Whats more Awful Tofu or Belgian Beer?
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makomachine
Well-Known Member
Love me some Brie! They don't make a cheese that I won't try and havent had one I don't like. I like all kinds of ethnic food as well - with Indian food on my weekly menu on a regular basis. Belgians thus far...not so much!
bottlebomber
Well-Known Member
jonmohno said:
That's one thing I haven't tried... NB has a kit for one that has an OG of 1.035, and isn't supposed to be imbibed for 3 years. I can't even imagine what a beer like that would taste like.
MultumInParvo
Well-Known Member
I am with you... Who has had Duvel and not liked it..? What don't people like? I don't get it...
bottlebomber said:
I have a lambic currently fermenting that'll be ready in 3 years total as well.
Closest thing you can usually find in the US is gueuze, which is often a blend of 1-year old and 3-year old lambic. In fact, just bought out the remaining local supply (nearly a dozen bottles of the only kind available here) earlier today, and as a seasonal release it'll probably be at least a year before we get more.
Should be easier to find in the US though. Look for Cantillon gueuze. Lindeman's makes a decent gueuze too, but you gotta be careful - only the one labelled "Cuvée René" is any good. All the other Lindeman's stuff is pasteurized and backsweetened to a disgusting degree (like soda syrup or something), and isn't a good representative of sours or even beer in general.
So... if you want to find out, most gueuze will give you some idea, but it'll be easiest to find Cantillon Gueuze or Lindeman's Gueuze Cuvée René.
Beezy
Well-Known Member
People don't like tasting the yeast it's pretty simple. I am not that way I can appreciate just about anything except for bland, light brews.
bottlebomber
Well-Known Member
I almost think Duvel is somewhat advanced for some reason.... I mean is just pilsner, a very small amount of hops, and then that delicious peppery funk of the belgian yeast, with not too much between you and it.MultumInParvo said:I am with you... Who has had Duvel and not liked it..? What don't people like? I don't get it...
emjay said:
Im definitely going to keep an eye out for those, I go down to SF every few months and they have some pretty good beer stores down that way.
n2fooz said:
It's okay. I certainly don't mind it. But it's a bit watery to me and overall is somewhat reminiscent of BMC, actually. I still tend to order it at restaurants and bars, but that's only because it's often the only beer that many places have which isn't a macroswill lager, and thus the only one I'll even consider drinking.
But even though Hoegaarden isn't totally my cup of tea, I DO like the Belgian Wit style, despite full awareness that it is the exemplar that the entire style is now based on. But after Pieter Celis sold it off to Interbrew, even Michael Jackson remarked (at least as far back as 1990) that he felt the beer had lost some if its complexity... so perhaps I would have liked the original one better!
Special Hops
Well-Known Member
Wouldn't say I hate Belgian beer. It's. Just not my thing. I have tried many at a beer test one one thinking there was one somewhere that i would really enjoy. Not the case
count_dookie
Well-Known Member
I love tofu, its like a mushroom and a marshmallow had a illegitimate baby. I also love Belgian beers. Both are great things but I've never had them together
This.
Belgianess is next to Godliness. Base malt+real candi sugar+triple decoction+ferm control+pure 02+belgian yeast...you should look at what some homebrewers are doing with Belgian beers these days. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f73/pious-westvleteren-12-style-quad-multiple-147815/ It represents the pinnacle of high tech brewing. Just the technology that goes into making real candi syrup....you guys should get on this, it's a great thing for homebrewing.
i dont understand. Tofu is tofu, and therefore almost equivalent to nothingness. It's a universal flavor sponge. But belgians have a great variety, I haven't found one I "love" but never one i hated either
bottlebomber
Well-Known Member
gstrawn said:
You couldnt be more wrong. There's a huge micro-batch craft tofu movement strikingly similar to what is happening with beer. As people are becoming more diverse with what they are able to appreciate, the market is responding. Tofu is now available in virtually every flavor, form, and texture. The days of the ubiquitous white blocks getting ignored in the produce aisle are over.
Ah... It's a huge conspiracy!
"Alpro, Belgium
Founded in 1980 and considered to be the European pioneer in soybean products, Alpro produces healthy ranges of drinks, desserts, yoghurt, cream, etc., and has production sites in Wevelgem (Belgium), Issenheim (France) and Kettering (UK).
Alpro is committed to ensuring a complete traceability of its products and a healthy lifestyle for consumers as well as employees. Alpro employs over 500 people.
Further information is available at: http://www.alprosoja.com"
"Alpro, Belgium
Founded in 1980 and considered to be the European pioneer in soybean products, Alpro produces healthy ranges of drinks, desserts, yoghurt, cream, etc., and has production sites in Wevelgem (Belgium), Issenheim (France) and Kettering (UK).
