Steenbrugge Tripel

Heavy Seas Beer – Cutlass Amber Lager – This beer ended my night of drinking as I had all four of these beers in one evening. Because I do these reviews in alphabetical order though, it’s first. This beer got downed while waiting for some chick pea curry at Explorer’s Club, which is fantastic. It wasn’t overwhelming in taste. It was a lighter amber that didn’t go heavy handed on the malt despite the name. It was right in line with a Vienna style lager. This beer has won a number of awards at the Great American Beer Festival and is their second highest selling beer. Heavy Seas is out of Halethorpe MD. They are kind enough to provide a beer finder so figure out if you can drink this one, you scurvey dawgs. I had to make one pirate reference.

Hoegaarden – Hoegaarden – We went out with some friends one evening and because of the draft menu at Hal & Al’s, I decided to make it a Belgian beer night. First up on the list was this beer which I first drank when I moved down here to Columbus. I haven’t had it much between then and now because I drank too much then to pay for expensive beer but with so many choices now, I hadn’t tried it until that night. This beer is a white ale which is a brother to hefeweizens. This beer has all of the hallmarks of a hefeweizen which is orange peel, coriander and herbs along with a murky look to the light yellow color. I’m not sure what the herbs are because the orange and coriander are far more prominent. I remember being surprised by the difference in flavor profile then but now it’s expected. Because of a difference in expectations, this “500 years of hard work” for this beer seemed just okay amongst it’s brothers in the hefeweizen family.

Rodenbach

Palm Breweries – Rodenbach – Until I started searching for the websites, I did not realize that these last two beers are owned by the same company. I don’t inspect a label that closely when drinking a beer. If it has a description of the beer, I’ll read it. The problem with these beers in particular was that they were on draft so no label was to be inspected. These beers differed quite a bit too. Rodenbach was my third attempt at a sour beer and I finally liked it. I don’t feel like this one was quite as sour as the ones from Russian River that I tried in the above link. The taste is still very unique from a regular beer but I think they are growing on me. I don’t think they’d be more than an occasional #SippyTimeBeer though.

Palm Breweries – Steenbrugge Tripel – It was fitting that a tripel brought to a close my Belgian beer tour to a close. The picture at the top of the page shows the smaller glass that it comes in because it’s 8.7% alcohol which will knock you on your ass in a hurry. I went to Beer Advocate to figure out what the percentage was and I just can’t shake the comments section. I know I like to taste beers but these assholes sound like wine snobs. I hope I don’t sound that bad. Back to the beer, it was smooth and crisp. It went down like a cider without the overwhelming sweetness. It is certainly in the white ale family but more refined than the Hoegaarden which makes sense since it went through an additional two brewing cycles.

This week in beer news (from AllAboutBeer.com) mentions that Great Lakes Brewing is changing their Double I.P.A. known as Alchemy Hour has been given a name change because of trademark matter with Craft Brew Alliance, Inc. It’s new name is Chillwave. It will be available in March, which is when I tried it during Bockfest in Cincinnati. It’s asolid beer but not one of their best. Of course, considering the amount of I.P.A.s I have tried recently, maybe I’ll have another opinion when I try this #SippyTimeBeer again in 2014. – Kevin