A Quadruple Blind Tasting

I’ve been waiting about two years to finally do this: a blind tasting between a bunch of quads. I’ve had the bottles ready to go since early 2009, as a result, some of them are aged while others have been dropped from the potential line-up and replaced by newcomers. The reason I wanted to do these as a blind tasting was to see how well Westvleteren 12 fared against the others in its class and to do it without bias of knowing what we were drinking.

The line-up was: La Trappe Quadruple, Rochefort 10 and St Bernardus 12, all about two years old, plus Westvleteren 12, BrewDog AB:01 and Struise St Amatus Oostvleteren 12, all about nine months old (the Struise is a cheeky Oostvleteren equivalent to the Westvleteren neighbours, while the AB:01 is made with the Westvleteren yeast, hence they were added to be modern contenders).

Here’s what we (four of us) thought, drinking them one at a time and then comparing the lot at the end and giving a mark out of 10...

Beer 1: Sweet yeast, tea, lots of raisins and figs, relaxed as the fizz disappeared giving off honey and vanilla. Great aroma, a lightness of flavour. (1st place - 30/40)

Beer 2: A harsh ethanol and nail varnish taint spoilt the great fruity depth beneath. A punchy hop hit finished the mouthful. (6th place - 19/30)

Beer 3: Like beer number one but fuller bodied and more intense in flavour with lots of prunes and raisins. It tasted aged, a little sticky and had a great flavour. (joint 3rd place – 24.5/40)

Beer 4: Floral, smooth, a little peppery, light in body and a bit odd in comparison to the others, marking itself as different. (joint 5th place – 22/40)

Beer 5: A little boozy, a floral hop burst, almonds and fruit, very clear in the glass but lacking anything to make us go wow or dip back in for another taste. (joint 5th place – 22/40)

Beer 6: The best looking, retaining its head even though it was poured over 30 minutes before. Lots of fruit, great flavour and depth, tasty and interesting. (joint 3rd place – 24.5/40)

The best beer was unanimously number one; it was the Westvleteren 12 (I remember the Beer Nut did a similar tasting a while ago with the same result). The others were, in order of 2-6: St Amatus, St Bernardus, AB:01, La Trappe and Rochefort 10. Why was the Westvleteren better? It had a different depth of flavour, but a real lightness to it as well. The St Bernardus had the biggest flavour, almost like an amplified version of the Westvleteren, and it seemed to age handsomely into something different and new.

Surprisingly, this was hard work. Some were bursting with flavour, others were seemingly dying inside. The one thing that we all commented after this was that quads are a style we rarely drink and none of us saw a real place for them in our fridges, seldom getting a craving for a dark, hearty monastic brew.

Are quads your thing? Is a number 12 your number one, do you prefer the 10 of Rochefort or are there modern versions which better the others?

The Hop Press: The Weekend of Spontaneous Fermentation

I've written about the Weekend of Spontaneous Fermentation on my Hop Press blog. It really is a unique and wonderful beer festival. You can read the full post here.

48 Hours in Belgium (Part 2)

Continued from yesterday.

Saturday 29^th May

8.30am: I am woken by a loud fart. I’m surprisingly clear-headed (which might mean I’m still pissed). I try to sleep some more, attempting to ignore the man smells around me.

9.30am: Breakfast. I’m desperate for a bacon sandwich, instead I get the European equivalent: bread rolls and slices of ham.

10.30am: Leave hotel, no time for sightseeing, but time to stop at Bier Temple to pick up a couple of interesting bottles.

11.15am: To Cantillon Brewery where Pete joins us along with Dominic, Janine and John. We get a tour around the place and it’s stunning. I’m not sure what I expected, but it beats that. It’s small but it just feels like the best brewery in the world; the cobbled stone floors, the old bottles, the giant wooden barrels of beer, the brewing equipment; it feels like you need to step delicately so you don’t disturb anything, it seems like it creaks and groans and lives. There’s a real magic to the place, a soul. At the top is the Coolship (which sounds like a 70s blaxploitation film set in space, if you ask me) where the beer is pumped into a large, flat tray-like vessel which is opened to the wild yeasts in the air through slats and holes in the roof. This is what makes Cantillon, Cantillon (the Homebrew Chef has some great pictures of the brewery here).

