Interview La Trappe

Gestart door jurgenfd, 26-06-2009 14:01 u

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jurgenfd

FYI from my American friend and most favored beer tender Bill

This interview was posted on the CBS ListServe today. I thought some of you might like to read it. I found it enlightening.
--Bill

Date:    Wed, 24 Jun 2009 06:21:04 -0700
From:    Dan Luksetich
Subject: Re: koningshoeven

Last night at the Eulogy in Philadelphia Koningshoeven had a meet and greet
featuring father Isaac and Gijs Swinkels. Some of you may have met them
already because they were just coming from Chicago!

I got lots of questions and I think I asked them all. Here's the answers as
best I remember.

Why they are not using the name La Trappe in the US?
After the arrangement with Bavaria they lost the trappist designation, and
then finally got it back after proving the monks are still involved on a
daily basis. They call the beer La Trappe everywhere but in the US where
the trappist organization here still needs convincing. It is their quest to
return to the name La Trappe, and they are extremely excited that their
anniversary beer that they have begun selling in the states is indeed
labeled La Trappe. They hope soon to return to the name for all of the
other beers in the states. It would make them very happy. They kick
themselves for being too honest when Bavaria took over the operations, and
they think they have more monks involved in making La Trappe than does
Chimay.

Are they going to bring back the Pils?
No way. The Pils was the every day table beer for the monks. Now the monks
drink the blonde, which is not available in the US. They think some of the
other abbeys still have table beers, but they feel the style is dying and
they see no need to bring it back because no one would be interested in it.

Why is the Bock called Bock?
They get this all the time. The monks had brewed this beer for many years
in the winter for their own personal consumption, and called it a bock.
There are other Dutch breweries that make an ale called Bock. So, when they
decided to sell it they called it Bock. So, it's not a German bock, it's a
Dutch bock.

Any extra yeast put in the bottles of the Quadruple?
Not in the bottle, no. However, every beer they make is blended with sugar
and yeast in the tank before bottling, and then placed in a warm room.

Hey, what happened to the formula after Bavaria took over, the beer tastes
different? What happened to the yeasty flavors?
When Bavaria took over they did not change any of the formulas. They did,
however, change the process. One of the things they did was to introduce
filtering. So, yes some of the yeast flavors are gone from the beer. They
have debated about this quite a bit, and still do to this day. However,
they want to have a high level of consistency and quality, and felt that
they had a big consistency issue before the filtering. They occasionally
debate as to whether or not to do an unfiltered beer, but are proud of the
fact that they are the "clean" trappist beer.

Is the beer aged at the brewery?
Nope, only conditioned. So, the beer in the bottle is fresh. You can tell
when it was bottled by looking at the bottling code. The last position is
the year, and the one before that is a letter corresponding to the month,
starting with "a". They do save some kegs and bottles at the brewery, and
have a bunch of 2004 Quad on hand that they sell to favorite customers by
special order. I'm pretty sure last time I was at the Arendsnest in
Amsterdam they had some. They don't plan on importing any of it to the US.

What's the "sweet spot" for aging the beer?
That's a personal preference. However, the only beer you should age is the
Quad and the Bock. The sweet spot is six years.

Any problem with other breweries using the name Quadruple?
They were the first to use the name, and they actually registered the name
and got approval for the registration. So, they are the only ones with the
rights to the name. However, anyone who makes a "Quadruple" is OK with
them. They were the first, they're not going to fight it, and consider it a
compliment.

The anniversary beer is made with hops grown at the abbey. They're extremly
proud of their hops, and quite concerned with how difficult it is to grow
quality hops. It's daily work, especially to prevent disease and intusion
from wild male hops. They were so proud of the hops that father Isaac was
passing around a camera with pictures of the plants.

Cheers,
Dan

RobinB

Nice interview but:

CiteerWhat's the "sweet spot" for aging the beer?
That's a personal preference. However, the only beer you should age is the
Quad and the Bock. The sweet spot is six years.

Brrr... complete nonsense... six months perhaps?

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