Brouwerij Van Steenberge

About eight months ago I decided I needed to drink more Tripels. I went on a bit of a shopping spree and brought home several bottles of Belgian and American Tripels. I drank about half of them that first month and decided to change gears before I got burnt out. One of the bottles I'd picked up back then had gotten misplaced somewhere along the lines and ended up in a box in the basement. Here we are, several months later, and I've found that missing bottle of Bornem Tripel. The bottle doesn't have a "best by" date on it, and at 9% ABV I figure it'd hold up for a few months but I should probably drink it ASAP...

The Belgians are an interesting bunch... Their beers are among the world's best. The abbey style ales that come from Belgium are some of my favorite beers I've ever had. Belgians, being a little ...out there, have some more interesting ales in their stable as well, and that's what I've got today. I sat down with this Monk's Cafe Flemish Sour Ale not knowing exactly what to expect. I've had a few American Oud Bruin style beers before, they were sweet and sour brown ales usually brewed with a bit of cherry flavor. That's the only frame of reference I really had. It's safe to say this Flemish Sour is nothing like the Oud Bruins I've had before...

I'm nearing the end of my Brouwerij Van Steenberge sampler pack I picked up about six months ago. These stubby little bottles have been consistently good, with a couple being phenomenal. Piraat is one of the beers that blew me away. It's been a tortured wait for this beer. Knowing that I had a bottle of this floating around the fridge at home meant I didn't want to order one while I was out and saw it on the menu. Well, now that I've killed the bottle at home I'll definitely be ordering this every chance I get.

I've overlooked this beer for far too long. I've heard stories about how great this "Dark Tripel" is, but I've never bothered to get a bottle for myself. Well, I picked up an assorted six pack of stubby little Belgian bottles about two months ago and it actually had a bottle of Gulden Draak packed in. Between packing, moving and unpacking I've been neglecting my beers so this has been sitting in the back of the fridge for quite some time now. In some ways I'm glad I saved it, a dark and sweet Tripel is sounding really really good right now...

This stout little bottle is quite unassuming. It's got a curvy upper half that looks a bit like soft serve ice cream atop a cone. The label is pretty plain, with it's blue background and curiously menacing stork icon. You can never really judge a beer by it's label so I tried not to develop any preconceived notions about this little Belgian bottle from a brewery I'd never heard of. When I poured this beer into my glass I noticed a pretty big aroma coming off the beer. There was a good deal of malt at first but hints of candied fruit, chocolate and caramel were all present. An odd aroma for a Dubbel, but a great combination nonetheless.

I was wary of this beer for a couple of reasons... This beer's name and label remind me of of all the sketchy vodka I saw in Eastern Germany. These cheap bottles of vodka were named after historical figures like Putin, Gorbachev and Stalin. These products had nothing to do with their namesake, it was just a marketing ploy to cash in on the name recognition... it struck me as being super tacky. When I first saw this bottle of Bruegel Amber Ale with Pieter Bruegel's Peasant Dance slapped on the side of it I couldn't help but Gorbachev Vodka with a birthmark logo on the bottle...

This bottle of Augustijn Ale is a smallish stubby dark bottle with a curious label on it. On the label is a scene of a bald(ing) fat monk stirring a barrel of what I assume is barley. The label is drawn in a way that reminds me of Disney's animated Robin Hood movie from the 1970s. There are no anthropomorphized animals in this monk's cellar but there are a couple of curious medieval banner with animals on them. One banner has three lions in silhouette and the other has three deer or elk... It seems a little out of place but maybe that's because I'm not part of this beer's target audience... I'm not a 14th century monk that looks like he just stepped out of a Disney animated movie.