We get to chat to Jean Van Roy, the brewer, who opens bottles for us, including a lambic aged for five years in a cognac barrel which was only bottled in April 2010 and won’t go on public sale - a very rare treat. Like a proper tourist I buy a t-shirt, a glass and two bottles of Cuvee St-Gilloise, the renamed version of Cuvee des Champions, which is delicious. Pete offers around a bottle of his own barrel-aged with cherries experiment (which he very bravely offers to a master of this type of beer) and it’s really good.

Cantillon is a rugged and beautiful place and I could stay in awe for hours. The only strange thing was the group of Dutch guys wearing bright orange cowboy hats and the coach-loads of people who arrived for tours, seemingly having never tasted beer like this before (you should’ve seen their puckered faces – what is this beer?!).

2.30pm: Arrive at De Heeren van Liedekerke for beer and lunch (we leave Dominic, Janine and JC in Brussels). This place is fantastic; a restaurant with seating outside, excellent food and a vast beer list unlike anything I’ve seen before, including a huge selection of vintage beers. A bottle of Cantillon Crianza Helena (a special blend only available in this bar) and four plates of delicious beer-soaking stodge come our way. They even inflate a bouncy castle but sadly there isn’t enough time and as much as we'd love to stay all afternoon we have somewhere to be.

4.30pm: We arrive at the Weekend of Spontaneous Fermentation and meet the others again. Lambic and gueuze in a small hall with lots of friendly people; a beer festival unlike any other I’ve ever been to. Fantastic, unique in so many ways (deserving of its own blog post). There was some excellent beer here, the pick of the lot was a 3 Fonteinen Schaerbeekse Kriek, made exclusively with the eponymous cherries giving the most delicious depth of fruit.

8.30pm: Back to Brussels and to Moeder Lambic. More IV Saison, confirming it as one of the best beers I’ve had in Belgium, and a Valeir Extra, a punchy blonde with big US hops. Toe-tapping jazz plays at the back of the bar while we flick through the long beer list. We continue to search for attractive Belgians but remain unsuccessful (they are, however, all lovely people).

10.00pm: Next stop: Les Brasseurs de la Grand Place (watch out, their website plays some annoying music), a brewpub directly off the Grand Place. There’s handsome brewing equipment as you go in, but the beers really disappointed; well brewed just lacking flavour (and expensive too). We leave, back into the bustling centre, made even busier thanks to the large stage set up in the middle of the Grand Place, playing more jazz – there’s nothing like jazz somewhere like this, it’s cool and relaxing, but funky and uplifting, perfect drinking music.

11.00pm: One in the Hoppy Loft, another Hornbeer, this one the Happy Hoppy Viking, which disappointed – a triple IPA but just a mess of hops (to use JC's term, the brewery seem a bit of a mine field - some brilliant, some a little less so, but I still want to try more). Still no good-looking Belgian women and we finally give up hope (further searches reveal that this is the best looking woman in Belgium).

12.00am: Back to the hotel because we have an unfeasibly early start after a weekend of drinking. Outside, below our hotel window, the party continues until we wake up.

Sunday 30^th May

6.00am: Woken up. Zombie-like we leave and Phil drives us back. I have two packs of crisps and a banana for breakfast. With four guys who have been drinking all weekend and eating junk food, the van fills up like a hideous gas chamber.

9.30am: Back in England.

11.00am: Exactly 53 hours after leaving on Friday I return home and slump down on the sofa, after carrying a rucksack, a small suitcase and a box of beer from the station to my flat. I spend the rest of the day either looking at the bottles of beer I brought home or sleeping.

A whizz-bang tour of Belgium, enough for a flavour, but giving the taste for more. We had some fantastic beers in some great places. Cantillon is a huge draw and should be a must-visit for anyone in Brussels. I need to go back now and do it all again, plus I have a feeling that I’ll be craving IV Saison all summer.

And did someone mention a Brussels Twissup?

48 Hours in Belgium (Part 1)

Friday 28^th May

5.00am: Get up, shower, dress, pack, panic I’ve forgotten something important.

