The Cocktail Hour - A Trio of Tripels

It's another stop on the wide world of beer as Tim and I put three tripels to the test. A tripel (or triple, or trippel...depeding on how the brewery wants to spell it) is simply defined as a Belgian strong ale.

Why tripel? It's hard to pin down. My research points up to two reasonable explanations...

Watch the Video!

1. It's got more alcohol than a dubbel, which has more than a regular ale. Legend has it that this is where the "X" in describing alcohol. A keg of Belgian ale would have an "X" for a regular ale, "XX" on the keg for the next level of strength, and "XXX" for the strongest.


2. It uses triple the amount of malt in the fermentation...this is the description New Belgium Brewery uses on their  entry, so I'd give that some credence too.

Today, we've got a true Belgian Abbey Tripel in the Petrus Gouden Tripel and two American contenders.  New Belgium...you might be familiar with their Fat Tire brand...from Colorado with their trippel, which they also add a little coriander to, and Andersen Valley Ale from Boonville in Northern California, near Ukiah and Mendocino.


All were very good but one really stood above the others for superior taste and drinkability...and it's probably not the one you guessed.


See the video above for the whole tasting and see who came in head and shoulders above the others in this strong ale taste off.

Cheers!


-Darryl

THE COCKTAIL HOUR: Belgian Sour Ale Taste Off

To me, Belgium is the beer capitol of the world.  In this small country, over 250 breweries make the best beer on earth.  Today, we’re tasting a tiny sliver of that tradition with our Belgian sour ale taste off.

Belgium is divided into two linguistic regions, Wallonia and Flanders.  French is spoken in Wallonia and Flemish (similar to German) is spoken in the northern region.  This area along the Dutch border is where the sour ales generally hail from.

Watch the Video!

Sour ale is a beer that, just like the name says, tastes sour.   Sometimes it’s just a hint of sourness and other times you’ll think you’re swilling vinegar.  It’s definitely an acquired taste for most people.  It’s a taste I’m trying to acquire…sour beer is pretty difficult for me to get a handle on.  My wife, on the other hand, loves sour ales and it’s her favorite beer type.  Unfortunately for her, most beer drinkers in our area aren’t big fans of the stuff so it’s pretty hard to find.

We’re lucky that we have a few pubs nearby that serve a selection of Belgian beers.  One, Lucky Baldwin’s, has a Belgian Beer Festival each year and this is where my wife found out she liked the sours.

Today, we’re tasting two ales. Monk’s Café is a Flemish sour ale.  Brewed just south of the Dutch border, it’s made especially for Monk’s Café, a Belgian restaurant in Philadelphia.  It come out a dark, copper color with a nice, 1 inch head. The sour taste is not overwhelming and is not sweet like some of the Flemish ales you find available around here, like the krieks you get at Trader Joe’s.

The second ale is Duchesse de Bourgogne, a Flanders red ale.  This one is a little sourer but still drinkable to me.  It’s just slightly redder than Monk’s.  It’s brewed farther south, about 50 miles south of Brugges.

At BevMo, the Monk’s Café sour ale is about $3.50 a bottle and Duchesse de Bourgogne is $5.49.

Cheers!

Darryl

CLASSIC TRIP: England, Ireland, Belgium 2005 - Part 3

Brugges

Just a quick word about the classic trip series of reports here, they are presented just as written on our old site, so the information...such as prices and such...may be dated.  They are accurate as of the date in the title.  This is the case in the story below...in 2005 Hoegaarden was a boutique and hard-to-get beer here in the states.  Since then, the company bought out Anheiser-Busch and is now the largest brewer in the world and you can find Hoegaarden in just about any supermarket now...

It took awhile, but we finally found the Ireland we came for.  Now, it was another trip across the sea, this time to Belgium.  Here's the final segment of our trip.

DAY EIGHT – The first half of this day is taken up with travel.. A 7:30am flight is schedule from Cork back to Heathrow. Again, it’s Aer Lingus time. It starts off well enough when a friendly worker is assigned to escort us to the gate. It soon becomes apparent that this was the only thing the airline had done. As this worker is frantically trying to find someone to help us board, the plane is loaded. The door is closed. The jet is ready to go. We’re still in the terminal – even though we arrived 2.5 hours early.

Finally, the food service truck is called back and commandeered to lift us up into the plane. The flight only leaves 1.5 hours after schedule.

We’re lucky in one sense, that’s just about how much our next flight at Heathrow has been delayed so we didn’t miss that flight.

I will not willingly fly Aer Lingus again.

The next flight is British Airways to Brussels. This is a short, uneventful flight with a professional and courteous staff.

