Maredsous 10° Tripel (Belgium)

Maredsous 10° Tripel (Belgium) 10.0%

A slightly reddish full gold colour, just barely cloudy with a large, creamy head of white foam. A sweet toasted malt and herbal aroma with hints of apple, pear, touches of alcohol and honey.

Honey and nectar-like sweetness, apple blossoms, toasty malt and a slightly herbal flavour; a bit of seeds of paradise and maybe even light licorice at times. The high alcohol is exposed at times and Maredsous 10° Tripel will certainly warm your chest but most of the time it doesn't taste like it is 10% ethanol.

Maredsous Brune (Belgium)

Maredsous Brune (Belgium) 8.0%


Yeasty, spicy aroma with floral hints and a dark malt back. Very roasty with a high alcohol burn that borders on a hum; floral and fruit tones (fig, prune). Very carbonated but that can be easily handled in the pour. Very nice brown version of you should expect from a Belgian Abbey Ale - perfectly balanced and bursting with character. Some light sediment that doesn't take anything away from the flavour.

Affligem Blonde (Belgium) 6.8%

Affligem Blonde (Belgium) 6.8%

This Abbey ale is deep gold in a glass and well carbonated. It has an floral aroma of apricots. The aroma is also distinctly alcoholic reflecting its strength at 6.8% ABV.

The taste is along much the same lines: sweet at first, floral, tastes of fruits like apricots and mildly banana, spicy like coriander; then bitter and obviously high in alcohol with a gingery aftertaste. It is right in the middle of the pack as far as abbey beers for alcohol content (or even towards the low end) but because its flavour is relatively mild the alcohol comes through quite clearly.

The flavour of Affligem Blonde is pronounced and interesting when compared to your average beer (and in truth profoundly delightful for those of us who have fallen for Belgian Abbey beers), but it is not nearly as strong as some other Abbey ales, especially compared to, say, Trappist ales. This makes it an excellent ale to use to introduce someone to the style: after having tried and enjoyed Affligem Blonde, some of the more "exotic" tasting (and thoroughly wonderful) Belgian beers will be much more approachable.

Affligem makes several other types of beer, a Dubbel, a Tripel and a Belgian ale, which I suspect will be much more like the explosion of flavour expected of a Belgian Abbey beer and I look forward to tracking them down.

A note on the serving: this beer, like any Trappist ale or Abbey beer (or really anything at all with a pronounced floral nose and spicy taste), should be served in a goblet style glass or, failing Belgian Abbey Ale dedicated glassware, a wine glass would do nicely to capture the aroma and bring out some of the best flavours.

Trappistes Rochefort 6 - Abbaye St-Remy (Belgium) 7.5%

 Trappistes Rochefort 6 - Abbaye St-Remy (Belgium) 7.5%

Big, frothy but very quickly fading head (more like a soda), which is a little unexpected.

A cloudy, deep gold and amber colour in a glass. A pleasant herbal, yeasty aroma; sweet, roasty and malty too. A delicious, rounded malt flavour; lots of biscuit and honey. Very nutty with only mild herbal tones, a little apricot and something like green grape raisins; just a little bit of hops too. The alcohol comes through a little but all the flavours work really nicely together. This is a sweet little Trappist number but also more similar to mainstream ales than other Trappist beers and its stronger brethren Trappistes Rochefort 8 and Trappistes Rochefort 10.

Trappistes Rochefort 8 - Abbaye St-Remy (Belgium) 9.2%

 Trappistes Rochefort 8 - Abbaye St-Remy (Belgium) 9.2%

A dark, but not opaque, reddish brown colour in a glass. Sweet, toasty, honey and nectar filled, slightly herbal aroma; a little roasty and very appetizing.

Richly malty taste with touches of barley candy but very sweet with an interesting spicy herbal quality; strong tones of dried dark fruit (prunes and raisins). Some faint milk chocolate but mostly dark fruit and herbal yeasty flavours - typically Belgian Abbey beer and delightful. This Trappist ale has a certain vegetal, herbal quality that is appealing and though it is different from other styles of beers it is not entirely unique amongst Trappist beers and reminds me a little of a young Orval (I typically try to age an Orval a year before drinking it). Quite a bit of sediment that seems determined to remain at the bottom of the bottle: not much of it ends up in your glass without a swirl or two. From past experience more than a little of the sediment can make this type of beer more yeasty than ideal/more yeasty than the brewmaster (brewmonk?) intended.

Rochefort 8 reminds me a bit of an herbal liquore except with a few more dark fruit flavours. Very nice, as you'd expect from a Trappist beer, and, like all Trappist ales, something every beer geek and aspiring beer geek must try along with Rochefort 6 and Rochefort 10.

