I had the opportunity to drink a 75 cl bottle of my favorite Belgian beer the other day. Absolutely delicious. I have been on the receiving end of some older, funkier Belgian examples (most notably a funky, flat Rochefort 10 that broke my heart) and this was by far the most fresh tasting Belgian example I have come across.
Westmalle’s Dubbel just has everything I love: delicious aroma with figs and dark chocolate. Flavor to die for, with a wonderful maltiness, fairly dry but with some sweetness. The color is just right with a good mix between the deep red, coppery color of say the Chimay Premiere and the dark brown of say the Maresdous 8.
And of course the oft-overlooked fact about Westmalle: they have the best bottles!
Westmalle is located at about 20 km from where I live. The Dubbel was my session beer before I really picked up the beer interest. Where I live, that’s what you get in a pub when you ask for a “trappist”.
For the ease of going back and forth between different recipes, I compiled in an excel spreadsheet all of the specification and recipe information from BLAM and CSI’s website.
I organized the sheets by type (Dubbel, Tripel, etc.) so that I can look down the line and cross reference ingredients for when I want to design a Trappist or Abbey recipe.
I have a Dubbel in mind that will follow the CSI recipe pretty closely, with a few exceptions to make it my own ala Denny’s Westcoastmalle Tripel.
I feels that if Westmalle had a dark strong that I wouldn’t need to drink any of the others. Their Tripel is king in my opinion and the Dubbel just seems to have the right body and flavor to blow away most of the other examples.
Interestingly enough, this is true for the domestic Belgian styled beers I like as well. I opened an Allagash Dubbel this morning and it was funky and slightly flat. I goes to show you how powerful it is to be able to brew your own beer and to experience it at the peak of freshness without the shipping and logistics concerns.