Belgian Tripel

Historical Development

If you believe the most fad-driven beer hype out there, you'd think that a "beer nerd" is someone who won't drink an IPA made without lactose and fruit added or a stout without a chocolate cake tossed into the boil. There is another kind of beer nerd, however. These are the folks who toil in searches for the outdated, foreign, and underappreciated styles of the time. You can mark the team at Black Flannel down in both of those categories…we love wacky experiments and more obscure foreign styles, and the Tripel might be chief among them.

Though this style has strong roots in monastery beers brewed for more than a thousand years, the style as we know it was born only around 100 years ago. According to legendary beer writer Michael Jackson, it's likely that a secular brewer, Hendrik Verlinden, who we met in our post on Dubbel, developed the first of these when he brewed Witkap Pater for the Slaghmuylder Brewery, which is now called Witkap Tripel. Westmalle brewed a similar style in 1934 when their new brewery was up and running, which was a higher gravity version that took off among Trappist brewers. Westmalle claims only to have changed that original recipe once in the 1950s, when the monks there added more hops, after which it has remained the same.

One of the most endearing qualities of this style is its deep connection to the historical brewing practices in and around modern-day Belgium. For centuries, if not longer, breweries outside of monastic life in the region were largely small farm operations, brewing beer for their own consumption. As any agricultural community might, they used resources to their fullest potential at every opportunity, including in their beer recipes. The use of candy sugar (sometimes spelled candi sugar) is a trend that comes from early farmhouse brewing practice, since, according to another resource by Jackson, farmers regularly extracted their own beet sugar by creating a syrup and allowing it to crystalize. When added to the boil, the sugar is sterilized and carried into the fermenting wort, where the yeast can metabolize it much more quickly than the more complex maltose that makes up most fermentable extract from malt. The result is a beer with higher ABV that doesn't feel-and usually doesn't taste-like it, since the sugar doesn't contribute body-building protein or long-chain starch. This practice, adopted by monasteries as well, is sometimes looked down on as unnecessary by some, and as a downright brewing crutch by others. We tend to agree with Belgian brewers, but also think it's a silly argument to begin with…if the sugar (or spice) makes the beer better, why not use it?

Belgian Tripels are one of the holy grails in most brewer's recipe efforts, and why wouldn't they be. The complexity of this style demands an extremely careful and balanced orchestration of yeast, malt, hops, and alcohol. When done well, it can be a revelation in a glass…when done poorly, it can be a relegation to the drain. The classic Trappist versions have some variety among them, but they're a great bet if you're interested in trying out this difficult-to-characterise style. For a domestic version, some of our favorites are brewed by Cambridge Brewing's "Tripel Threat" and Allagash's "Curieux." When you open one, pour it at cellar temp and ask a friend over…these beers drink way below their weight class.

Modern Evolution

Originally popularized by the Trappist monastery at Westmalle.