Beer Blog - Belgium

Happy New Year! We rang in 2013 with our boys, a couple bottles of local bubbly and tens of thousands of other Luxembourgers. This year - for whatever reason - the Ville decided not to host a public fireworks display. After actually staying awake until midnight ( a rare feat in recent times), I can see why they didn't need to spend the money. The citizenry of Luxembourg put on quite the show...this is what we could see just from the back patio! 

Sorry for the poor image quality, but I think it conveys the scene.

Now, dear reader, the following information is strictly an academic pursuit done solely for scientific and historic purposes. We are trained professionals, and I can assure you we do this only as a service. Any beer buzz that may have been derived during the course of the investigation was merely coincidental, I'm sure...and what a better time than New Year's Day to explore some of our regional beverages.

As you can imagine, there are as many different beers and styles of beer as there are stars in the sky. I would never condone drinking and driving, so instead of traveling the Belgian countryside and visiting Abbeys and breweries, I trundled up to the local grocer and very scientifically gathered a cart full of 'loosies' in an effort to study this matter more deeply. Here's what we discovered.

Don't Judge!

1. Apparently Jeni and I truly prefer our darker less 'hoppy' flavored beers. 
2. Trappist Monks really rock.
3.  Never judge a beer by its label.

Jeni and I tasted nine different beers from various breweries and rated them one to five stars (one being the lowest). Every self-respecting brewer has a specific glass for each of his varieties. We opted for a half pints not only because they are the only 8oz glasses we own (we did share the beers so as not to get completely sloshed), but also to keep an even baseline for our investigation. Cheers!

Bofferding - Our featured Luxem-beer. A nice light pislner. Luxembourg has three main breweries, and we will share these with you soon. B - 3* / J - 1*

Seef - From Antwerp, another light beer with a surprisingly full body with flavors of clove and citrus. B - 2.5* / J - 1.5*

Leffe 'Radieuse' - A great beer company with loads of different styles. This, however, fell a bit short...we really like their 'Bruin'. The Radieuse was very hoppy and too floral for us. B - 1.5* / J - 1*

Leffe 'Royale' - ROYALE!  Can't go wrong, right? Meh. Really tasted like nothing...stick with the 'Bruin'. 

B - 1* / J 1*

Orval - Our first Trappist offering. This too has a citrus flavor with a kind of 'piney' aftertaste, and not too hoppy. B - 2.5* / J - 2* Note the background.

Westmalle 'Dubbel' - Another Trappist Ale. This was nice and dark with a sweet caramel flavor - Yum! If the 'Dubble' was this good the 'Triple' must be amazing. B - 3.5* / J - 3.5*  

Yeah, sunset at 4:45pm!

Westmalle 'Triple' - Not so much :( This was a very good beer, just not our style. B - 2.5* / J - 3*

Trappistes 'Rochefort 8' - A really nice medium bodied beer from the monks at Saint-Remy with an interesting butterscotch flavor. Most of these dudes (Monks) make cheese as well...I did mention that they rock!

B - 3* / J - 2*

Chimay 'Blue' - In our opinion, the gold standard of Trappists ales. Chimay may be the best known and for good reason. The Blue was full bodied and had a wonderfully sweet and nutty flavor. By far our favorite in this round of Beer Blog! B - 3.5* / J - 4*

As always, we will continue our hard work bringing you the as much information about life in Luxembourg as we can. It's a tough job, but we think we're up for the task. There's still Germany, France, Holland just in our neighborhood alone. Whew!