Low sugar/final gravity Belgian ales

Discussion in 'Belgium' started by BelgianBeerFan, Mar 29, 2014.

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  1. BelgianBeerFan

    BelgianBeerFan Initiate (0) Feb 8, 2014 England

    Hi there, I'm driving over to Belgium soon with a pal of mine to visit a couple of breweries and pick up a load of beer from one of the beer warehouses.

    My friend is a big fan of the strong dark ales (westy12, rochefort10 etc) but being a diabetic he can't consume too many of these type of beers due to the higher sugar content.

    Just wondering if anybody can recommend any Belgian beers with lower fg/sugar content.

    From what I've read Duvel seems to fit the bill although it's not the style that he prefers.

    Any advice will be much appreciated.

    Cheers.
     
  2. TongoRad

    TongoRad Grand Pooh-Bah (3,884) Jun 3, 2004 New Jersey
    Society Pooh-Bah Trader

    It's kind of in the opposite direction of what he likes, but you never know...anyway, 'unfruited' Lambics will be extremely dry and hopefully not too hard to track down in Belgium.
     
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  3. BelgianBeerFan

    BelgianBeerFan Initiate (0) Feb 8, 2014 England

    Unfortunately unlike myself he has strong dislike of lambics.
     
  4. TongoRad

    TongoRad Grand Pooh-Bah (3,884) Jun 3, 2004 New Jersey
    Society Pooh-Bah Trader

    Ah- OK. Unfortunately that's the one type of beer where he'd be guaranteed of there being almost no residual sugars remaining. The stronger beers he likes do utilize simple sugars in the process (which are 100% fermentable by the yeast) in order to 'dry out' the beer, but that really is a relative term- they will be drier than other beers of that gravity, but still have a good amount of residual sugars.

    Hopefully somebody from Belgium chimes in with some other suggestions that are more locally known, now that this thread has been moved.

    Enjoy your trip in any event!
     
  5. erbu

    erbu Crusader (418) Feb 12, 2014 Belgium

  6. Stevenwings

    Stevenwings Initiate (0) Jan 15, 2014 Belgium

    Saison Dupont is bio, grayjacket from la senne brewery, maybe check out gruut brewery because they use herbs and no hops in the beer
     
  7. Heretic42

    Heretic42 Savant (1,118) Aug 31, 2011 Texas

    Another vote for saisons. I'd also add most Flemish red/browns, witbiers, and any table beers you can find. Dubbels may be a stand-in when you want lower residual sugar than quads, but still want a similar flavor profile.
     
  8. DaveJanssen

    DaveJanssen Initiate (0) Apr 17, 2008 Germany

    For the similar taste profile I support the dubbels suggestion, which usually have lower FGs. There's a good number of low ABV suggestions on here which may be accurate in terms of low residual sugar/beer but not necessarily low sugar/ABV. But some witbiers can have final gravities around the range of some dark strongs, meaning comparable residual sugar. Of course you low abv beers will still have less sugar than stronger beers given the same final grav, but 1 dark strong at 1.090 to 1.012 (10.3% ABV) has fewer calories than 2 wits at 1.050 to 1.012 (5%) according to this calculator:

    http://kotmf.com/beer/2012/alcohol-tools/

    Something like orval or saisons as mentioned above would also have a lower FG.
     
  9. BelgianBeerFan

    BelgianBeerFan Initiate (0) Feb 8, 2014 England

    Thanks for the suggestions guys.

    The caulier tripel looks promising so we're going to try and find some of that.

    Neither of us have tried saison before so looking forward to that. Can anyone recommend a high abv saison?
     
  10. DaveJanssen

    DaveJanssen Initiate (0) Apr 17, 2008 Germany

    Fantome saisons are higher than typical for the style (8%) and also generally rather good and unique. Dupont's Avec les Bons Voeux is probably the classic high ABV saison.
     
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