Still Beyond the Pale: Triple 5 by New Glarus Brewing

As the great Zaphod Beeblebrox once said, "Belgium, man! Belgium!"

Belgian and Belgian-style beers have, for reasons that are not entirely clear, an air of refinement about them that other beers lack. At least for me. Maybe it's because sophistos at trendier establishments drink the stuff out of chalices and goblets instead of simple pint glasses and this makes them appear aristocratic.

Another factor is that I've seen breweries make a big to-do over them in a way they don't other, perhaps more plebian, styles. Take Sprecher, for instance. They have a German name and a reputation for making excellent Central European brews like Vienna lagers and Schwarzbiers. So what did they brew for their 30^th anniversary? Why a Belgian quad, of course. A couple years later they released the Belgian Progression Pack with 4 types of Belgian ales: an enkel, a dubbel, a tripel, and a quad. A year or so later they opened the cellar and unleashed a blueberry lambic on us.

And then there's New Glarus. Remember when their Belgian Red and other Belgian-style fruit beers came in wine bottles? The quotidian stuff came in 12oz bottles but you could only buy the Belgian brews in milliliters because the metric system is for civilized people. While today you get Belgian Red in 12oz bottles, they only come in 4-packs because they're still special, I guess. And they have a whole cave system for aging the Belgian beers that Werner Herzog could make a documentary about. "Are we today the drinkers who look back into the abyss of time when we see the bottles of Belgian ales?"

Adding to the mystique of Belgian beers is the complexity of making them. A brewer must age them so that detritus from the air sours them just right and endows the beer with funkadelic flavors that would lead a casual beer drinker to think it was skunk. Sometimes fruit is involved and in other instances fresh batches are blended with those that have been carefully aging in a vast cave system that requires a degree in spelunking to manage. This may not be rocket science but it's still something of a Daedalean endeavor.

While I have always appreciated Belgian styles, it's generally been from a distance. A chalice here or a snifter there but never too many nor too often lest people think I am some kind of beer snob. (Ahem – ed). However, I think I've had more Belgian-style beers this year than I've had in the previous…previous…well, few…several. I don't know exactly. And this is not to say that I've quaffed dozens and dozens of 'em. Let's see, there was Wit TF by Hinterland, Allagash White, and a couple three New Glarus brews. Now I can add another New Glarus notch to the headboard – Triple 5.

Released back in February, this beer has a real oddball name that pairs number types. It just sounds wrong to have a multiplicative number followed by a cardinal one and that's all. Triple 5 whats? Where's the noun? Well, the bottle tells you that it is a Belgian triple that was brewed from 5 grains: barley, white wheat, oats, brown rice and corn. Mystery solved. But it also engenders a new conundrum for me: what is a Belgian triple?

"Tripel" is more correct, I suppose. I've always just assumed that these number indicator thingies were simply a measure of alcohol content so your tripel had more alcohol in it than an enkel or dubbel but less than a quad. Each of these can be dark or pale, depending on brewer preference. At least that's what I've gathered.

Triple 5 is a pale ale. It's a lovely light gold hue and a little hazy. A small white head formed in my glass but it disappeared quickly. Looking inside, I saw a stream of bubbles going up up up. (Sha oobie, shattered, shattered) I smelled honey along with a whole bunch of yeasty aromas – clove, banana, and bubblegum. Belgian ales are obviously cousins to the German hefeweizen. There was also an astringent kind of smell that I couldn't really place.

The flavor foundation was a medium dose of caramel sweetness. Atop that rode yeasty flavors of banana and bubblegum (but no clove that I could detect). There was a gentle overall fruitiness to it that didn't seem to be akin to a particular fruit and what my notes say is an "indeterminate grain" taste. I guess those 5 cereals ended up making some kind of grainy gestalt flavor. Swallowing the beer brought out some spicy hop bitterness which made things pretty dry. I could also taste the alcohol – this stuff is 9% - which contributed to a fairly strong astringency.

All of those grains gave the beer a medium body and a healthy dose of sweetness but there was enough fizz to cut through it and keep my tongue from being bogged down in a lightly treacly kind of thing. I liked the nebulous fruitiness and all of the banana and bubblegum flavors from the yeast. But the astringent taste was a little too much for me. I think it would have been more palatable had it not been as strong but, as it was, it just didn't sit well next to gentle phenols and laid back esters.

Junk food pairing: I had tacos for dinner after my sampling so I suggest pairing Triple 5 with a bag of taco flavor Doritos. But make sure they come in that retro bag that looks like 70's shag carpeting.