It’s Tuesday and we’re in Belgium!

We pick up our rental car and head out. Our first stop is a mecca for beer drinkers, at least a number of American drinkers, the little village of Hoegaarden, about 40 minutes east of the airport.

Having a Cold One in Hoegaarden

This pretty and neat village of brick houses makes one of the best beers around, Hoegaarden Witbier. It’s a rare treat to find this delicately flavored brew back home and that treat will cost you big time ($9.00 on tap at the Yardhouse here in L.A.)

It takes us awhile to find the old brewery (a very large modern one sits at the edge of town) with it’s charming courtyard pub. The villages’s signage is very low key but we eventually make our way in and enjoy the best beer I can remember having. Along with the Witbier (which is as pervasive in Belgium as Budweiser is here), we enjoy the splendid dark Grand Cru that is not available in America.

I grab a pack of the Grand Cru to take to the hotel for later when we leave.
We have come here to Hoegaarden straight from the airport. It’s now time to head back to Brussel’s and find our hotel.

The arrival in Brussel’s puts us right on the street where the EU headquarters are located at the peak of rush hour. I have no idea where we are or how to get to our hotel. When I get a chance, I duck onto a side street where I can pull over and study our map.

I’m armed with several street maps of the city, none of which show the city as a whole. They all come in two parts. I seem to be on one side of the map and our hotel on the other. The big problem is that Brussels’ streets are a real labarynth. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to how the city is laid out.

St. Catherine's Cathedral and Plaza

With my wife navigating and several stops to pull over and study the map, we finally find our way to the hotel about an hour and a half later. The hotel is the Citadines St. Catherine’s, located on a time-worn but beautiful plaza dominated at one end by the St. Catherine’s cathedral and the other with a large fountain.

The Citadines is an apartment hotel, meaning a suite. We get a large suite on the third floor with a bedroom apart from the living room. It also includes a small kitchen and dining room. The bathroom has a bathtub only and is not accessible. It is separate from the toilet which is minimally accessible. The Citadines also has smaller studios which are accessible (I do not have details) but we wanted the larger suite and are willing to adapt.

Our room has three large windows, two in the living room and one in the bedroom, which offer spectacular views of the city. Parking is at an underground garage for an extra charge. There is a metro station in the plaza across the street but it is not accessible. According to the map in the station, I could only find four accessible stations on the metro system. Every bus I saw was accessible.

I go to the small market at the end of the block where 2 Euros gets me enough eggs, ham, coffee, and milk to make breakfast in our room for the next couple of days.

It’s still relatively early and the sun goes down very late this time of year, so we walk over to the Grand Place, Brussels’s old plaza. It’s about a six block walk from our hotel.

Brussels is a beautiful city with many old buildings, plazas, and cafes. It reminds me a lot of Paris with all the winding lanes and alleyways. It does have a kind of dingy glamour like a fading movie star. It’s kind of hard to describe. I really enjoyed this city, more than I did Paris, but you will be stepping around streetwalkers and junkies sleeping off their last fix. I guess this city just feels more real.

The late afternoon sun makes the Grand Place shine. This plaza is surrounded by intracately detailed buildings, each one created by crafts guilds hundreds of years ago. The guilds would be equivalent of our unions today. The ironworkers guild is in one building, the printers in another, and so on. Restaurants line the perimeter.

About two blocks beyond is Brussels most famous sight, the Mannekin Pis. Remember those cheesy fountains you see at your local garden center of the little boy relieving himself? Well, the original is here. Erected a few hundred years ago, the Mannekin Pis is just what the name says. A statue of a boy urinating into the pool.

The Famous Peeing Boy (no, not Tim)

Many stories abound as to its origins, my favorite is that the boy peed on a witch’s house that stood on the corner and robbed her of her powers. A museum stands nearby that houses the many costumes people have made for the statue over the years.

On the way back, we have dinner at one of the many restaurants lining the streets here. A pot of mussels cooked in a garlic broth, accompanied by steak, bread, and fries (which, of course, is a Belgian invention) is what is on our menu tonight. It is all very good. We wash it all down with Hoegaarden, which at 1.5 Euros is less than my son’s coke at 2 Euros. I don’t know if it’s this way everywhere in Belgium, but a glass of water on the side also costs a couple of Euros.

DAY NINE
It’s about an hour and a half drive to our next stop, Brugges. When coming into Brugges, you're directed to one of the many underground parking lots. Don't worry if you end up at an outlying lot, accessible shuttle buses will take you into town.

The old medieval port town of Brugges is a perfectly preserved masterpiece. The heart of the old city is spared much...but not all...of the vehicular traffice due to those underground garages. It's a strollers paradise with sidewalk cafes, chocolate shops, and museums galore.

