Quad Tasting Advice

Pannepot.

 

I certainly agree with Pannepot as mentioned above, as well as suggest St. Bernardus - Abt. 12 as a must have.

If you can obtain those 2, I would personally just limit this to a Belgian Quad tasting and save the others for another time as that is a lot of high ABV, complex beers.

 

It would be interesting to get a group of maybe 3 Belgian quads and 3 American quads and do a blind tasting to see if people could taste a difference between the countries.

 

I would drop the Ovila Quad and add Abt 12.

 

Wyerbacher's Blasphemy is barrel aged and might provide a nice counterpoint. It's relatively cheap and delicious.

 

I was highly impressed this past weekend by the Gulden Draak aged in Whiskey Barrels. That's a quad I think.

 

I totally agree with the suggestion to add St. Bernardus and Pannepot (if you can find it) and keep the tasting to all Belgian. Next time do the others.

If you do this as a blind tasting and in random order you'll get lots to discuss and some interesting results out the other end.

Give everyone a sheet of paper to make notes on (preferably separate sheets, 1 for each beer) and do the tasting of each beer in random order. At the end you can have folks review their notes and rank order their favorites simply by sorting the pages in order. You can then tally the votes and discuss the results.

When you pour, pour a portion for each person and an extra portion so that there's some left and people might be able to revisit a favorite. (BTW since their may be sediment, if so you can decant a bottle into a small pitcher and then pour out the equal portions from the pitcher. Watch the temps on the beers to be sure they are all about the same as temp afffects what you taste with these beers.

Be sure you also lay in lots of spring water (no chlorine) for sipping/drinking between quads. Also during the tasting don't have any food except maybe some unsalted crackers or unsalted pretzels. (Salt changes the palate but does not re set it.

 

Not sure if they distribute near you, but Boulevard's Bourbon Barrel Quad and Sixth Glass are pretty tasty.

 

The one and only, oft overlooked and underappreciated, Achel Trappist Extra.

 

I was wondering about how this was. Not sure if it was a Quad or not since they also have the Gulden Draak 9000 Quad thats not barrel aged.

 

In my opinion, you can't do a quad tasting without St Bernardus. I strongly prefer it over Rochefort 10.

 

This.

 

St Bernadus Abt 12 instead of Chimay, while I'm not saying skip the Americans save them for a different day, quads are high abv and you want to be able to taste them.

 

I think you have a great plan there!

There are indeed tasty American Quads but IMHO the level of complexity is not comparable to the Trappist & Pannepot/St. Bernardus level.

Please report back your findings. Drtth provided excellent advice on how to logistically conduct the tasting.

Cheers

 

You could always swap out the la trappe for the oak-aged version. Its a pretty fantastic beer and mght be a nice change of pace.

 

for 3 people, i think you could add in another trappist quad like St. Bernardus Abt 12. Also, as a fun experiment, you could do the Ommegang 3 Philosophers in the middle of the tasting or at the end. Its made with black cherries i believe, and would be a cool change up to throw in with the trappist ones. I did one of these a while back with both trappist and non-trappist

 

Definitely add St Bernardus to the Belgian list. If there are only 3 of you, I'd separate the belgians and americans or else you won't be able to walk.

As for American quads, I'd skip the Ovila Quad and consider adding:

Lost Abbey Judgment Day
Avery The Reverend
Adelbert's Flyin' Monk (rum barrel aged)

 

I'd include some pretty things baby tree just had one yesterday mmmm