6.00am: Leave house, walk to train station.

7.20am: Meet Phil and Owen in Folkestone and get the Eurotunnel.

10.00am: Arrive in France, heading for Belgium, first stop: Westvleteren for breakfast.

10.30am: Realise Westvleteren is closed on Friday (lazy bloody monks), change of plan: Oostvleteren.

11.00am: Arrive at Oostvleteren, home of De Struise Brouwers, head for their ‘school’, where they have a shop and offices. This is also closed. I begin to start worrying that we will never get a beer. Owen, who is in Europe interning as a brewer, worked at Struise earlier this year so called Urbain, the brewer.

11.30am: After arriving at Deca, where the Struise beer is brewed (they don’t have a brewery, instead they rent space where they can make, package and distribute their beers), and meet Urbain, a short, scraggy guy with stress and laughter lines etched into his skin, who speeds around like a madman, here one moment, gone the next, infectiously busy and cheery. He’s bottling, labelling and packing palates of Pannepot, as well as many other simultaneous jobs. I have never seen so much Pannepot in my life – over five palates full – and we help to lift the crates off the trolley and pack them.

12.00pm: Work done, we finally get a beer: Saint Amatus 12. We might have failed to get a Westvleteren but this is the next best thing: Struise’s ostensible 'copy' of Westvleteren 12. It was young (too young, said Urbain, as he poured and then tasted it before leaving us for half an hour while he filled in some paperwork) but it was stunning: a body like velvet, dried fruit sweetness then a super-fresh hop flavour, leaving a dry finish. They are working on a new bottle cap for this beer which is a firmly tongue-in-cheek nod to their West neighbours.

1.00pm: We are in the office/shop for the brewers, sitting upstairs in what can best be described as a bachelor pad with the best beer fridge ever, drinking bottles with the brewer: Elliot Brew, a big IPA brewed with Mikkeller, wonderfully fresh and very good; Roste Jeanne, a delicious red Belgian ale; Mocha Bomb, a blend of stouts (50% Black Albert aged on coffee beans, 25% Hel & Verdoemenis from De Molen aged in Jack Daniels barrels and 25% Cuvee Delphine – yes seriously) to make a superheroic one to kick everyone else’s arse; Black Mes, which is Black Albert aged for three months in Caol Ila’s Distillers Version 1995 casks, which is an incredibly good whisky-aged beer with the barrel adding just enough to improve the original (if such a thing is even possible); and finally a couple of Westvleteren 12s (we got there in the end). Carlo, another member of the Struise family, shares a couple of the beers and then it’s time for us to leave.

2.30pm: Hungry – need food!

3.30pm: Arrive in Roeselare for a Rodenbach Foederbier (the unfiltered and unpasteurised version of Rodenbach) and lunch (over-dry croquet monsieur) in the busy square. I don’t really like Rodenbach so this wasn’t my thing (it’s the aceto that I don’t enjoy, that vinegary harshness at the back of the throat). The question of attractive Belgian women is first raised: are there any?

5.30pm: Get to 3 Fonteinen in Beersel, meet Armand the blender and (former) brewer, tour the cool, aromatic cellar, lined with chalk-marked casks of different beers ready for blending. We try the last batch of lambic brewed on site, straight from the barrel, which is young but delicious (of course it is, we’re drinking it in the cellar, surrounded by giant barrels of lambic – there’s something to be said for context) then drink their kriekenlambic in the bar, a bright blush of pink with a wonderful cherry depth. Did you know they used 10-year-old challenger hops to brew with here? 3 Fonteinen is a great place.

8.00pm: Arrive in Brussels at hotel after driving around looking for parking for ages. The hotel (hostel) is best described as cheap, cheerful and cosy, overlooking a very busy and noisy street, with four single beds lined up side by side, perfect for four drunk guys on a budget...

8.30pm: Eat something disgusting (half a baguette stuffed with two burgers and fries) to prepare me for an evening of drinking. Brussels is lively, busy, jazz music plays all around because we arrive during a Jazz Marathon.

