Buy triples and enjoy them with various fromage. Yeah. Walk down the Belgian aisle at our stores and talk to the beer consultants about Belgian beer. A lot of them are going to be super excited to talk to you about it because it's something that a lot of people that are in the industry and really passionate about beer love talking about and don't get asked about enough. By the way, you live in Chicago or the Chicago area, probably, and Chicago is a bulwark for these kinds of beers. I can't see this label, this Fendimand label and not think of the Hopleaf and the Map Room. There are so many institutions that established this beer in America and keep it going people. Come try these beers. They're awesome. Yeah. Totally awesome. That's a great point. I can still remember drinking one of my first Triple Caramelite was at the Map Room and then I found out that there was a little bar closer to me in Villa Park called Lunar Brewing that also had it on draft. Yeah. I went and got a tattoo on my chest and then to celebrate I went to the Map Room to thin out my blood. Yeah. I have many happy memories of both those places. I'm really glad you brought that up because yeah, that is a true component of this is that I think it probably mattered that we all went to places like that where we were surrounded by people who picked up the banner and celebrated like, holy cow, At the end of the day, it's worth exploring good quality, flavorful, complex beer outside of IPAs and stouts. The way to do it is with beers, specifically Belgian beers, but especially with things like triples. You're going to have that dry finish that's going to keep it sessionable, but it's just a complex beer drinking experience at the end of the day. They pair with so many foods. There's a great quote from the Michael Jackson book where one of the fathers goes, hey, you know what this is great with? Asparagus. Tell me what wine again you can pair with asparagus. It's true. Thank you for listening. Please download our podcast. Tell your friends about it, family, your mom, everybody. Check us out anywhere you get your podcast episodes from, iTunes, Google, podcasts. But until next time, I'm Roger. I'm Greg. I'm Chris. And I'm Pat. Keep tasting.