pmonti80
Active Member
Hi I posting to tell two recent beer experiences which I liked quite a lot.
1) I could try with my father a 2012 Chimay Bleue and a 2013 Chimay Bleue together. It's a beer that we tend to like us a lot, sort of a benchmark for the other beers we try. Tasting them together we realized that we liked more the "old" one wich was 2 years old. I do not know how to explain it but all the flavors were much more integrated, the 2013 was much more aggressive to put it in some way. It's something we had heard that the Chimay improved over time, now I can confirm that having a two years old one we enjoyed it much more over the one year old. Now we are making a cellar to try to preserve some trapist and gueuze beers for at least 2 or 3 years to see the diferences.
2) We were lucky enough to receive a St Bernardus Triple that expired in 2004 (so it would have been made around 2000 or so). It certainly didn't look good on paper because it was pretty old. Anyway, after tasting the beer and we saw it was kind of bland mainly due to the lack of gas, although it had developed an interesting flavor but it was very faint. Then I remembered something I had heard on a Struise Pannepot a podcast by one of the brewers himself. And I decided to mix the St Bernardus Triple with a Westmalle Triple (because we didn't have a new St Bernardus Triple at hand which would have been ideal) pouring 50% - 50% of each beer in each glass. The mixture brought back to life the old St Bernardus, and the resulting beer was delicious blending with the best of both.
What about you, did you have any similar experience?
Cheers,
Patrick.
1) I could try with my father a 2012 Chimay Bleue and a 2013 Chimay Bleue together. It's a beer that we tend to like us a lot, sort of a benchmark for the other beers we try. Tasting them together we realized that we liked more the "old" one wich was 2 years old. I do not know how to explain it but all the flavors were much more integrated, the 2013 was much more aggressive to put it in some way. It's something we had heard that the Chimay improved over time, now I can confirm that having a two years old one we enjoyed it much more over the one year old. Now we are making a cellar to try to preserve some trapist and gueuze beers for at least 2 or 3 years to see the diferences.
2) We were lucky enough to receive a St Bernardus Triple that expired in 2004 (so it would have been made around 2000 or so). It certainly didn't look good on paper because it was pretty old. Anyway, after tasting the beer and we saw it was kind of bland mainly due to the lack of gas, although it had developed an interesting flavor but it was very faint. Then I remembered something I had heard on a Struise Pannepot a podcast by one of the brewers himself. And I decided to mix the St Bernardus Triple with a Westmalle Triple (because we didn't have a new St Bernardus Triple at hand which would have been ideal) pouring 50% - 50% of each beer in each glass. The mixture brought back to life the old St Bernardus, and the resulting beer was delicious blending with the best of both.
What about you, did you have any similar experience?
Cheers,
Patrick.