9.00pm: Meet Dominic from Marble Brewery, Janine, girlfriend of Dom and brewer at Ashover, and John Clarke at Moeder Lambic. We sit outside, in the warm evening, and drink. Taras Boulba is light, dry and hoppy, just what I needed after imperial stouts, quads and sour beer all day. A IV Saison is just about the best beer I drink all weekend, packed with tropical fruit and just so bloody tasty. We continue to look for attractive Belgians without success.

10.30pm: To Poechenellekelder, opposite the lamest national landmark I’ve ever seen: the Manneken Pis. A bottle of year-old Orval (because I couldn’t not have one) and various others, including a 2008 Cantillon Zwanze, made with rhubarb. A great evening just chilling outside drinking and talking.

12.15am: To Porte Noire, a dark and grungy underground bar, filled with smoke and people (the non-smoking section is empty when we arrive, in fact they have to turn the lights on for us). It’s salubrious, the walls are bare, the tables wobble too much to be safe, but it’s a great place to drink late at night. The Hercules Stout was very good.

1.30am: To Delerium’s Hoppy Loft, a smelly, hot, smoky place with a decent selection of taps and bottles, including a new brewery to look out for – Hornbeer (Black Magic Woman is fantastic, their IIPA is delicious and their bottles look great). Dom also thought buying a bottle of Sam Adams’ Triple Bock was a good idea. It probably wasn’t.

2.30am: Chips and mayonnaise. Still searching for good looking Belgians and even at this time of night with beer-blurred vision we are unsuccessful.

3.15am: Bed.

Hopping to Belgium

Back from Belgium and I had some fantastic beers in some fantastic places. I managed to drink a few of the recommendations from last week and IV Saison from Brasserie Jandrain-Jandrenouille was probably my favourite beer from the weekend (or, at least, the beer I’d want to drink most of, most regularly). 1001 Beers tells me that the brewers have day jobs of working for Yakima Chief, the Washington state hop producers, based in the Belgium office, and that sure shows through in this beer – fruity, citrusy, tropical flavours on top of a full and smooth body, with hints of Saison spice and zest, the sort of beer you guzzle down because it’s so delicious and effortlessly drinkable for its 6.5% abv. Sitting inside or outside the excellent Moeder Lambic in Brussels, this beer, poured on draught, is perfect.

A draught Taras Boulba also went down very well after an afternoon spent drinking imperial stouts, quads and lambics. A Valeir Extra followed the IV Saison perfectly with a great whack of US hops, making a Belgian Blonde into something so much more interesting (Belgian Blondes bore me in the same way as Brown Bitters). These three beers, with their liberal use of hops, were exactly the sort of beers I was hoping to find. Another discovery was Hornbeer from Denmark, with fantastic looking bottle (except for their choice of font) and great beer inside, they are one to look out for, particularly their Black Magic Woman and the Imperial IPA. Of course, we also drank a lot of other excellent beers, including visits to De Struise, 3 Fonteinen, Cantillon and the Weekend of Spontaneous Fermentation, but more on those in later posts...

If anyone needs me I'll be in Belgium

Tomorrow I’m going to Belgium. We’re staying in Brussels on Friday and going to the Weekend of Spontaneous Fermentation on the Saturday. Hopefully we’ll be stopping at a couple of breweries over the weekend too – Westvleteren, De Struise would be cool, Cantillon for breakfast... Tell me though, because I won’t be able to drink just sour beer and quads for two days, what new Belgian beers are there that are worth looking out for? I’m thinking along the lines of Chouffe Houblon, modern twists on traditional Belgian styles, something a bit different (but preferably not spicy Belgian blondes or anything similar to Duvel - I have no idea why people like Duvel -  as they aren't my thing).

FABPOW! Carbonnade and Chimay Blue

Ireland has beef and Guinness, England has steak and ale, Belgium has carbonnade. It’s that classic recipe which uses beer as the vital ingredient along with hunks of beef and lots of onions. I don’t know if there is a definitive beer to make carbonnade but a dubbel seems to be a popular choice, although I’ve seen everything from a bottle of geueze, to Orval, to a Flemish Red, to Westlveteren 12 and beyond into beers of all styles from all over the world. To be honest you can use any beer you want and each will add its own flavour, though it probably should be Belgian to qualify as Carbonnade (use a British ale and you’ve made a stew...). I decided to use Chimay Blue because it’s a great beer, it’s ideal for this recipe and I can buy it from Waitrose down the road.

