Abbaye Des Sept Minutes III

Another entry from the series brewed by Godspeed and Tooth and Nail, Abbaye Des Sept Minutes III is a Belgian-style tripel. It’s a 9% golden ale that pours clear, under a white, sudsy head. The beer comes in 355mL cans, which is plenty to get your heart started!

AD7M III has a yeasty and tart aroma that touches on cranberry and apple notes. The flavour kicks off sweetly, with loads of boozy warmth. Beyond that, there is a degree of Belgian-style yeast, apple, and spice. The back end is warm and strong.

This beer is, to me, an approachable take on the tripel style. It has the heat, and some of the funk, but it doesn’t have a lot of the charming quirks that characterize the best tripels.

Rating: 7.0 out of 10.

11-05

“Remember, remember the fifth of November”—I actually sat down with a 473mL can of 11-05 on November 5th. The beer, brewed in collaboration between Nickel Brook Brewing Co. from Hamilton, Ontario and Sawdust City Brewing Co. out of Gravenhurst, Ontario (where it was actually brewed), contains 11.05% alcohol. The can has three notable features: (1) the two collaborators involved in this brew share a common birthday—November 5; (2) there is an excerpt from the famed rhyme about the Gunpowder Treason and a Guy Fawkes mask; and (3) there is an indication that the beer was brewed in support of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation Canada. A fourth element also caught my eye—the beer was brewed on August 31, 2016—over a year before I bought it.

The beer is billed as a Belgian-style tripel brewed with brettanomyces yeast. 11-05 is a sunny golden brew. It’s hazy, less carbonated than expected, and pours with a white head. It has a funky scent, with notes of sour cherries. The flavour is extremely sweet, with fruit elements. It isn’t as tart and yeasty as I expected, nor as lively and effervescent.

In truth, I suspect that this beer was in the fridge at Sawdust City for too long before I bought it. It likely lost a bit of its funk and punch over the 14 months between brewing and consumption. Still, it was a boozy and fairly interesting collaboration between two of my fave Ontario outfits. It was too sweet and not nearly as yeast-focused as a tripel should be, but it was brewed for a good cause and gave me a lot to write about.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10.

RGBee

Billed as a tripel with wildflower honey, RGBee comes from the Halo Brewery. A Torontonian ale with some heft, this re-imagining of the Belgian-style contains a stern 8.7% alcohol and comes in 500mL bottles.

Initially, the beer poured extremely clear, which was an unusual characteristic for a tripel-style ale. However, my second pour seemed to dislodge some sediment and resulted in a considerably more cloudy second half. Additionally, it proved to be substantially carbonated and occupied space beneath a fuzzy white head.

I found RGBee's nose to be a complicated affair, encompassing malt, honey sweetness, and a whiff of copper. The beer tasted extremely sweet--a product both of its boozy nature and of the use of honey in the brewing process. While there was definitely some Belgian-inspired yeastiness, I found it to be rather understated, taking a backseat to the sugary qualities that were the real drivers of this ale.

RGBee was a very interesting ale. I found it to be well-conceived, but not quite as well-executed. A bit too cloying and not nearly as representative of the tripel style as I wanted. Still, the use of wildflower honey created a pleasant clover feel that made for a memorable flavour.

Rating: 7.0 out of 10.

New Limburg Belgian-Style Tripel

Another installment from Nixon, Ontario's New Limburg Brewing Company, their Belgian-Style Tripel is a dull orange-gold ale. Sold in 500mL bottles, this brew packs 8.7% alcohol which, though very strong, is on the low end for tripels. The beer poured with a warm blanket of fluffy off-white head--so volcanic that it took an age to get the stuff in my glass. Lots of sediment, too. Another reason to pour cautiously.

To the nose, this stuff is powerfully yeasty, in a tart, funky sort of way. The flavour follows that trend, and does so in a convincingly Belgian fashion. Boozy, but relatively dry, this stuff has some green apple notes to compliment the hefty yeast profile.

New Limburg specializes in Belgian-style ales, and their Tripel is as close as you can get to the real deal without buying an abbey brew. It could have been stronger and perhaps a bit bolder, but the flavour was on point.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10.

Quesada: Farmhouse Tripel

On a beautiful holiday Monday, I met my brother near his pad at a place called Folly Brewpub. Folly hadn't been on my thirst radar until I noticed it from the streetcar a few weeks earlier, but since then it had been popping into my head a lot.

While waiting for Little Brudder to arrive, I ordered myself a 12oz pour of Quesada: Farmhouse Tripel. Quesada was a sunny golden ale, hazy, and stroked with slow-moving carbonation. It showed up with a thin measure of bright white head. According to the tap list at Folly, Quesada contained a burly 8.8% alcohol and is dry hopped using Citra and Jarrylo hops.

My beer arrived bearing a powerful aroma that blended punchy yeast elements with dry white wine and tart fruit notes. Its mouthfeel proved to be a bit mellower than I expected, with a nice, smooth texture--not quite the farmhouse fizz I was counting on. Its taste was yeasty, bright, and fruity, with tart apple and pear notes in evidence.

For a Belgian-style ale brewed in Toronto, Quesada really delivered. The farmhouse elements make for an interesting take on the style. It was good enough to make a return to Folly an almost certainty. Not too sweet, plenty strong, and nicely made.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10.