Alpro is committed to ensuring a complete traceability of its products and a healthy lifestyle for consumers as well as employees. Alpro employs over 500 people.
Further information is available at: http://www.alprosoja.com"
Special Hops said:
Zamial said:
And yet, you're missing out just as much as the haters.
Without a doubt, it's worth putting the work in to condition your palate and learn to appreciate Belgian beer. And yes, many people don't realize, but with a bit of work you CAN learn to appreciate previously unappreciated tastes. And to a surprisingly extreme degree too... it's very possible to learn to absolutely love stuff that you previously considered awful.
Most beer enthusiasts notice this with beer to some extent, that their palate has broadened since they first started drinking craft beer. Some people can jump right into 100+IBU IIPA and be able to enjoy it, but most people need to work their way up to that point.
And it's inevitably very rewarding. If you'll notice, most of what are considered "the finer things", in terms of food and drink, are things that are disliked by many - and often even MOST - adults who wouldn't even necessarily be considered picky eaters. And you'll *never* be able to get the same level of enjoyment eating a mild cheddar as some people experience when eating an extremely sharp and well-aged one, or any number of examples that most people wouldn't even want in their house at all, let alone be willing to eat it! (Interesting, a cheese called "Vieux Boulogne", despite only a couple of months of aging, manages to be the world's smelliest by washing the rind in beer during the production.)
Heck, beer is probably on of the best examples. Just look at how many people go nuts over hops with aromas and flavors that are compared to things like "cat pee." Or how many people are so devoted to sours/wild ales, with beers tasting like "vinegar" often being very desirable, and people often intentionally seeking out beers with flavor profiles described as "barnyard funk" and "horse sweat."
But beer enthusiasts typically acquire these tastes naturally/accidentally. Nothing wrong with that, but it's often a much slower process, and it tends to be hit-or-miss, requiring the right set of conditions and generally only working for a fraction of the styles or groups of styles on could possibly acquire a taste for.
And the thing is, as homebrewers, we're the best equipped to really work on acquiring tastes. Because it's a process best done incrementally, with a series successive approximations. As homebrewers, we can select, tweak, or design beers that allow us to gently ease into new territory, using recipes that are perfectly suited to our tastes except for one tiny little baby step in the right direction. This is virtually guaranteed to work.
And as brewers, if we're very serious about what we do, it's almost our duty to work to break free of the restraints of "personal preference" in the pursuit of a somewhat more objective way of being able to taste and evaluate beer. To use food as an example again, this is the kind of palate a professional chef absolutely requires as well... no chef worth their salt is ever going to tell you that they really don't like mushrooms, or seafood, or rosemary. There is nothing objectively bad about these things, and so even if they started out not liking these things, they can learn to appreciate them. Often, something can be intensely disliked simply because it is unfamilar or unexpected. Most people have had at least one experiencing of thinking something tastes awful because they are under the wrong impression of what it is, but as soon as they find out what it actually is, they realize it's actually pretty good! The brain handles aesthetic judgments (such as taste) in some.very strange ways.
bottlebomber
Well-Known Member
emjay said:
Its true... I have 3 boys, one of them is 4 years old and wont eat squash. We were at a japanese resturant Saturday night, and there was a big plate of tempura vegetables. He picked out a big piece of kombu, a japanese squash, and asked what it was. I told him it was a japanese secret, and no one really knows what it is for sure, and he was wolfing those things down. Adults who wont try to appreciate new foods/beers are kind of like 4 year olds.
bja
Well-Known Member
This is rediculous. Why would I force myself to drink something I honestly don't like. Lifes to short to put yourself through crap like that.
I don't like coconut either and I see no reason why I should try too.
bottlebomber
Well-Known Member
bja said:
Lifes too short to not have a Belgian
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I dove in the deep end of the Belgian pool with Quads. It seems I was destined to love Belgians. I would think a mild American Farmhouse/Saison would be a good gateway. Around here, a good example would be Boulevard Tank 7. Even the Saison Brett is not to crazy.
Houblon
Well-Known Member
I mean really? whats more simple than a gueuze w/cheese stuffed peppers & crackers and more cheese
If you can't find one good beer in that book of 1568 pages
nefarious_1_
Well-Known Member
mmmm, that looks exquisite.