The joy of carbonnade is the simplicity. Brown some beef, take it out, soften lots of onions, a little garlic and thyme, a couple of bay leaves, a teaspoon vinegar and of sugar, a little stock and then the beer and cook for a couple of hours on a low temperature until it’s thick and rich and delicious. Pile this high next to a mound of chips and a glass of beer. You can add mustard-covered slices of bread on top too. It’s great and hearty food, it’s warming, it’s tender, it’s intensely savoury with an underlying sweetness and it comes with chips: it’s proper man grub.

The Chimay adds a depth of flavour to it that can only be given by the beer and when you drink the beer alongside it you can pull out the caramel base, the dried fruit and the distant spice. Together they work perfectly; the beer is both dark enough to handle the carbonnade and light enough to not make it cloying, the carbonation is refreshing but it’s the bridge of flavours between the glass and plate that pulls it all together and makes it extra special.

Carbonnade is a great beer dish. It's so easy to make and whatever beer you open to put in will change the final flavour. My next attempt will use a geueze or Orval, I think, if I can bare to open one and not drink it straight down. Anyone used these or other beers to cook carbonnade? What has given the best results? 

FABPOW! Chouffe Houblon and Paprika-Roasted Chicken

Those handsome be-gnomed bottles of La Chouffe had been sitting in the cupboard for a while, next to each other like a beer-warped cartoon version of Twins. The thing is, 750ml of 9% beer is quite a lot, so I wanted to share it. Sharing is good. Plus I wanted to compare the two side-by-side and have them with friends and food. The good news is that I’ve finally done it and the result was such a roaring success that it gets the illustrious FABPOW! status.

Beer first - La Chouffe and Chouffe Houblon. Both 9%, the difference being that the Houblon is a Double IPA Tripel, meaning, essentially, that it’s got a lot of American hops in it. I expected them to be the same base beer with one hopped-up, but judging by the colour difference this isn’t the case – the Houblin is much lighter. La Chouffe is a caramel colour with a spicy-bready aroma and a prickly mouthfeel with softens and sweetens as it relaxes in the glass. Houblon is all that plus a wonderful, smooth citrusy-floral hop flavour that’s so drinkable; not overpowering, not tongue-splitting, not aggressive, just really delicious. The Houblon was quite a few months old so the hops had mellowed, I’m sure, but they were still in there, teasing and tantalising.

And then the food. I roasted a chicken covered in sweet and smoked paprika. It was stuffed with garlic, lemon, thyme and rosemary. This sat on top of loads of onions, garlic and herbs and some potatoes, all seasoned and paprika-ed. I had this with roasted tomatoes, onion, basil, thyme, garlic and olives mixed into cous cous with some of the chicken juices. There were also some cursory green beans with garlic and lemon. It was a great dinner. Served with the beer, it was even better.

The beer and food together was just effortless perfection. The spice and hop combo in the Houblon lifted the smoky-earthiness in the chicken and sweetened it while the soft carbonation played little tricks with the richness of the dish. It probably shouldn’t work given that the food is quasi-Mediterranean and North African while the beer is Belgian with an American punch, but some pairings just work so unequivocally and so simply and this is one of them. That roast chicken might now become my dinner party staple, in which case I need to find a few more bottles of the Houblon.

This is the first FABPOW! for a while, so has anyone had any decent food and beer pairings recently? FYI, dessert that night was crème brulee with a Bourbon County Stout – it was almost great but the beer just overpowered it.

As-Live Tasting: Chimay Red vs. Chimay Blue

It’s Monday 23rd February (quite a while ago now, oops) and here’s an as-live comparison between Chimay Red and Blue.

20.16pm: The first beer is poured and it’s the Chimay Red. A 7% trappist ale. A murky burnt copper colour, thin head. A nose of burnt sugar and roasted fruits as well as stone fruits and some apricot.

20.17pm: Man I’m thirsty.

20.18pm: First word to mind: fizzy. It tingles the tongue, grazes on the way down. Beneath that it’s stone and roasted fruits and dark sugar. A complex and slight sourness.

