Jason:

You are listening to Barely Getting Started with Jason and Craig. This is part of our brand new segment and we're in our first series dealing with Belgian beers, Trappist ales, and all things great from Belgium. Beer to Belgium.

We're moving on into the Belgian beers and the Trappist ales and we're talking about Rochefort Brewery. So it's going to be in the Trappist Rochefort. I already tried this once before in the Abbey Notre-Dame de Saint-Remy, located in Rochefort.

Beautifully said. Rochefort, Belgium. This is the ale that I have been looking forward to in this series.

Why? Because the Rochefort 10 of their four beers that they make, this is the one that is, according to the many and the millions, I guess, is rated top five in the entire world.

Craig:

Yes, this gets consistently, you know, rated in the, you know, 95 plus points. I think, you know, Beer Advocate has it in 99, which means world-class. Anytime you're in the 90s, you're a world-class beer.

And as I said on other podcasts, the pronunciations, please send them in if you have the correct pronunciation because it's very difficult, especially with all the different languages and dialects of Belgium. But Rochefort 10 has always been near and dear to me. I tried it and I was just, this is one of those beers where it's like, ooh, ooh.

And every sip is a different sound of ooh. It's like, oh, ooh, ah. And that's just because there's so much going on.

You know, this is, you know, the most popular, the most beers that I see from Rochefort are the 6, 8, and 10. Very fancy names, 6, 8, and 10. We'll talk about kind of how those names come about.

But 6 is a triple. We did La Fin Du Monde on a previous podcast, which was a triple style, not necessarily Trappist. We're back to Trappist Ales.

And we'll touch base on that as well, just as a refresher. But 8 and 10 are quadruples. So quadruple, also known as the Belgian dark, strong ale, mainly because it's exactly that, Belgian, dark, and strong.

I think you had it listed. It is over 11%, 11.3% alcohol. That's what I have, yep.

And quadruples. So real quickly, let's run through which makes this a Trappist beer. Trappist, coming originally from Saint Benedict and the Benedictine monks that, you know, spawned Cistercian monks, which spawned the Trappist monks.

So Trappist making Trappist beers. The three main things set by the International Trappist Association, which would dub you an ATP product or an authentic Trappist product, would be that first and foremost, it's either made on, it's made on the grounds of a monastery. So it's monastic versus secular, which means not of a monastery.

Then it also has to be under the supervision or brewed by the monks themselves. So not necessarily by their hand, but they got to be around, okay? They got to at least show up and, you know, look at the beer.

But that's, that's one category. It also needs to be secondary to the function of the monastery. You know, they're not there to, you know, the rule of Saint Benedictine at its foremost is to be selfless and everything you do should be through prayer and your, you know, duties to, you know, being a monk and, you know, your prayers and less about worldly desires.

Even so much so I talked about previously, you're not supposed to be openly laughing and, you know, indulging in conversation. You, you speak when there's something to be said, but not necessarily, you know, how I speak and how we barely even get started half the time.

Jason:

No Trappist monks podcasts.

Craig:

No, no, I don't think maybe, maybe within the funniest thing to talk about tangents during the COVID pandemic, a lot of the monks, even though that, you know, because a lot of people think that there's a vow of silence. It's not necessarily about silence. They're just speak when only needed.

So for the most part, they're silent. However, they do get some time to kind of walk the grounds with each other so that they do have this kind of like brotherhood and, you know, this feeling of community because most of the time they're on their own doing their, their, you know, their, their work amongst their peers, fellow monks on the monastery. But you know, it's, it's, it's work.

It's, it's not, there's no fun. That's what basically should boil down to no fun. You're not here to have fun.

You're here to, to, you know, praise God and do your duties. So as a sacrifice, they stopped walking around with each other. Not only do they not really talk, they don't really do much.

And they're just like, you know what, since the rest of the world is kind of on lockdown, we're going to take our lockdown and lockdown even harder. So they stopped taking their little walks on the grounds with each other. And I'm just like, oh, come on.

