Getting into the Belgians

Last Saturday I had a chance to sit down with 7 certified beer judges to taste and analyze several styles of Belgian beer, which are known to be the hardest to judge. Needless to say, it was a very informative learning session (ie, we ended up drunk).

Long story short, we compared tripels with golden strong ales as the main course, since many judges have trouble distinguishing between the styles. We seemed to find that the golden strong ales were generally lighter in colour, plus seemed to have a slightly sweeter champagne character in the beers we tried (Duvel & Chimay White Cap) compared to the tripels (Trappist Rocefort 8, Tripel Karmeliet, and... uh... crap, something else).

I'd intended to write more about this this week, however something else has popped up that has taken a bunch of my time lately... its beer related, but I'll have to post it later.

And to add more beer to the list, later in the week a friend and I compared the Rochfort 8 & 10 to the St. Bernardus Abt 12. It was quite a flight of heavy beers, indeed, but yet quite interesting to taste them all side by side. Compared to the 10 and the Abt 12, the 8 tasted almost light and even wattery... when its certainly not! My favorite was the Abt 12, while my friend stuck with the Rochfort 10

Anyway, going to brew a tripel this saturday morning methinks. Not tooo sure of the recipe yet, but I am trying to get rid of some specialty malts (cara wheat and victory malt might make an interesting tripel!), and I made a starter for Wyeast's Belgian/Canadian yeast today... it should be an acceptable yeast choice (... as it is my only choice).

K, I'll blog better soon... maybe even post something interesting... wouldn't that be a hoot.

Cheers