Back in the saddle

My appetite has more or less come back. Still not eating as much as I was before mid-May, but definitely more than last week. I think that's a good thing.

New (ish) beers over the past week...
Delirium Tremens (draft at Ashley's 5/30; bottle at HopCat 5/31; draft at Logan's Alley 5/31) Nice, fruity fake-tripel. Tastes a lot like apricot biscuits--the front is stone fruit and light hops, finish is yeast and flour, with some butter for good measure. Very drinkable but I was not blown away. Bottle is much, much better than draft.

Chimay Tripel Cinq-Cent (draft at Ashley's 5/30; bottle at HopCat 5/31) Delicious. Nicely acidic, tart, great example of a well-made tripel. Also much better bottled than on draft--this, I've come to understand, is a characteristic of most Trappist beers. Has to do with the bottle conditioning.

Westmalle Tripel (bottle at HopCat 5/31). By far my favorite beer from this weekend. Perfect for its class and style. Lovely, crisp, refreshing--fantastic summer beer, if a bit spendy.

Rochefort 6 (bottle at HopCat 5/29-ish?) Malty, sugar, great color and flavor. More of a sipper than a quaffer, and while nothing I've been drinking is really sessionable (everything's well over 8% ABV) this is by far the least likely beer this week to sit down and drink a lot of. Took me well over an hour to finish the (standard-sized) bottle due to its intense fig-cookie-butter-sugar richness. Lovely, but damn.

Golden Cap Saison (sample/draft at Vitale's 5/31) Pretty straightforward: I like it. It's tasty, and it's local. Probably not the best example of a saison I'll have this summer, but honestly? Not bad.

La Chouffe Houblon Dobbelen IPA Tripel (draft at HopCat... nightly? Bottle to-go 5/31 [yes, I drank A LOT on Sunday]). Okay. I have to preface this by saying that before about two weeks ago, I had zero desire to drink Belgians outside of a basic understanding of the tasting notes so I could sell them. In my head, I was thinking about Belgian Wits and overdoses of coriander and orange peel and syrup sweetness or overpowering sourness. I tried Brooklyn Brewery's Flemish Gold about a month ago and really enjoyed it, so when one of the guys at work opened a bottle of the Houblon, I was ready to taste something outside my usual IPA, hop-bomb box.
Lucky me. For real. The bottle isn't cheap by any stretch and we split it evenly. And it is seriously, beautifully, eye-poppingly amazing. The really fun thing, though, is that we have it on draft as well, and the side-by-side tasting was astonishing. Next to the bottle, the draft tasted bad. In the sense of it tasted spoiled, not low-quality--all the tones were there, it just didn't taste right. (Bottle-conditioning Belgians FTW!) Now, La Chouffe has done something interesting with this beer, and to my knowledge it's fairly unique: they made a double IPA (so lots of hops, lots of malt) and brewed it as a traditional tripel. So while it's got the clarity, crispness, and general flavor profile of the tripel, it's also got a shit-ton of hop aroma and maltiness. And it is truly sublime. Favorite beer of the last few months, no question.

I'll probably write about this weekend later--one of my besties got married, so I spent the weekend in Ann Arbor, ate a lot, drank a fair bit, and pretty much just had a blast. Still don't have any of the pictures uploaded, so that's no fun...

I have to work tonight. Last Tuesday was painfully slow (ie, I had $150 in sales at 10:30pm) so hoping this week will be a bit better as I'm scheduled (again) to close. Tomorrow is deep-cleaning day and possibly lunch with Jak's parents, then Mom is coming down Thursday and staying overnight on her way to Lansing. Yay Mom!