Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Know Your Beer - Belgian Tripel


This week we are going to look at the Belgian Tripel style of beer. This style has become more common in the US, but especially in Nuevo Mexico - we're really starting to see our local breweries exploring this type of beer and seeing what they can do with it.

The term "tripel" actually relates to the part of the brewing process where a brewer will use triple (aka 3x) the amount of malt that they would usually use for a brew. These beers tend to be on the fragrant end; having a bit of floral, fruity and sweet aroma to it. The brew tends to be lighter in color and body; the lighter body hides the fact that these beers are really strong - most of these start off at 8.0% abv (an average beer is 5.0% abv) and go up from there! So don't suck these down, unless you want to end up with a headache the next day.

I haven't had a lot of these, in fact, we've only featured three on the blog: the Flying Dog Kerberos Tripel, the Chama River Menege a Tripel and the Prescott Brewing Belgian Tripel.

Some others that you could try are the Rock Bottom Tremere Tripel and the Sierra Nevada Stricklander.

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