What are you thoughts about Chimay?

Great beers. I personally didn't really like the chimay blue. Had a big alcohol taste. But the red and yellow are both fantastic beers.

 

P.S. "available locally for less money at a better price." Is this from the department of redundancy department!?![/QUOTE]

The department of not the sharpest knife in the drawer while having an afternoon beer.

 

Cheers to you sir!!

 

I think I'll come out and say it: they're fairly overrated among the trappist breweries. For example, Chimay Blue (which I fully expected to blow my mind) tasted oddly metallic. All of their brews I've had were good, don't get me wrong, it's just that none of them were what I would call 'world beaters'.

And hey, being the worst trappist brewery still means you're better than a good chunk of breweries out there...

 

Excited to buy some at Hiller's a couple of years back. I love stinky cheese and Chimay, Chimay cheese however, not so much.

2nd note, as a tradition I drink a 5 year old Chimay Blue on my birthday every year.

 

Love Chimay Blue - think it's underrated
White/Red are good but don't stand out to me
Accordingly, I think that Blue is reasonably priced (I compare it to Rochefort, St. Bernardus) but White/Red are too expensive.

 

It is stinky, but not over the top. I also like Orval cheese, can't think if I have had it in the US.

 

There should be a choice that reads: Great beer, but for some reason I don't drink it very often. Because that's what I would've chosen.

 

Not quite. The list of taxes shows how each country taxes beer within its own border.So Belgian beer in Belgium carries over twice the tax/duty as German beer in Germany. So of course does beer from any other country.

 

Chimay Grand Reserve 2012 <3

 

Great beers, all of them !
Given the fact that you're able to find it, you should really try Chimay Dorée also. Very nice !

 

Wait, there are people out there who don't love Chimay?

 

Like a few other BAs, I lived in Germany for a few years. About a 3 hour drive away from Brussels so I was very, very spoiled. I chose the "It's OK" option only because I have had A LOT of really good Belgian beer. I would bet that in a few years from now after re-adjusting to American craft beer I would change my mind back to loving it.

 

Chimay white is my favorite, love Tripels so much

 

Thanks for the clarification of the table.

That actually makes it even even more relevant to the origin of the mini thread on costs (something which is often hard to track :-)) in that the discussion of taxes and relative prices originally started in a question of why relative costs of Belgian and German beer here in the use seemed so different and that is what led to the questioning of cost levels in each of those countries.

 

That's a matter of drinker preference.

 

I wasn't trying to do a Chimay clone, I did a dark ale. I just wanted to try and see if I could get some of the Chimay yeast ester characteristics. In the end I couldn't detect any but it turned out nice the few times I brewed it.

 

I cultured up yeast from a bottle of Chimay Red once and my experience was similar to yours; it was a pleasant beer but it lacked the 'Belgiany' yeast character of Chimay. At the time I wondered if Chimay used a different yeast strain for bottle conditioning.

Cheers!

 

Very often breweries filter the beer and seed it with a different strain for bottle conditioning. This strain is intended to stick to the bottle and remain there when the beer is poured.Few brewers want their beer spoiled by the yeast coming over. But there are people who don't seem to mind this.

 

While I can't document the source and memory can be unreliable, I recollect about 5-6 years back reading somewhere an argument that suggested that the Trappist breweries in general started doing this also because they found that amateurs were cloning their brewing yeast and they felt they wanted to protect their yeast strains. So two birds with one stone by making the switch in yeast before bottling.