Like, it's okay, guys. I'm not mad at you. I mean, I don't think COVID made it to the, yeah, it's, get your steps in, you know, be able to just, you know, walk, but no.

So cheers to the monks for, you know, being that selfless, you know, and producing such great beer. So, you know, the last thing is, it cannot, we cannot really profit from making the beer. To sustain the monastery and then any residual income is to be donated to charity or, you know, the local municipality to help those around them.

So, you know, check out our other episodes to kind of catch up on the timeline of beers. But basically in the 20s and 30s, 1920s and 30s, because we go back thousands of years with these monasteries, but Belgian beer was pretty bad in the 1900s. Competitions were held to get some better beers.

And then the banning of a Geneva with the Vanderbilt Act in 1919 called for higher ABV beers. So now we're talking about 11.3% beer. That's equivalent to a lot of wines out there, you know, not the biggest, boldest wines.

But, you know, this one comes in just a 11.2 fluid ounce bottle, kind of looks like our standard 12 ounce bottle. It's not, you don't typically see this in anything larger because it's 11.3%. She looks like a little baby. Yeah, she's a very svelte, very svelte little bottle.

Jason:

Beautiful calligraphy on the label there.

Craig:

Everything with Belgian products, especially the Trappist, you know, there's this artistry to it. A lot of intention, you know, and you only brew a few beers. You know, you think of the breweries where every week there's four new beers.

These guys have four for hundreds of years. And that's also why it's some of the best beer in the world. They've had plenty of time to master their craft.

Jason:

Fine-tuned and perfect.

Craig:

Absolutely. Chimay was actually the first. They brewed like a Christmas Ale.

And it was a dark, stronger version of the double. So Trappist beer is typically single, double, triple, and quadruple. We're drinking the quadruple, shorten it up.

We call it a quad. So these are, and Jason, you kind of brought it up, kind of compared to the English barley wines. Okay, the barley wine came about.

One of the big things is we're in, Belgium's what's in called the grain belt or the beer belt. Because it's in a latitude that doesn't produce a lot of grapes. You've got grains are being grown much more so than grapes are being cultivated.

And, you know, these are a lot of proud countries. This is, you know, Belgium, Austria, Germany, Great Britain is all up in there with, you got Ireland, the UK, the Netherlands. I think I got most of them there.

Might have missed one or two. But, you know, they don't really want to get grapes from the Italians. They don't need grapes from the Spanish.

You know, you can, I'll drink some wine, but I don't really need anything from you. So the barley wines kind of came about because, all right, you know, people don't think beers are sophisticated. So let's make a more sophisticated beer.

So that's why the term barley wine came about. Because they were brewing higher ABV, higher gravity, higher everything, adding nuanced flavors into it to create something as, you know, sophisticated as your best wines. So that's where kind of barley wine came from.

This quadruple kind of piggybacking off of that a little bit. You know, the Christmas ale. Think of it as, you know, that's where all those, when I think Christmas beers, I think of those baking spices, your cardamom, your clove.

Yes. Even like, you know, touches of cinnamon. A lot of these beers, you'll get notes of cherry, dark fruits.

You know, we were talking about the standard reference method or the SRM, the color of beers. This one, you know, definitely some dark red, amber hues. You know, it's more of a dark brown chestnut in color with this nice red, amber, ruby base to it.

You know, it kind of just, you know, glows like a nice, a jewel. And it just, you could tell there's a lot going on just from the color and then the aromatics of it. I'm going to take a little swirl and sniff.

You know, a lot of these darker beers with the Belgian characteristics have dark fruit flavors. So dark cherries, figs, plum. And then when I think of these bigger alcohol, the alcohol kind of gives it almost like aged flavors.

So instead of plums, sometimes it's prune. Instead of grapes, it's raisins. You know, think of the dried or the more concentrated version.

Instead of apricots, or sorry, instead of the regular apricot, you have your dried apricot. So a lot of those darker, more, you know, robust fruit flavors. Not so light.

So that's what, you know, makes this another one of those easy sipping, more sophisticated type brews.

