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Posts Tagged ‘Belgian Ale’

Free State Bumper Crop Saison

Posted in Beer, tagged , , , , , , on May 13, 2011 | 6 Comments »

For those of you not familiar with Free State, I should point out that it has the best of all possible mottos on its glassware/shirts (which are omnipresent in Lawrence – every Lawrencian has at least one (if not more) in varying states of disrepair from being loved to death). I’ve tried to capture it on the pint glass:

Basic Info:
Name: Bumper Crop Saison
Origin: Free State Brewery, Lawrence, KS
Style: Belgian Saison/Farmhouse Ale
ABV: 7%
IBU: 12
I drank this: on tap at the brewery alongside their insanely good tuna sandwich* (very good pairing – locals should try it)

I’m not really big on Saisons as a whole - the Saisons are all funky and I am just not down with that yet.** I’m working on it, and am starting to find them less repulsively horse barn-like than I used to. That said, I did like this beer much more than I was expecting to. Maybe I’m learning the funk, or maybe Free State didn’t overfunk it.

In any case, Free State threw all kinds of stuff into this lovely little beer. There’s rosehip, lemon peel, black peppercorn, and then the bananaclove flavors of the yeast. The combination smells kind of like a dirty summer perfume: herbal and dirty and slightly floral.

The flavor is layered and complex in a light-bodied, refreshing beer. There’s a touch of honey, lots of herbs (lemon thyme came prominently to mind), a definite sort of lemony hop touch, pale malts, grass, and finally the dirty, earthen flavors demanded of the style. If rolled around the tongue for a while, a sharp sort of piney flavor will develop – the combination makes it feel like standing outdoors on a Summer’s day.

I don’t know that this is the most textbook of Saisons, but it’s really drinkable, especially on a disgustingly humid day. Given the Saison was first brewed in Autumn to be ready the following Summer for the fieldworkers, refreshing is probably the best thing it can be. I enjoyed this quite a bit – I’d encourage everyone else to try it, even if they, like me, don’t particularly want horsebarn beer. This was good stuff.

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*The Savona Tuna Salad Sandwich. It’s. AMAZING. Tuna, cannelini, lots of herbs, olive oil dressing with lemon or something. Nice, light, perfect. ADORE.
**”Funk” is not a term I’m making up here - it’s the term often used to describe the sort of dirtyweird earthen flavor that Belgians – Farmhouse Ales in particular – often have. There’s a particular strain of wild yeast that imparts the flavor most strongly. It tends to pop up in Saisons, Farmhouse Ales and Sour Ales, so if you’re not a fan of the funk, stay away from those styles. Or do as I’m doing and start going after them at every given opportunity in an attempt to figure out what all the fuss is about.

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New Belgium Trippel

Posted in Beer, tagged , , , , , on February 22, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

One of my kickass coworkers gifted me a bottle of this when I mentioned that I hadn’t had a chance to try it yet.

Basic Info:
Name: Trippel*
Origin: New Belgium Brewing Co.,  Fort Collins, CO
Style: Belgian-style Trippel
ABV: 7.8%
IBU: 25
I drank this: at home during my first listen to the new Radiohead album**

This beer begins with a rich, slightly banana-tinged honey-like scent. (Note: there is no banana anywhere near this beer. None. The banana-like hint that comes in this beer, and many other Belgian-style ales, is due to the yeast strains the brewers use. I tend to notice stronger banana hints in American-brewed Belgian style ales than I do in Belgian ales actually from Belgium, but that could just be my not-huge sample size from either category.) The coriander that they throw in is there, but barely – it does a good job of melding with the fruitiness of the yeast and malt.

This beer has a great mouthfeel – it’s thick and creamy with just a hint of bite from the hops and a hint of tingle from the carbonation. The flavor of the beer is just as complex and layered. It starts off with touches of honey and banana-hints, then a slight touch of bitterness, followed by malty sweetness and the coriander hint, and there’s the slightest hint of sour at the back of the mouth. A few sips in, that sour flavor starts to turn into the calling card of good lighter-colored Belgian beers: flowers and hay.

Reading this, I know I’m talking about everything being in “hints” and “touches” and so on, as though the beer had no real flavor. But it does – it’s absolutely *packed* with flavor. It’s just that there’s so much going on and it’s all so well-balanced that there’s no one (or two, or four) dominant flavor(s).

This beer is a major change of pace for me – longtime readers will know that I tend toward the extreme flavors, going for either super-hoppy or super-dark-malty in my beers. This is nothing if not not-extreme (triple negative, people). It’s sophisticated as hell, and absolutely lovely.

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*A Trippel is actually a style of Belgian beer – “trippel” (as opposed to “dubbel” or “quadruppel,” whose English cognates are close enough that I’m not going to bother translating) refers to the amount of malt put into the initial recipe (i.e, a simple gets the normal amount of malt, a dubbel gets twice that and so on), which then affects the alcohol content and the length of time the beer ages. Simply put, the higher the number, the more malt put into the beer, the longer the beer took to make and the higher the alcohol content.
**Those of you who know me well know my insane Radiohead obsession. They are far and away my favorite band by such a margin it’s stupid. That I decided to try this beer during my first listen to the new album is a major compliment, because it says that I had faith this beer would be complex enough to be worthy of new Radiohead. I’m happy with the choice.

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