Shadow
member
- Location
- edge of the south downs
Apparently so.
Maybe we should send a CC contingent into belgium to findout how rare?
Nice pic.
Beer?
- Thread starter Chuffy
- Start date
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Apparently so.
Maybe we should send a CC contingent into belgium to findout how rare?
Nice pic.
Spartak
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- Location
- Bristolian
I'm fortunate with my work to visit Belgium 6 - 8 times a year.
My research has shown that their beer is very good ... 😂
Spartak
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- Location
- Bristolian
No Ta Doctor
Veteran
is it though ? ok let me qualify that by saying in the UK yes it can be, right but so Beautiful Beers has got the Blond, the Dubbel and the Quad, from £16 up to £21.
now I wont pay £21 for a 330ml beer, regardless of how good it maybe, since I can get the St Bernardus Abt12 for £4 from the same shop, and the story goes theyre the same beer recipe, just brewed by different monks.
but fine thats the UK, its expensive and harder to find, and fair enough its been more than 10 years since I last went to Brugge, but we found it for sale in a number of bars, probably around 6-8 Euros I think vs the average back then was probably 3-5 Euros for the other beers we drank, and of course they give you the sell that its rare, you have to go on a special day and queue to get it and the monks dont like bars selling too much of it and so on. but we left one of the bars went into one of the nearby bottle shops to have a nosey and they had a case of it selling for 3Euros a bottle, and youre like wait we just paid double for this.
and maybe we were just lucky that day the shop had just got their one and only delivery of the year and we probably got half of it to take home between us, mine all sadly now drunk.
but is it that rare, really ?
as for the appropriate glass, this obviouslybut any belgian beer glass shaped like a goblet basically will do, I think the deal is the beer aromas & taste with the head work better when the rim of the glass opens outwards from the bottom, and doesnt come back in cinched, like in a wine glass or the Duvel glass does just below the rim, as that changes the flavours you get from supping the beer, and the stem allows you to hold the glass without transferring your body heat into the beer that warms it up and again alters the flavours. which happens in a tumbler, or pint glass for that matter
View attachment 819018
OK, yes I can get Westvleteren in Denmark, but I do have to go out of my way a bit, and at those prices it might as well not exist. I've bought the younguns a bottle or two of the 12 to lay down (stand up) a while for special occasions (an 18th and completion of a Masters), but never shelled out for the blond (I'm not actually sure I've seen it on a shelf), and like most of the lower strength blonds, it's probably best fresh (I'd happily keep a Westmalle Tripel around for a while, though it seems to sometimes not have the yeast in the bottle it once had, so maybe that's a mistake, I think we discussed this already a while back?) . Duvel is best fresh as well, or it can lose its crispness and bite.
As for glass shape - I mostly agree, though that Duvel glass is all about the head really. I think it also holds the aromas in a bit, so when you do get you nose in there while drinking it delivers a bit of a punch, where the chalice/goblets give a gentler waft of scent
On the St Bernadus / Westvlteren thing - as I understand it, St B brewed the Westvleteren under licence when that was still allowed. When the trappist certification came in (70s? early 80s?) they brought it back in-house as required, but allowed St B to keep the yeast - as long as they didn't associate it with monks (it's an alderman, not a monk on the bottle apparently). Later on Westvleteren had some quality issues and got yeast/help from Westmalle, so the 12 may be more like what Westmalle would do for a quad than the St Bernadus 12, which may be closer to the original Westvleteren 12. Maybe one day I can try them head-to-head!
Oh and the St Bernadus Wit is interesting as well - it was developed in collab with Pierre Celis who basically reinvented the Belgian Witbier at Hoegaarden (but had to sell up to Interbev after they loaned money for a rebuild after a fire) who went on to produce Celis Wit for a while and then some unsuccessful stuff in the US. So St Bernadus might have a couple of the most authentic recipes around, despite being a family owned commercial brewery rather than a religious order
Shadow
member
- Location
- edge of the south downs
And I can highly recommend a visit.
Good beer (obviously), good food, roof garden (do not go on a windy or wet day), loads of
Elybazza61
Legendary Member
no Summer Dream thoughso not a full compliment imo, Id rather have that than flower power which is just its supercharged version but the higher abv kills all the subtlety and flavour of the elderflowers.
at least theres some 5x if you get a bit bored with the rest, and Adnams Extra coming back to fill that hole of an around 4% bitter they left by downgrading the og bitter.
TBH forgot about that but as long as they have Trawler Boys on we're happy as we never really see it around here.
library pic sourced as they used to say
my own picture of our sampling way back was barely recognisable, except it had the classic bottle shape ,same shaped glass, I dont recall it being a westvleteren glass fwiw, and bottle cap which is the only hint at what it is if you werent there, thesedays my phone would use AI to autocorrect the lighting and probably look amazing.it reminded me I still havent bought that Good Beer Guide to Belgium yet. but Ive been Oktoberfest beer buying lately, patiently waiting for Lidls Oktoberfest beer case to appear again.
No Ta Doctor
Veteran
Thanks for the reminder on the Guide!
Have I posted this before? Brugge Beer Guide site - also available as an app
https://www.beerguidebrugge.com/index.php
There's a range of them
https://www.beerguideapps.com/