Jason:

Yeah, I like that. Cheers, my friend.

Craig:

Cheers. So typical to most Belgian beers, a lot of carbonation. Wow, wow, wow.

Dry, right? You got a lot of flavor on this, but does not finish very sweet. Sweet on the front end with some like cherry fig notes, but finishes dry.

You know, a lot of people, they don't know what dry or astringent means. And basically what it just means is it doesn't, you know, sometimes you drink something and there's that residual sugar where you kind of just still feel it in your mouth. Or, you know, your mouth is still kind of, you know, satiated and wet.

Where this finishes where, man, did I even just take a sip? Or, you know, it kind of just disappeared. You took a sip and there's such little sugar left.

And, you know, that's a part of what the Belgian yeast does. It's a term called attenuation or attenuates. Basically, the yeast just ate up all the sugar.

One of the things that does make this same thing with doubles, they use a candy sugar. It's called C-A-N-D-I. I think it's derived from beets.

So it's a beet sugar. And it's one of those like caramelized darker sugars. So you get a lot of burnt sugar, caramelization notes.

Think of your like creme brulee topping. That's what I mean by like burnt sugar. So not burnt in a negative sense.

Just that really caramelized, you know. Cooking it down. There you go.

Just delicious, dessert-y type flavors.

Jason:

So this is wonderful. It is. I'm a big aficionado of what I call a trail ale.

Raisins, maybe some nuttiness, stone fruits and things like that.

Craig:

A little gorp in there.

Jason:

Yeah, yeah. This is what it reminds me of. But this is so much, like this is incredibly smooth.

And it's rich, but it's not overpowering at the same time.

Craig:

So think about all the things you're saying here. Rich without being overpowering. Smooth with still being crisp.

These are true indicators of a world-class, especially Belgian beer, that is just balanced. Everything about Belgian beer culture is go big, go crazy, put what you want in there, but it should balance. You shouldn't have, you know, when we're drinking something, you know, I love a hazy IPA.

I love a crazy fruited sour. But they're so, you know, one note intense. There's some nuance in there.

Sure. Don't get me wrong. But balance isn't their key, you know.

That's why I like double IPAs more than regular IPAs, because there's more of a sense of balance. You know, there's this higher ABV that then needs to be balanced out, and there's just this sense of balance. And, you know, Belgian beers really are the pinnacle of, wow, there's a lot going on, but it all kind of makes sense.

And this beer with its dark fruit notes, its, you know, rich candy sugar kind of flavors, this goes with your darker meats. This is great. Like if you ever went to a wild game dinner, or if you're having, you know, if you're a hunter and you've got venison, if you're eating jerky, this has enough ABV, enough carbonation, enough everything to stand up to some of the gamier or some of the, you know, the darker red meats.

This is great with duck. Anything that you would want to, or should I say canard, anything that, you know, you can think of like a cherry sauce on it or something with a gastrique, you know, a very fruity or you do kind of think of like Christmas time roasts and Christmas time dishes, almost like fruit cakes and stuff like that, that have these deep, intense barley rich kind of flavors with subtle fruit notes and those nutty flavors that you had mentioned.

You know, the fruitcake is just, I feel bad for the fruitcake because it gets such a bad rap. It does. If you get a good fruitcake, it's actually funny.

My mother likes, there's this Florida, I forget the name of the company, but there's a fruitcake company out in Florida that my mom, that's what she wants for Christmas every year. Cause she used to get it from one of our uncles that lived out in Florida and it is fantastic. I mean, you take a slice of this and it is just decadence, but it, you know, it's been such a, kind of like what we did with fast food.

It was just more of a, all right, you know, whatever's left on the, on the bakery table, let's just put it in this fruitcake. But there's so many, it's the bar mat drink at the end of the night. You just pour it into a glass and, and shove it down.

But if you think about all the things that go on in a well-made fruitcake, it balances out and ends up being this decadent treat, kind of like this quadruple. And I always get these kind of fruitcake Christmassy vibes from it. And, uh, I, I love drinking this when there's snow on the ground.