The centerpiece is the main square where fishermen used to bring their catches via the canals that came in from the sea. The canals now stop about a block short of the square and the fish market has moved over by the city hall. Dominating the square is the tall clock tower with its hand operated carillon.

We start off with a hot cup of coffee at the first cafe we encounter upon exiting the garage and then start winding our way to the center of town.

A special note here for wheelchair users. Brugges is very bumpy. The roads, squares, and many walkways are, for the most part, cobblestones. In the Rick Steves book about accessible Europe, it is stated that there are smooth paths where cobblestones are that make for easy travel by wheelchair. We did not see any such paths, so be aware of this.

There are many chocolate shops along the way so we stop in at one and are offered many tastes of some of the best chocolate we've ever had. Of course, we have to by a few boxes to take home but it's very reasonable here and only sets us back about $20 for a pretty large assortment of sweets.

Market Day in Brugges

Emerging in the main square, it turns out today is market day. Vendors fill up the space with fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, cheese, and flowers. Being lunch time, we decide that our midday meal will consists of whatever we can come up with by walking through the market. Starting at the west end, a vendor is grilling delicious pinwheel sausages on skewers. Next, Tim and I share a bratwurst. Some good Belgian beer is purchased at one of the stands to help wash it down. To make it a little healthier, some plums, peaches, and grapes make a nice side dish. A large sampler buffet of cheeses makes for some great free snacks. Arriving at the other side, a cart is making the most delicious Belgian fries and we finish it off with a couple of orders and a couple of cans of Hoegaarden.

Wandering around the many alleyways, we emerge upon the gold plated magnificence of the city hall. We are looking for a restroom and find one that requires three steps up and then another three steps down. I spot a wheelchair lift at the entrance of city hall and a gentleman standing there says to come on up. It turns out that he is an artist who is having a show of his work in the lobby of the building. Good paintings and nice gentleman but we really need some facilities. He tells us that the bathroom we saw is accessible...and that the Flemish are a forward thinking socially aware people...but I cannot for the life of me see how they were accessible.

We finally had to make do at one of the restaurant bathrooms which at least was level if not fully accessible. I did not find any accessible restrooms in Brugges.

There are many beautiful canals here and many boats to tour on. All of them require the navigation of stairs so that option was out for us.

Later on, we found a restaurant on one of the back alleys that made waffles. I know that many U.S. restaurants serve Belgian waffles but I have never had one like the waffle we had this day. It was slightly crisp, very buttery in its flavors, light, and covered with melted chocolate and cream. Very sinful and delicious.

After Brugges we took a drive through the countryside. It's only a 30 minute drive to the Netherlands so we head north to add one more country to our list. The first thing we notice is when you get over the border, there are as many bicycles as cars...if not more. Every road has a corresponding bike path and many paths go beyond the roads. It's very beautiful and clean in this area.

Ijzendijke

We make a quick stop at a local pub in Ijzendijke, a pretty little town with friendly people, a windmill, and a small cannabis shop. A two hour drive across the Dutch countryside leads us back across the border at St-Niklauss, just west of Antwerp. From here, it's a short drive south back into the maze of streets that is Brussels.

One more night of rest overlooking St. Catherine's square and then we get back on the plane to go home.

Darryl
Copyright 2009 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

The Cocktail Hour: Belgians on Ice, Part Deux or Part Twee

Felt like something different for this week's Cocktail Hour so I decided to expand upon our original Belgians on Ice post.

Today, I needed to go to the store for some groceries and remembered that the Stater Brothers in Glendora is right next door to Lone Hill Liquor, home to a vast array of beers.

Letty likes the sours, so I'm looking for something she'll enjoy without breaking the bank like the sour rye I see from the Bruery that goes for around $24 for a 750 ml. bottle.  There is a great selections here and I end up settling for the Rodenbach Grand Cru at about half the price of the Bruery's version.

For me, it's been a long time since I've enjoyed a St. Bernardus brew, so I go with the hyper-strong ABT 12, which clocks in at 10% alcohol.

First the sour...Rodenbach is a classic Flemish Red Ale made in Roeselare, Belgium. It's sour, real sour with...as my wife says...no hint of sweetness at all. That's fine with her as she likes her sour ales as sour as possible.  It's aged over two years in oak barrels and has added bacteria to impart that tartness.

When it hits the tongue, the first thought is vinegar, like the malt vinegar you put on fish and chips, but let it linger a little bit and you'll find a rich savoriness in the background that's quite interesting.

I admit, I'm still developing my taste for the sour ales but each time I try, I like it a little more.

