Westmalle Tripel: A Story of Evolution
Photos courtesy Westmalle Abbey.
The magazine I used to write for, *All About Beer*, officially died when owner Christopher Rice filed for bankruptcy earlier this year. To preserve some of the content I've contributed over the years, I'm reposting some of my favorite pieces here. This article was published in Volume 38, Issue 1 on March 1, 2017.
Belgians, in the realm of beer at least, are slow to give up their traditions. As late as the 1960s, they were still resisting the charms of industrial lager, and when you pore through the gem case that contains Belgian ale styles, you still find many ancient treasures. And until fairly late in the 20th century, Belgians hankered mainly for dark ales.
This was true of most of the barley beers, which in the 19th century were regularly boiled for eight or 10 hours to develop color (wheat beers were different; they could be made pale or “white”). Drinkers and brewers both believed a long boil was critical in developing flavor, and deeper color was its proof. Golden hues in a barley beer would have seemed pale to them in all the wrong ways—pale flavor, pale strength, pale quality. Indeed, blond ales were such a rarity that, when the monks at Westmalle released a coruscating, golden beer called Tripel in the 1930s, it counted as a radical move.
Now, of course, it is the ambers and browns that are rare—blonds proliferate. This seems barely worth mentioning, since it mirrors the trends everywhere else, but consider this: The radicals at the forefront of this evolution in Belgium were Trappist monks. A group dedicated to upholding tradition across the centuries does not seem likely to lead innovation, but perhaps there’s some wisdom in looking a little closer at this. Jan Adriaensens, the man who has overseen brewing at Westmalle since 1982, explains the evolution this way: “The formulation of the Tripel was first developed in 1936, when the monks of Westmalle built a new brewery with a higher capacity, for funding projects like new monasteries.”
The Trappist order believes monks should support their own monasteries; it’s the reason they got into brewing (and cheese-making) in the first place. But it’s the next part of his story that reveals the essence of monastic brewing. “… in 1954 it was Brother Thomas Sas who developed the ‘Tripel’ as it is today,” Adriaensens reports. “I never updated the recipe, which is something the monks explicitly asked me.” Development of the beer started years before it was released, and the monks let it evolve over the next two decades. Eventually, they liked what they had and kept it that way. Monks are used to thinking in terms of decades or centuries rather than the next quarter or year; perhaps they saw the future because they were used to peering so deeply into time.
Their foresight was impressive: The beer itself is, today, perfectly au courant. Its deep golden body is offset by a snowy white head, fed by a cascade of bubbles that flash and dance to the surface. Notably, it has hops in the nose—they’re lightly herbal—along with honey and esters of pear and banana. Hop oils collect on the bubbles in the foam, and they arrive first in the mouth. This is unusual; most Belgian beers have little or no evident hopping, but Westmalle Tripel is stiffened with a fairly stout dose. “The bitterness is very important, which is around 38 to 40 [international bittering units],” says Adriaensens. He prefers to think of the beer as “hoppy” rather than bitter, and he uses a blend of six varieties of hops. Even in this, the abbey seems to have anticipated the direction beer would ultimately go.
As in most Belgian ales, though, yeast character is the essence of this beer. Expressive yeastiness is so important that Belgians do things like underpitch their wort and ferment at temperatures so high they scare brewers elsewhere. These techniques boost the flavor and aroma compounds yeasts produce. But that’s not enough. The yeast can’t produce all the flavors Belgians want in a single fermentation, so they do a second one in the bottle. The warmth of the initial fermentation sparks their expressive yeasts to kick off wonderful flavors of fruit and spice. Going through a second fermentation builds them further. It is so critical that many Belgian beers, including Westmalle Tripel, are never kegged; without refermentation in the bottle, the beer just doesn’t have the right complexity.
Decant Westmalle into a goblet and allow it to breathe, like a wine. As you drink it and the beer warms, pay attention to how those esters evolve. I started taking notes, and I thought I was suffering from critic-itis—becoming too florid with my adjectives. I had written down “orange, banana, rose, apricot (peach?), hint of ripe pear.” I went back and paid close attention. Sure enough, they were all there. Which come from the first fermentation and which come from the second? Only the monks know.
Some time ago, Westmalle decided to switch from square fermenters to more modern, conical ones—a change it was feared might jeopardize critical ester formation, so Adriaensens spent eight years experimenting on a pilot system to ensure the hydrostatic pressure didn’t inhibit the yeast. Eight years is a lengthy period to perfect a process, but not in the way monks think about time. And on this occasion, they were back to their practice of upholding an old tradition.