Um, but not to say it's not a summertime beer. I always, people would be like, oh, I only drink dark beers in the winter. And I'm like, well, I, it's more of a time of day for me.

I'm not going to start drinking this at noon.

Jason:

This ain't a day drinker, but this is not a stouter reporter. This is a treat, honestly. And I dare say it's probably one of the best beers I've ever drank.

And I, I'm glad I, I wait because it was one of the ones when I was reading about it, I was looking so forward to it. And it's everything that I like. Like I said, I'm a big trail ale kind of guy.

So it's, it resonates that way for me.

Craig:

It's a beautiful beer. And, uh, this is one of those ones I just gave my glass a little, uh, stir, you know, a little nice little swirl, boom, back to a nice, uh, half inch ahead. There's just, there's tons of carbonation.

That's what also makes Belgian beers very good for dinner, uh, as dinner companions. Cause that carbonation, um, really cuts through. So when we talk about flavors, being able to stand up to your dark and roasted meats and, you know, some of these game meats, the, uh, carbonation does the same thing.

It cuts through it. It acts as kind of like the scrubbing bubbles of beer to cleanse your palate. Um, and to me, like I was saying, you know, I don't see this being a daytime beer, um, because it's 11.3%. However, this is one of those campfire beers. You talk about trail beer with, um, you know, the flavors of trail mix. I'm talking trail beer is in at the end of a nice hike and yet, you know, you're at base camp or wherever you're doing and you're, you're at home base and you start a fire and you're getting ready to eat and it's nighttime. You just want a slow sipper to kind of just go off into the evening with that's, that's where I think, you know, your quadruples, your barley wines, your stouts, that's where were they really shine.

And then of course, in the wintertime, these are warmers. That's why there's a whole style called winter warmers, uh, that alcohol and these flavors kind of just warm the body, warm the soul. Perfect for wintertime.

Jason:

Um, interesting little history piece. I wanted to bring up about this cause we talked about in the last episode about Akle Abbey, um, and, uh, how they lost their recognition in 2023 because they ended up ultimately selling out to a private, uh, buyer. Uh, one of the things I picked up on the modern history when I was reading everything was that back in 1887, that father, uh, and, uh, again, pronunciations, uh, Anselmiss Jadong from the Tappist Abbey of Akle, uh, came to the old Abbey, uh, back in December of 1887.

The buildings were bought by those monks of, uh, of Akle and then the Abbey was restored with the new buildings raised in a new brewery was founded, but it would take until 1952 for that brewery to produce enough beer that would be sold just like what we, what we have here. So brewing being the main source for the monastery since the 16th century. And then, uh, that brewery was renovated in 1952 to produce a high fermentation beer.

Um, so they were, uh, sister, these are pronunciations that I don't get here. So sister CN order of the strict subservient cistercian order of the strict observance is known for their seclusion and the brewery is not accessible to the public. Um, so then in 2010, a large fire had destroyed a large part of that Abbey, though the blaze destroyed much of the building's timber structure, the monk, the monks escaped unharmed and the flames did not damage the beer producing facilities.

So it would seem that Akle Abbey still has a hand in, well, at least on an ownership standpoint of, uh, Rochefort and then Rochefort being...

Craig:

The one thing that's nice about the Trappist community of monks is they kind of borrow each other. Uh, West Mall, West Malle, they, um, I forget his name, Brother Tom. I believe it's Tom something.

So we're going to, we're just going to go with Brother Tom and...

Jason:

Brother Tom. I like that reference.

Craig:

Yes. But I do actually think it is Tom. Um, so Brother Tom would kind of go to different Trappist breweries and help out, you know, um, they wanted each other to succeed.

Cause again, think about the rules of St. Benedict is, you know, everything's secondary. And it's like, Hey, if your monastery is faulting because your, your beer production and beer sales aren't very well, well, you know, come on in brother, literally to, um, uh, you know, learn from us. We, we, we're doing pretty well.