20.20pm: I’m chilling out watching Flight of the Conchords. I love this show, it’s flipping awesome. Band meeting: Chimay Red? Present. Chimay Blue? Present. Mark? Present.

20.22pm: I’m getting a depth of spice from the beer now. It’s going down quickly tonight. I had a huge gym sesh earlier. It was mega busy though, a real sausage fest of pumping testosterone and not a fit young girl in sight. Rubbish.

20.25pm: I’m letting the beer relax a bit to numb the fizz; it prickles and I don’t want that. In this episode of Flight of the Conchords they declare that they don’t like beer! What the hell?! Murray the manager tells them that it’s cool - it’s rock ‘n’ roll - so that’s fine by me. It does look like a lager they’re drinking though.

20.28pm: These are crown tops, by the way. And both bottles are pretty new; there’s no age to them. I think I got them from Waitrose, but it may have been Tesco, or even one from each.

20.32pm: The beer is getting smoother, fuller, richer. More fruits are coming through and a nice bitterness to end it. There’s pepper too, toasted brown bread and nuts.

20.34pm: Did you know the brewery makes cheeses?! I want cheese now… though I pretty much always want cheese.

20.42pm: Red done. I liked it. Fairly complex and drinkable but for me the carbonation was too much. Maybe I just didn’t give it a chance to settle in my thirsty haste. Bring on the Blue. Oh, and I would drink a White (a Triple) too but I don’t have a bottle.

20.46pm: Masterchef is on and the Blue is out. It’s darker; I’ll call it russet. It’s 9% ABV, the nose is sweet, dark sugar; a bag of sticky dates. Now this is a lot bigger than the Red. Boozy and rich, strong and rammed with flavour. Loads of dark fruits, dark sugar, a tangy bitterness.

20.51pm: I am with cheese. I couldn’t resist!

20. 56pm: The phone rang when I had a mouthful of goats’ log! I took the beer with me and I think it worked but I was concentrating on answering the call so can’t be certain. I’m back on it now.

20:57pm: Cambozola, a creamy mild blue, is up: it’s a great little match and the beer sweeps the palate clean and the deep fruitiness in more pronounced. This is a yummy cheese.

20.59pm: Blue Shropshire next. It was reduced at the supermarket and tastes damp. The match is kind of average. If anything the beer masks the musky, dry taste of the cheese. Pretty lame.

21.01pm: Colston basset stilton. A blinding cheese. A constant in the fridge and the match is a goodun’: rich cheesy funk and the complex beer party their asses off.

21.05pm: Masterchef finished and Flight of the Conchords is back and this beer is getting better and better. The date-and-fig-like fruitiness is rich and sweet and fantastic. I’m getting bready yeast up the nose with the dried fruit, like a fancy slice of tea cake.

21.08pm: Cherry brandy! And it’s warming me. Speaking of warm, the temperature has risen (it’s about 10C I think) and the garage is now approaching perfect cellar temperature so I can transfer a few beers out there to keep cool.

21.10pm: This is the start of a Trappist/Belgian week in preparation for a Westvleteren 12 (which I wrote about here). I’ve blitzed my palate with mainly American beers for the last few weeks so I want to jump over to Europe to limber up my tastebuds in a different way. My polygamous palate.

21.14pm: This is an easy drinker which is surprising for the 9% ABV. It’s getting better still and I know that the last mouthful will leave me wanting more - that’s a sign of a good beer. I might have to pick up a few more next time I’m shopping.

21.18pm: I’ve just remembered that this is billed as a comparison. So here it is: the Red is a nice beer, plenty of complexity and depth of flavour, but it pales in comparison to the Blue which is just a superb beer all round. The Blue is a flavour bomb with dried fruits and bread and a mellow smoothness. The cherry sweetness is a delight.

21.21pm: I’m waffling on now. The beer’s almost gone. I’ve passed an hour and I’ve had some fun. I like this whole ‘stream of consciousness’ writing. Chimay Blue is a gorgeous treat of a beer.

21.25pm: The beer is gone and I want more. I’ll console myself with Flight of the Conchords. Over and out.