Love for Belgian beers

Huge fan with certain styles I prefer them compared to their U.S. counterparts (some U.S. ones are great too though.)

 

I'm pretty confident that no American brewer will ever replicate the crazy funk of Cantillon and Drie Fonteinen.. However, and this may be total blasphemy, but I enjoyed DG Broken Truck more than anything I've had from either of those brewers. Not to say their beer isn't totally amazing, but Broken Truck blew my mind.

 

Count me in for Tripels, Quads, and Strong Pale/Dark Ales

 

I am also a fan of Belgian beers: Trappist/Abbey style ales, Saison, Wit, etc.

When it comes to the Saison style my favorite is Saison Dupont but IMO American craft breweries make very high quality Saisons: Stillwater (Stateside, Cellar Door,…), Hill Farmstead (Ann and others), Tired Hands (SaisonHands and others), Goose Island Sofie, Ommegang Hennepin,…

There are a number of North American craft breweries that produce good Trappist/Abbey style beers (Ommegang, Unibroue, etc.) but for my palate the Belgian (and Dutch) Trappist breweries are the epitome here.

Cheers!

 

Yes! Some of the Belgian Trappist ales are otherworldly.

 

Belgian beer lover here.
Triples, Dubbles, Abbey ales, Saisons, Belgian Dark Ales, Quads - sign me up for all of them!

 

Saison du Pont and Tripel Karmeliet are amazing beers. In reality though its hard to get bad beer from Belgium. Even their so-so beer is pretty solid.

 

I like them on occasion, although I could drink saison dupont and orval every day. Most tend to be a bit sweet and/or too boozy for me

 

Hi. I'm an oddity, being a german who ALWAYS loved belgian beers, no matter if trappists, geuzes,lambics, sours in general, witbiers and so on. Lots of my go to beers I regularly buy are from belgium. And I have yet to have an american or worse, german brew inspired by belgian beers which even comes somewhere close to the "originals". So. Yeah.
The few german attempts I had were very bad...

 

Anything funky and I'm in!

 

Agreed. American Attempts just end up being too sweet or too hoppy.

 

Yeah, in general it seems that there's a finesse and delicacy to the Belgian versions that few others can match.

 

Germans make the best "German" beer, Belgians make the best "Belgian" beer, and so on.

Having said that, I still look for and drink American beers that emulate these types due to factors like price, availability and freshness.

 

Let me add that I still have flashbacks to the one time I was in Brussels, and then I start to uncontrollably drool.

 

I wish more people were interested in Belgian beers so I could have a regular stock of fresh Houblon Chouffe and St. Sebastiaan Dark. At least Rochefort, Westmalle, Orval, and St. Bernardus are usually very easy to come by because of their popularity.

 

much rather have the imported beer for most styles.

 

Did you see a lot of folks drinking Jupiler in the cafes like I did?

Cheers

 

I also do the same.

I prefer to drink US craft brewed German style beers for the freshness factor. I can obtain German style beers from Victory, Sly Fox, Stoudts, Straub, Troegs,... with less than a month from packaging and they are also reasonably priced.

I am not too concerned about the age of Belgian brewed beers since those styles are resilient to age effects and some styles actually improve with age. I do tend to drink mostly American versions since the price of Belgian beers tend to be expensive (some outrageously so!!).

Cheers!

 

Saisons are one of my favorite styles, anything funkwerks is worth seeking out.