The St. Bernardus is an abbey ale, a quadruppel, which goes down very smooth like a good Belgian dubbel like Petrus or Kwak. It explodes with a rich, deep, almost sweet taste that goes down like velvet.

At 10% alcohol, this one will kick your ass if you're not careful...I think I'll need a nap after this bottle.  Only drink it if you're somewhere you won't have to drive from any time soon.

It's a delicious beer with a well-hidden kick.

Cheers!

Darryl 

THE COCKTAIL HOUR: Belgians on Ice

Today on the patio were chillin’ some brews.  A couple of Belgian beauties.

Belgium is our favorite beer making country, followed closely by Germany and the good ole USA.  Today, we’re trying an abbey brewed reserve ale and a Lambic.  Both are readily available, today’s bottles came from Trader Joe’s.

The Lambic is Lindemans Framboise raspberry Lambic and the ale is Chimay Grande Reserve.

First the Lambic.  These are mainly sour beers often fortified with fruit.  Letty loves the sour Belgians, I think they taste like vinegar.  It’s an acquired taste for me but some people really love it.  This one is not sour, though.  It’s actually pretty sweet and tastes more like a raspberry soda.  Not sour enough for Letty and too sweet for me.  The raspberries give it a deep red color and it looks like punch.  

The Chimay is a rich, brown, smooth tasting beer.  It’s not very clear, almost a Guinness like thick brown that blots out the sun.  It is very smooth, like you’d expect a Belgian to be, and tastes just a little hoppy and a lot nutty.  Not a bad brew but there are better out there, although they are not as readily available.

The Lambic is $8 and the Chimay $9 for a 750 ml bottle at Trader Joe’s.

Cheers!

Darryl

The Cocktail Hour - Belgian Beer Festival

The World on Wheels crew gets out of the patio this week and goes on location to Lucky Baldwin's Pub in Sierra Madre, California just east of Pasadena.  There's also a Lucky Baldwin's in Old Town Pasadena. It's the 11th annual Belgian Beer Festival where, in their words, the largest selection of Belgian beers in the world are served on tap.

Maybe, I don't know. But there are 46 taps and 29 of them (on this day) are dedicated to the Belgian brew. The kegs are rotated, so what's on tap today may not be what's available on Monday. I do know that they will be serving around 60 Belgians on tap during the festival, which happens in February and again in the summer.

The way it works is this... 6 oz tastes are $4 with an extra dollar tagged on for the ultra-premium brews. Pints are $7-9 dollars. You can get a package with a souvenir glass and t-shirt for $20. The glass comes filled with whatever brew you want. Come in anytime during the next year, and get a dollar off of your beer. It's not as good as it sounds because the glass is only 12 oz. and they usually sell pints. You can see the glasses at the end of part 2 of the video.

I'd put the entire video up at once, but YouTube only allows 10 minutes at
a time, so I have to break it into two parts.


Here is part 1 of the video...

and here is the conclusion...

Enjoy!

-Darryl

EVENTS & FESTIVALS: Belgian Beer Festival

Picture courtesy of Wikimedia

Josef Stuefer under CC-BY license

We're wrapping up Wine and Beer Week today to coincide with the opening of the Belgian Beer Festival at Lucky Baldwin's pubs (Pasadena and Sierra Madre, California).  If you're in the area, be sure to check it out as you can taste dozens of great Belgian brews on tap at festival prices.  We do this every year...we take a cab and have a ball.  Also available is a menu of great Belgian specialties like mussels and waterzooie.  The festival lasts through the end of the month.

If you see us, stop on by and say hi.  Hope you enjoyed Wine and Beer Week...watch for Olympic Week starting on Monday.

-Darryl

BEER AND WINE WEEK EPILOGUE - The Hangover

Picture courtesy of Wikimedia

AgnosticPreachersKid under CC-BY-SA license

Now that we're wrapping up our week dedicated to beer and wine here at The World on Wheels, we're putting up a list to all our reports that have to do with the two drinks.   Here you go, happy trails...

Viktulienmarkt. Munich, Germany

BEER
Bavaria, Germany - Beer heaven.  I thought pubs were about the most fun you could have until we found the beer gardens.
England, Ireland, and Belgium part 1, part 2, and part 3 - Pubs are still a lot of fun, though.  Belgium is the pinnacle of beer making.
Seattle, Washington part 1 and part 2 - One of America's great beer cities.
The World on Wheels Beer Taste Off

WINE
Amador County part 1 and part 2 - My favorite wine country in California.  Part 2 has most of the wine related information.
Napa Valley part 1 and part 2 - The world's most famous wine producing region.  Great wines but you're going to have to fight to find it.