Barley wine is first and foremost characterized by its high alcohol content, which is close to that of wine. Reputedly, this strong beer originated in Britain during the Napoleonic Wars, when British gentlemen considered it unpatriotic to drink French wine and found a suitable alternative in strong beers. Other sources report, however, that this strong beer only replaced wine because wine imports stopped. Barley wine has an alcohol content of around 8–12% abv, is usually dark-golden or reddish in colour and has a rich, very sweet vinous character reminiscent of port or dessert wine. It is often barrel-aged.
MIKKEL’S NOTES
Barley wine is an exciting beer style because during brewing you have a lot of freedom in terms of ingredients and alcohol. At the same time, you can put a lot of different traits into the beer by using different types of cereal. This is also a beer type that is well suited to barrel-aging.
MIKKEL’S RECOMMENDATIONS
Mikkeller
French Oak Series
Mikkeller/Three Floyds
Boogoop
In the beer world, there are many different interpretations of the terms dubbel, tripel and quadrupel. The most common is that the trio of beer types, which stem from the Flemish-speaking region of Belgium and the Netherlands, were originally named based on how many barrels of malt were used in the brewing process. The more barrels of malt, the higher the alcohol content. Consequently, the rule of thumb today is that a tripel is stronger than a dubbel and a quadrupel is stronger than a tripel.
The red-brown DUBBEL or ‘double’ is one of the Trappist abbeys’ most popular beer types and, with its dry sweetness and fruity notes, one of the easiest to recognize. Dubbel, as we know it today, was defined by the brewer Henrik Verlinden at the Westmalle brewery in 1926 and has an alcohol content of 6.5–8% abv.
By contrast to dubbel, TRIPEL is pale, a bit like a cloudy lager, but with a higher alcohol content of around 8–10%abv. It also has the complex, slightly spicy stamp of esters and phenols. Like dubbel, tripel is associated with the Belgian Trappist brewery Westmalle, where the beer type was named in 1956. It was created, however, in the 1930s.
QUADRUPEL has an alcohol content of 9–14% abv, making it the king of the Belgian beer family. It is characterized by its deep amber-red colour and notes of dried fruits such as figs, prunes or raisins. One of the world’s most talked-about beers is a quadrupel, namely Westvleteren 12, brewed by the monks at the Saint-Sixtus Abbey in Westvleteren. On several occasions it has been declared the world’s best and is a permanent fixture in the top five at ratebeer.com. It has an almost mythical reputation among beer geeks, partly due to the monks’ anti-commercial sales methods, which mean that the beer can only be purchased at the abbey gate.
MIKKEL’S NOTES
These beer types are defined on the basis of a long, highly traditional brewing culture in Belgium. It is therefore hard to be innovative with them. If you say ‘quadrupel’, anyone who knows anything about beer immediately connects it with the legendary Trappist brewery Westvleteren. It is difficult to work with and generally impossible to add anything new without moving away from the style. Apart from that, personally I could not bring myself to drink a quadrupel that is not from Belgium.
MIKKEL’S RECOMMENDATIONS
Mikkeller
Belgian Tripel
Monk’s Elixir
Santa’s Little Helper
Westmalle
Dubbel
Westvleteren
12
De Dolle Brouwers
Dulle Teve
Brasserie Rochefort
10