I forget which Trappist brewery it was, but it ended up, there was kind of some turf wars here and there. Um, because you know, these beers, you know, talking about world-class beers, Trappist, you know, monasteries trying to start making beers and they're just like, yeah, your beers are so good. Get them, get them away so we can start brewing.

So, um, I forget which actual monasteries it was, but they did kind of divide and conquer a little bit. Um, and that's, what's nice. And I think that's reminiscent of the beer community as a whole, where it is kind of like, you know, one, one rising tide raises all ships.

Um, you know, they kind of share with each other. And one of the reasons that, um, Akle is no longer, uh, out, you know, they lost their, uh, ATP, their authentic Trappist, uh, product designation because the last monk, uh, he left, um, and he may have gone to Rochefort. I'm not sure exactly where he ended up.

However, he was no longer at Akle. So it was no longer the supervisions nor being brewed by a monk, but still on a monastery. So they could still call it Trappist.

It's not authentic Trappist beer, but then when they sold it to, uh, you know, uh, Senior Frogs and, um, it was no longer a, uh, uh, held by a monastery or a Trappist, um, organization whatsoever. You know, it's, it's sacrilege to, uh, call it a Trappist beer at that point, let alone an authentic Trappist beer. So, um, you know, we do have, I think five Belgian Trappist breweries left.

We've got a couple in the Netherlands, you know, America, we had our own for a little bit and Spencer, I think Massachusetts. Um, but they lost their designation there. They make a lot of jams.

The big, the big three are jams and jams, jellies, the breads and the beers, uh, bread and beer makes sense because they're basically the same raw ingredients. And then jelly, you put that on your bread. So they would make a lot of those.

And then a lot of cheese, a lot of cheeses were made. You think, you know, there's some livestock and, you know, eggs and cheese being some of the biggest things that come off of a farm. But, um, the other thing I kind of wanted to, you know, dive into is just, you know, these beautiful, beautiful names that they came up with six, eight, 10, you know, and where, where did they actually, where did they come from?

Um, so in brewing, uh, and if you're, you know, uh, into, uh, making your own beer, you know, about the, uh, specific gravity. So gravity of beer, if you ever hear the term gravity, that's, uh, they're all terms of how much sugar, um, is in the wort. Wort is the liquid that we use to make beer and yeast goes after that sugar.

So, um, there are different ways to measure that. Uh, two of the main ways were degrees Plato. And then there was the, uh, the specific gravity.

You'd have your, uh, original gravity and then your final gravity. Cause basically it's what, how much sugar did it start with and then how much sugar is left over after the yeast has its way with it. Um, and that's how you determine how much alcohol was produced basically by how much sugar was used and then converted.

And then the, uh, the healthy, you know, however healthy your yeast was would produce a more attenuated, or like I said, it used up more sugar. So it would be a, um, maximizing yeast strain where it takes as much, um, alcohol as possible from the, uh, conversion from the starches and sugars that we get from the malt. So degrees Plato is a measurement as a percentage.

So if we heard 15 degrees Plato, that means by weight, the solution is 15% sugar. So if I have a hundred, uh, grams of the liquid, we could, and it's 15 degrees, Plato, 15 of those grams are coming from sugar and the rest is from not sugar, mainly water. So specific gravity is more of a proportion.

So, uh, if we go back to degrees, Plato zero degrees, Plato is pure water. There's no sugar in it, or, you know, pure water would have zero degrees Plato. It's not necessarily zero degrees.

Plato means it's water, but water has a zero degrees of Plato. If you follow me there. Yeah.

Now, uh, water has a specific gravity of 1.0. So think of it as the baseline. So as you set up the proportion, uh, sugar in water is going to make it heavier. So the weight of the, uh, solution as a proportion to pure water is where you get your specific gravity.

Okay. So 1.002, 1.04, or 1.1, um, you know, we're increasing the proportion, which means, Hey, there's more and more sugar in this solution. So it's much more used now, the specific gravity, cause you would take your original gravity.

