Posts Tagged ‘Rochefort’
Belgian Styles: Putting Rumors to Rest
You’d be hard pressed to go into a DC bar and not find at least one Belgian beer, or Belgian-influenced beer, available. In establishments with, shall we say, less than robust selections this usually means Stella, Blue Moon, or Leinie’s Sunset Wheat, but DC Beer Week has had a lot of really great Belgian beer all over town. To our delight, more and more bars in DC are carrying a wider range of Belgian styles on a regular basis, including saisons, Belgian IPAs, and the dubiously-named dubbels, tripels, and quadrupels.
At some point, everyone has wondered why the latter three Belgian beers have been named in relation to each other. Is there math involved? If so, what factor is being multiplied? Speculation runs high, and we have heard claims of all kinds. “The styles have twice, three times, and four times the alcohol content of the monks’ basic brew.” “No, it’s the malt that’s doubled, tripled, and quadrupled in the recipes.” “It has nothing to do with ingredients. Most people couldn’t read back then, so the barrels of types of beer were marked with one, two, or three X’s.”
Each account has a bit of truth to it, but none is entirely correct. The simplest (while still accurate) answer is that the names have to do with the amount of malt used. However, the full explanation has more to do with an old brewing process in which the same malt was used for multiple batches of beer than it does with simply math and the unique characteristics that each style has come to exhibit today.
My Top 5 Desert Island Beers. What Are Yours?
A sixer of Dale’s to go — on your desert island
I’ve had, and still do have, a proclivity toward lists and the ranking of favorites. High Fidelity inspires desert island-record discussions. Fantasy football drafts are a drug. And as tykes, my brother and I would sit cross-legged in the living room, surrounded by sorted mounds of Halloween candy or Pogs (depending on the season) and conduct elaborate trades and negotiations based on our arbitrarily prized possessions. (Should I be confessing this in print? If I ever run for public office, let’s pretend this didn’t happen.)
The point being: I’m no different today. So when I see the Alström brothers of Beer Advocate fame enumerating their top five desert island beers alongside a profile in The Boston Globe, I start getting ideas. Building a desert island list is a delicate task. With records, you need to take into account all the different styles, eras, and at least one sentimental favorite. You probably want some reggae in there, being on an island. So while ranking Pogs may be less nuanced, picking just five beers to drink for all of sand-locked eternity seems unfair, if not impossible. Or in other words, fun.
Like records, my favorite beers change frequently — probably every time I walk into a beer store. But here’s my outline, the prototypical desert island beer list. And despite the urge to apply a beach theme, I have one rule: nothing with a lime in it. Ever.