Trappistes Rochefort 10 - Abbaye St-Remy (Belgium) 11.3%

 Trappistes Rochefort 10 - Abbaye St-Remy (Belgium) 11.3%

Dark cherry and oak aromas. Touches of caramelized sugars and just a touch of alcohol. The taste is very sweet, a bit of high alcohol, lots of chocolate, some light and smooth molasses flavours and a touch of hops coming through with light wooden tones - faintly cedar. It tastes like a gourmet, rum soaked milk chocolate cake. At first all you taste is the sweetness followed quickly by alcohol and definition to the sweetness: molasses, milk chocolate. Then comes bitterness, some wood tones and finally a long sugary and roasty, baked finish like brownies with a continued alcohol hum that fades slowly and compelling you to take another sip. This one is awesome. Opaque brown with an red or amber hue and well carbonated with a substantial amount of dark sediment on the bottom of the bottle.

Leffe Brune (Belgium)

Leffe Brune (Belgium) 6.5%

Very dark brown in a glass. A floral, roasty aroma with yeast and dark fruit tones. The taste is floral with lots of apricot, figs and a hint of dark chocolate or more so molasses. Quite sweet, somewhat sherry-like. Better off served much warmer than the five degrees Celsius that the label suggests. Reminds me of those Christmas chocolates that have booze in them.

La Fin du Monde - Unibroue (Canada - Quebec)

La Fin du Monde - Unibroue (Canada - Quebec) 9.0%


A delectable spice filled floral aroma, matched by an amazing flavour. Strongly sweet, yeasty, bitter with powerful notes of citrus, pear, coriander. This product of Quebec tastes like a true Tripel from the abbeys of Belgium. To think, it's taken me so long to try this one!! La Fin du Monde is a little thicker on the toungue than some but really beautifully crafted and has a truly amazing mix of flavours not to mention the fact that it's cheaper by volume than any Tripel you can buy from Belgium. I'm definitely going to be picking up La Fin Du Monde again and again.

Orval Trappist Ale (Belgium)

Orval Trappist Ale (Belgium) 6.9%

The first one I tried was VERY bubbly - probably because I served it right out of the fridge instead of at 12 to 14 degrees Celsius as they directed: word of warning!

The second was very bitter, spicy, sweet, floral with some wood tones: this is a beer that won't go unnoticed. This is much as I expected from a Trappist ale though I do find it to be more bitter than some of the other Trappist ales I have tried. A fun, exciting and exotic beer to try for anyone interested in a taste adventure.

A cloudy orange amber colour in a glass. Trappist ales always cloudy with natural sediment because they are bottle fermented.

Also of note, this beer has a "bottled on" date and a "best before" date - five years later! Like many Trappist ales this one can be aged essentially like wine.

Norwegian Yule Beers: PART THREE

It this concluding entry my three part Yule Beer series (see part one & part two here and here respectively) I will discuss the handful of yule beers (aka Juleøl, Julebrygg or Julebokk) that contain an alcohol percentage above 7.1%. Enjoy!



Aass Juleøl Premium (Norway - Drammen) 9.0%

Darkly malty. Bitter caramelized sugar. Yuley but it didn't have the impressive flavour I expected from Aass, their 6.3% beer is better.


Ringnes Julebokk 2010 (Norway) 9.0%

A dark chocolate tasting smash in the mouth with a malty aftertaste. It is black in a glass and really good. I did not expect this from Ringnes: although their Juleøl Sterk was good, their lager is so so and their lower alcohol Juleol is just blah.

This one is really well balanced and smooth, not heavy, on the tongue. This strong tasty beer, with its smoky undertones and deftly measured sweetness, has surely ruined countless Norwegian Christmas dinners and work parties as it is 9.0% ABV wrapped in a Trojan Horse of deliciousness and therefore more than capable of overrunning the unwary. If they sold this year-round I might give up wine! Not to be missed.

St. Martin - Cuvee de Noel (Belgium) 8.5%

From the "Abbaye de Aboij Van" this 'Certified Belgian Abbey Beer' smelled of cinnamon at first. Oddly, when I set it aside for a moment (that's odd in and of itself), it very slowly spouted a pillar of foam out of the bottle so I poured it into a glass revealing a cloudy walnut brown colour. I drank the last sip from the bottle getting a mouthful of grit (delicious grit but way, way too strong tasting) which is a rookie mistake, I should have known better, but we carry on.

Inhaling the aromas of this beer brings me back to the three glorious days I spent in Brussels: smells of flower and spice seem to be the trademark of Belgian abbey beers, but this beer also has much more distinct tones of ginger and cinnamon (spice and everything nice to borrow a phrase). Obviously not in the same style as Norwegian Yule beers or German winter beers, but this beer is an absolute hit, and a must try.

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Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed reading about these delicious (and not so delicious) Yule Beers and the Norwegian Christmas tradition that they are continuing.

Cheers!