In addition to the main article, I wrote a second blog post at All About Beer with material that didn’t make it into the main article for reasons of space and so on. Here it is.
Until that beer came along in the 1930s, amber and brown beers were the overwhelming norm in Belgian brewing. (There was another early blond, Witkap Pater, developed by the same brewer who formulated Westmalle’s, that came out a year or two earlier—though it was Westmalle’s that ultimately influenced imitators.) Indeed—fun fact—Belgium’s most famous blond ale, Duvel, was until 1970 an amber ale. I corresponded with Production Manager Jan Adriaensens for the column, and he conveyed more than I could include in one article.
Hops
Hops are not the most important flavor element in Westmalle, but they are pronounced—unusual for a Belgian beer. This is partly because Belgian beers—including Westmalle’s—highlight yeast character, but also because the high attenuation levels leave very little body to balance bitterness. Adriaensens seemed to allude to that when he began his comments this way: “Yes we have ‘hoppy’ beers, which is not the same as bitter beers.” (his emphasis). But Westmalle Tripel is pretty bitter. Even Americans will nod their head appreciatively. I wanted to know what the brewery was shooting for there. As with so many classic originals, Westmalle was never copied—all subsequent versions were a good deal more sweet and lacked that layer of herbal hop flavor.
“Of course, the bitterness is also very important, which is around 38 to 40 EBU for Tripel,” he agreed. (EBU is a different bitterness measure, but is very close to IBU.) “Our hop recipe contains about six different hops, which are dosed as hop cones in our boiling vessel.” I wondered whether he used a consistent blend of hops or, since hops vary year to year, whether he used different varieties. “As we also have a very fruity beer, the hop balance is very important and not easy to achieve. The right balance between fruitiness, bitterness, and hoppy flavors needs a constant ‘follow up.’”
Yeast
Belgian beer is characterized by yeast, first and foremost. It may be spicy or fruity or even funky, but it is almost never neutral. Brewers can coax their yeasts to produce these flavors in a number of ways, from the mash through to bottle-conditioning. Historically, the fermenter itself contributed a lot to the way the yeast behaved. Beers exposed to open fermentation produce more esters, as do beers in shallow fermenters. Pressure inhibits yeast expression, and tall cylindro-conical fermenters create pressure by stacking up that liquid weight in a narrow column. Beginning 20 years ago, Westmalle first broached the idea of moving from its square (closed) fermenters to cylindro-conical tanks (CCT). I wondered how that process went and reported some of Adriaensens’ response in my column. Here is his fuller answer.
“We knew already from literature that it is important to start with the right dimensions of the cylindro-conical tank,” he began. “The hydrostatical height of the beer in the fermenter should be as low as possible to prevent saturation of carbon dioxide in the beer, as this inhibits the formation of the fruity esters, which are very important for the fruitiness of our beers.
“As a change cannot be done without being 100 percent sure of the quality and the flavor of our beers, we placed one pilot CCT with a lot of possibilities for sampling and measuring different parameters like the evolution of the Plato, yeast concentration, and the flavor of the beer.
“With this pilot installation we have done fermenting and yeast-harvesting tests for eight years. [At the end], a triangle tasting of the beers coming from the traditional horizontal fermenters and the cylindro-conical fermenters gave no difference. We discovered the exact parameters of time, pressure, temperature, volumes, and many more parameters, to have the guarantee of a fruitiness Tripel/Dubbel, as we used to have the traditional way.”
As I mentioned in the article, taking eight years to conduct an experiment is, for Trappist monks, not an especially long trial. I love going to the Cathedral in Brussels, because the long-sighted vision of the church is evident in the architecture. Built over 300 years, the building reflects different architectural trends over the period as you walk around it. Compared to this length of time, eight years is nothing—especially when the thing you’re working on may be around tens or hundreds of years more.
I’ll leave you with one final, charming quote. Westmalle shares its yeast strain with the monks at Westvleteren. As he was discussing this, Adriaensens wrote, “in another brewery, this would do the yeast no harm, as long as he is not harvested there and reused” (bold mine). This answers one final question—the gender of yeast, in Belgium at least, is masculine. Now we know.
While you wait for my column on Westmalle to arrive, go find a bottle or two and sample. It’s a wonderful, historic ale.