It's been a while since I've been structurally reviewing beers, and I realised that I needed to have a common theme in order to keep going. So therefore, I herebye present you one of my New Years resolutions: post a weekly beer review.
Over the next months, I will be trying to review 1 trappist beer every thursday night. And I mean to get my hands on as many of them as possible.
For number one, we will kick off, with a lifetime favourite of mine.
The Chimay Bleue:
9% alc
Tasting temperature: 15.7°C, 60,3°F
Age: 6 months?
The beer looks dark, but clear. The foam consists of fine bubbles, more like a cream than like foam. The foam is dark coloured.
You can check whether a dark beer is clear by aiming it towards a direct light source. Any dark clear beer will show the lightsource. If it is turbid. You will notice. A black beer however, will not show any light shining through, even if it where to be clear.
Dark coloured foam is a sign that the beer is darkcoloured due to the use of dark coloured malts. It is possible to produce dark beers made only with light malts, by afterwards colouring them with caramel extracts, but than the foam remains white.
During the pouring, I already noticed a whiff of banana.
This aroma is actually the ester isoamylacetate, which is produced by the yeast during fermentation. It is a quite common aroma in dark beers.
Yeasts produce two kinds of aroma components: esters and higher alcohols. Both are dependant on two factors: the temperature of fermentation (which is why it is important to keep gfermentation temperature constant throughout the year), and the strain of the yeast itself (which is why in Belgium most breweries own their very own specific yeast strains which they guard jealously from the competition.) It is a saying in Belgium that a brewer will swap his wife before he will swap his yeast.
Besides this banana aroma, there is a rich scent, tropical fruits are entirely at the back, but before that there is caramel, and freshly baked cookies
#The flavour:
The flavour of this beer is very intense, and complex, it is sweet throughout, but starts of, and ends, with something grainy. There is iron there, which is an of flavour, which comes from the brewing water, but it is very ligh, meaning that you cannot taste it, unless you take a bite out of the rich foam covering the glass when you just poured it.
It has a "warm" flavour, which is due to the alcohol. This is not a beer made for drinking quickly, but rather for enjoying over a long time. You won't see me ordering this one in a bar, but I will drink it at home, over the course of an hour or more, enjoying it thoroughly.
#Body: This beer is very full of flavour, it fills up your mouth and throat, leaving every square inch saturated with flavour.
This beer has a very long aftertaste, it will remain lingering for a couple of minutes. (which is exactly why this beer will last you for over an hour). Strangely enough for a beer like this, the aftertaste is quite fresh. SOmething remeniscent of green apples. As this is a sweet beer, it is somewhat sticky.
#Age:
Like all beers, beer changes with age. Not all beers provide a bottling date, but I will be making an effort to show you the true age of the beer I drank. In this case, I'm guessing 6 months. Why 6 months. I bought the beer around october. The bottle both states that it was bottled in 2017 (front label) and the best before date is 12/2022. Therefore, the use by date is more than 5 years and less that 6 years after bottling. Based upon my date of purchase, I would say that 5,5 years will be the use by date which is given to this beer, meaning that this beer would have been bottled in june 2017, but I admit this is just an estimate.
Overall, this is one of my favourite beers, especially for sipping slowly throughout the winter evenings, while enjoying a good book. (Currently: Anabasis by Xenophon)
If you have the feeling that I described sensations and flavours which you never tasted before in beer, go back to the start of this post: I tasted this beer at 15,7°C (60°F)
Like all food, beer releases more of it's flavours and aroma's at a higher temperature. A beer which is only good at 3°C, is not good at all, but is actually crap.
Beer was not meant to be drank out of a fridge, and throughout the ages, it mostly wasn't. If you want to experience the full flavour a beer has to offer, drink it at a higher temperature. I myself will go as high as room temperature, but for regular tasting 12-15° is a nice area, which will allow you to taste all flavours and aroma's.
If a beer is bad however, at 15°C it will be truly bad.? In that case: you've learned that the thing you where drinking was bad. Pour it away, and dpour a new, better beer.
See you next week thursday for the next trappist.
Cheers