Then what's left, you know, you take a couple of marks throughout the, uh, you know, some readings throughout the brewing process to make sure you're on the right course. And then you're kind of brewing till you get to your desired, uh, final gravity. Cause then, you know, you've, uh, gotten the most out of the yeast that you want it to be.

And you started with enough sugars to get to where you want it to be. So there's kind of a conversion between degrees, Plato to a specific gravity and it's a 0.4 scale. So basically, you know, if you take degrees, Plato say 15 degrees, Plato, uh, times that by four is 60, but then there's that good old point in there.

So it's going to be a 0.06, uh, you end up with, uh, that's 1.06, uh, roughly would be at specific gravity. And then what's nice about gravity is it's roughly the percentage. Okay.

It's not exact, but if you hear something that's, you know, that zero in front, uh, you know, that, uh, sig fig significant figure, Oh my God, going back to ninth grade chemistry, um, that 0.06 would mean it's, uh, approximately a 6% going to be 6% ABV. And basically you can think is one degree. Plato gives you 0.4% alcohol. So that's where that conversion kind of comes out. So if it's the same to get to degrees, uh, um, your specific gravity, it's the same ABV you're looking for. So if you think of, you know, this beer, if it had, uh, you know, a final gravity of 1.1, which is what it 1.1, it should be around the 10% or more mark.

Jason:

And that's where we end up with the, uh, 11.3. And the original Plato degree on this was actually a 22 and a half, which means there was a lot of cutting that needed to take place to get to where we were.

Craig:

Yeah. The 22 and a half. I mean, if you think about that, that's going to get us to, you know, 22.5 times four, we're getting up there into the nineties. So, you know, you end up after conversions right around that, uh, you know, 1.1. And then there was actually, um, the Belgians as a part of their taxation system, they had, which were Belgian degrees. Basically, it was an easier way to think about it. They just cut off the one and then the first decimal.

Usually they went to the second, uh, decimal or the hundredths place there. So if it was a 1.06, uh, final gravity, or, you know, that, that was six degrees Belgian. Okay.

And then, uh, 1.08, that's where your eight comes from because it would just be eight degrees. And then your 10 degrees was your 1.10, which is why you Rochefort 10, the six eights and tens. So it's an obsolete, um, measurement.

They no longer use Belgian degrees. However, does it mean that they still don't name their beers off of that? So that's kind of, you know, so that's why as they get bigger, there's more alcohol because it's all a part of that, um, you know, all this interesting stuff that everybody was just dying to know.

Jason:

Yeah. Well, that, I mean, that's, that's great history there because that's a, to, to understand how the numbers work. Um, so the, yeah, then why you can't, uh, you can't go away from that and not be able to stick with the original scale.

And I noticed also on the, the bottle here, it has the, uh, the, uh, ATP, uh, stamp on it as well.

Craig:

Oh yeah. It is authentic. That's, uh, and you know, we, we touched on this and I think when we were drinking our Orville, you know, we're not going to see these forever.

I mean, you know, again, being a monk is an easy work and talking about post pandemic life where it's a little bit more focused on work life balance. Uh, if work is life, then there's not much of a balance and that's the quintessential life of a monk. So we're running out of monks.

So either become a monk or at least buy a Trappist beer.

Jason:

Right. It's like a civil war nurse. There's not, there's not a, a huge calling for it at the moment.

It's got, it's a lifestyle choice.

Craig:

Oh, a hundred percent. So, um, and you know, it's with the amount, you know, let's, we were talking about this, uh, Jason and I, about Spencer out in Massachusetts. Uh, you know, you've got the likes of, I mean, Sam Adams, let alone, um, Treehouse, Trillium, Lamplighter.

You talk about fantastic breweries out in the Massachusetts area. And, um, you know, people aren't rushing to get Trappist beers like they are some of the, uh, uh, Hype beers we call them of today. And there's nothing wrong with those Hype beers.

However, uh, it doesn't bode well for Trappist breweries that are trying to, uh, sustain their monastery with their beer because people like it, people enjoy it, but they're also not, uh, driving hours to go and load their cars up to get some of the