Belgian Passions Comics & Beer Triple Blond

Brewed by Brasserie de Silly
Style: Abbey Tripel
Silly, Belgium

Another unique beer dumped on the Australian market. Cloudy light amber with a generous fluffy white head. Strong, sweet belgian yeast aroma. Some spicy plum pudding notes. Strangely underwhelming flavour, but it’s well balanced. Seems fairly sugary, even for a belgian, but it doesn’t seem too sweet on tasting. Pleasant if not challenging.

Another high rating to add to the evidently volatile opinion of the Aussie contingent! This is one good looking beer. Thin head on pouring and excellent visual complexity - cloudy orange glow lightens notably to a dull gold at the edges. Powerful nose, well cooked malts, not roasted (if that makes any sense), a touch sugary. Impressive. palate has power but lacks the smooth, well integrated structure of the nose. Big malts, stewed, some blocky alcohol notes, but settles nicely nicely in the back palate.

5 Mar 06 - Spiritous spicy malt hop aroma. Cloudy yellow-brown colour, good retaining head and suds lacing. Big spiritous spicy fruit malt flavour. Tangy hoppy malt aftertaste.

10th Aussie to rate this one! I guess us Aussies must be able to get this one fairly easily. Spice hop malt aroma. Murky yellow colour with great head and lacing. Spice malt hop flavour with spiritus. Smooth palate.

Mystifying name but an interesting tripel. I found this very satisfying. Lemon marmalade colour, with a towering frothing head. Aroma had banana and honey notes. Creamy mouthfeel, smooth and very drinkable for its 9% abv. Flavour palette dominated by wheat, lemons and cedary hops. Very well balanced for its strength. (Bottle, 2003)

Bottled: The lables had fallen off this bottle and I had to work backwards to figure out what it was, quite an amusing exercise. Bottle conditioned judging by the floaties in the glass, horse blanket yeast aroma with some honey and fruit. Somewhat peppery but the alcohol in pretty-in-your-face instead of being a background player. Easily enough identified as a triple, but not a particulary good one. Had to identify the beer using the bottle and cap in the end. Not Sillys best beer.

8th Aussie rating! I grabbed this one cos it was the only one left that I hadn’t rated! Colour was a murky pale straw with a large frothy head that left an odd shaped egg in the foam. Wheat and yeast on the nose. Alcohol shows in the taste, some pepper, coriander, sweet and not that well balanced.

The 7th rating and the 7th Aussie. Just like some of the other Belgians (Caporal comes to mind) it appears that we are the dumping ground for some of the inferior stuff. The silliest thing about this beer is that I had to hand over a $10 note for this beer and a small handful of loose change. The other silliness is that, as described, it just lacks the presence of other beers of this kind. The most noticeable aspect of the beer is the lack of real integration of alcohol, hops and malty body and mouthfeel. Enough said, except 493, the number of this rating.