Favorite Beer Right Now Is....

Favorite Beer Right Now Is....
January- Favorite Beer of the month is...Kirin Ichiban (or Sake Bombs)

Friday, January 20, 2012

New Belgium - Trippel


Friday morning 12:30 a.m. and I'm lying in bed wide awake, enter fridge. "Let's see what we have here".

A proffesional review of this is a bit more generous to this than I will be. My first impression of this beer was hard core alcohol (by beer standards). Although the alcohol content of this beer is not unusually high it's clearly the defining characteristic, this is reflected by its name which refers to Tripel style beers.


A side note about Tripel. One of the possible explanations of the name was of a system used at one time involving X's. There were one to three X's placed on a cask to indicate the strength of the beer in terms of alcohol. One was the weakest and three containing the highest amount.

So Trippel is a strong beer, for me the taste was cutting or biting. Many or most of the beers I've tried with similar alcohol contents also have that strong alcohol taste although I recall a time or two having some Chimay that didn't have that overpowering taste. So my only complaint isn't so much about this particular beer as it is the style in general. I don't understand why beers of high alcohol contents have such a strong taste in beer while wine, champagne, and certain liquors have much higher alcohol by volume contents and yet don't "snap at you" when consumed.

Don't get me wrong however, Trippel was not a bad beer and was definitely drinkable. The taste for me left a little to be desired however. Comparative to similar styles I'd be lying if I said I've had enough to know how it stacks up. The only one that I've tried that immediately comes to mind is La Fin Du Monde which was much harsher for me. Trippel does a good job of mellowing flavors with this to create a flavor that isn't entirely dominated by alcohol.

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