Let me tell you a little story about a little boy. He began college drinking only budlight, and maybe even a yuengling! Whoa! And then one day he tried a Terrapin Rye Pale Ale, and boy was it disgusting. It was so bitter, he couldn't even understand why anyone would want to drink that. Now that boy loves things with three times the IBU's and is on homebrewtalk.com telling everyone he even enjoys a belgian every now and then.
gr8shandini
Well-Known Member
Personally, I find cauliflower to be disgusting, so this post got me thinking. I wonder if there's a compound common to many Belgian beers that some people can taste and find unpleasant while others are "flavor blind" to it. Kind of like this:
http://www.precisionnutrition.com/research-bitter-blind
For the record, I think Belgian beers are great. And some of the American beers brewed with Belgian yeast are just as good. Right now Great Divide's Colette is one of my favorites.
wildwest450
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Yes, it's called yeast. I find most Belgian yeast's to be nasty and overpowering.
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bja
Well-Known Member
Cute!
Let me tell you a story about a big girl (this is a true story, I saw it on TV) who ate drywall (sheet rock). She says it's delicious and I believe that she truly thinks that it is. Does that mean that everyone should also enjoy her snack of choice? Probably not, but that decision is yours to make.
BTW, half of all the beer I brew is highly hopped IPA's. Wasn't always my favorite but that's what I prefer now. So peoples taste do change. Who knows what I'll be partial to a year from now.
Houblon said:
nefarious_1_ said:
Not particularly, actually.
The picture is actually kind of a funny contrast. The food makes it seem like he had decent taste, and then the St. Louis "gueuze" instantly destroys that inference.
I put gueuze in quotes because, while it's technically written on the label, it hardly qualifies. The producer joins a few other "lambic" blenders/breweries in bastardizing lambic products and producing something almost completely unrecognizable as lambic for the mass market.
Gueuze is supposed to be ridiculously dry (often even below 1.000), second only to particularly old straight lambic, and intensely acidic, with plenty of sourness and barnyard funkiness, but St. Louis "gueuze" is blended, pasteurized, and backsweetened to the point that it no longer bears any resemblance to a real lambic product.
What's just as bad (possibly even worse, depending on your viewpoint) is that this particular example has absolutely no redeeming qualities either way. It's disgustingly sweet for a beer, and, skimming through some BA reviews (which admittedly should never be taken too seriously), one guy hit the nail right on the head, "It's like apple juice without the depth of flavour."
One other interesting thing from the BA reviews is the MUCH higher than average ratings given from the loads of Ontario brewers. It was sold much earlier in the year by the government-run liquor store as a seasonal release, and the only VERY rarely carry sours - the vast majority of these Ontario reviewers were no doubt having their first taste of gueuze ever, as many even said. And all the subsequent high scores amazingly demonstrate the subconscious willingness to delude ourselves about taste when we think we're drinking something, as nefarious put, exquisite. Even when we're not. Much like the vast majority of people will rate a wine much more highly - and even describe it much differently - when they think it comes from a $100 bottle. And this is the exact impression I get from the picture - somebody who doesn't have such bad taste, and trying to display all that stuff together as an arrangement of fine food and drink, knows enough about beer to know gueuze is considered to be a favorite of true beer connoisseurs, but not enough about this particular one (and not particularly experienced with traditional Belgian sours), that the gueuze label alone is enough to trick him into thinking it's something worthy of the utmost appreciation.
Not his fault though... the brain is funny that way. It's a shame though that these beers are allowed to be labeled identically to "real" gueuze, because a lot of people are tricked by these products all the time! Especially those that live in markets where real lambic beers are difficult to find. And pethaps worst of all, the hit to their wallet is generally the same!
uhhh wow that was alot of words - but I do agree with what you said. Please feel free to disagree with me but my favorite gueuze has to be hands down Cuvee Renee' (lindemans).
gr8shandini
Well-Known Member
Too late. All my IPAs contain drywall (gypsum).
bottlebomber
Well-Known Member
emjay said:
I thought the Saltines gave it away
Houblon
Well-Known Member
Good F%&^* GRIEF, that was what I had for a afternoon snack and said "hey let me get a pic of that" no planning the arrangement just the way it happened
As for the "authenticity" of the beer yeah its a cheap knock-off but I was in Belgium and will always try a beer myself with little regard as to what BA-RB sites say.
Wonder what BA & RB say about the beer on the right?
If I used BA & RB to pick beers to drink I would have missed these as they had just been released:
How is the "authenticity" of this beer?
As for the "authenticity" of the beer yeah its a cheap knock-off but I was in Belgium and will always try a beer myself with little regard as to what BA-RB sites say.
Wonder what BA & RB say about the beer on the right?
If I used BA & RB to pick beers to drink I would have missed these as they had just been released:
How is the "authenticity" of this beer?
whatever we do noone bring up politics debt ceiling obama or sara palin. lol.
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