Continuing in the style of Four Belgian Blondes and Four Wittes, I am going to try to work through the Belgians I have squirrelled away over the last few months style by style. I also want to avoid one problem that arises doing a side-by-side, especially when you are looking at triples and strong ales. Four of those at 8 to 11%, especially when one or two only come in a quart, can frankly blow the top off yer heed. So, to ensure some benefit of the colour and head comparison, while at the same time avoiding a public display of the ever famous liquid lobotomy, I have decided upon a handy-dandy chart format for these posts. As I open each brew within the set, I will add it to the table with a photo of its label and one of the pour along with some notes. Click on the photos for a bigger view.

The trouble with this first set, however, is that they are not a style all. They are just a grab bag of styles all of which fall under the word "brown" more or less. The Petrus is a tangy Oud Bruin, while the Leffe Brown is something more familiar, a rich brown. The Kasteel is more of a barleywine while Rodenbach Grand Cru is a sour beer gone mad - the best malt vinegar you will ever find. All, however, are forms of browns from Belgium.

Belgian Browns	Bottle and Pour	Notes
Petrus Oud Bruin Flemish Brown	translucent mahogany	Lambic-like, sour cherry aroma, refreshing but also, at its core woodsy. Tart orange and spicy but in a good Christmas cake way. The body is not heavy. Slight carbonation - very light for a Belgian. 5.5% in a 250 ml bottle. BAs speak.
Kasteel Ingelmunster Quadruple or Barleywine	demarrara	This is a dandy big beer - brown sugar plumy or red grape malty goodness at 11%. Without a trace of orange peel or spice so no hint of a dubble. No sour at all so nothing oud about it. This is surprisingly fresh for its bulk...like me. Rummy. Very subdued hops, only enough to keep the sweetness from being cloying. Here is the brewery's take on it. A juicy swallow ending in a hot port finish. 330 ml bottle. Advocates comment.
Rodenbach Grand Cru Flemish Red	cherry wood patina	I said that this was the best malt vinegar you will ever taste and I am not kidding. This is pure soured, oak aged Belgian brew. Michael Jackson is kinder speaking of a vanilla-like oakiness, passion-fruit flavours, a clean sharp acidity like sour cream. That is all there but you have to appreciate that the acidity is that of a sub-puckeringly sharp wine. Vineous does not cover how sharp. Tart but only in the sense of King Tart of the Tartonians. Within the tart the is some reflection of spice and certainly a gooseberry-rhubarb custard trifle would go well with this. That acid lingers the palate with the yeast with some deference to richness. It is nice. Try it but prepare to wish for a nice light double IPA as a cleansing light chaser. 6% in a 330 ml bottle.Beertonians blown away.
Leffe Brown Belgian Dark Ale	Chestnut	Hard label this one. It has some rich round brown like the Kesteel and also some tang like the Flemish Browns. Another calls it an almost double and another a dark ale. But labels have a limit. A lively head which leaves a rich foam ring. Medium to strong body. Cream and chocolate with a strong hop edge cutting the sweet. 6.5% in a 330 ml. Great on tap. Beersters consider.

Collecting these little bottles - as often as singles as I can find them - has created a bit of a daunting list of tasks to be done by way of style and beer comparison reports. These five pending articles are just the Belgian style ones:

• Dubbles - Borneu, Chimay Red, Maudit.
• Triples - Borneu, Petrus, Chimay Blue, Fin Du Monde, Augustine.
• Assorted Browns - Petrus Oud Bruin, Leffe Brown, Kasteel, Rodenbach Grand Cru.
• Dark Strong Ale/Dark Triple - Gulden Draak, Trois Pistole, Ommegang, Dogfish Head Raisen D'Etre.
• Golden Strong Ale - Delirium Tremens, Duval, Piraat.

It is, as they say, a tough job but someone has to do it - but over time, grasshoppers, and, with luck, company.

A quick note on a tiny beer. Many but not all Christmas barley wines come in small bottles - this one being 7 oz, a lovely little thing. The bottle promises big, however: "Old Foghorn is dry hopped in the classic ale tradition and aged in our cellers until it attains the perfect balanace of malty sweetness, estery fruitiness and exquisit hop character..." Pretty happening adjectives and I have not even opened the bottle yet.

Now that I have opened the bottle, I notice that it was filled to the rim of where the crown cap's edge would sit. Very little air to place at risk its conents during the long moths of maturation. It pours into less than half a pint of my big Polish beer snifter - yes, such things do exist. The nose is all malt and the flavour of malt is massive - concentrate of beer. I need to go think about what is happening to my mouth...back later.

Leathersweet Mennonite apple butter laced with boozy heat and a thread of cigar tobacco. Divine. Glad bought two. 8.8% and $2.69 USD each at the Galeville Grocery. Add about 15 % for exchange and maybe about 27% tax and duty at the border. Four other Anchors reviewed here.

Two expressions of an English winter's ale, to the left Winter Welcome from Samuel Smith's, one of the most ancient of brewers, and to the left Winter Ale from St. Peter's the great modern traditionalists. Winter beer is not a style so much as a harkening. Each is actually a recollection of a Victorian style a burton and a porter respectfully.

Burton is one of the rarer ales left to us from the 18th century, predating the product of that town, the India Pale Ale by perhaps a century. The best reference to that latter strong ale, as I have noted before, is in Wind in the Willows when Rat and Mole in the chapter "Dulce Domum" discover it in Mole's old pantry as they prepare a winter night's feed:

The Rat, meanwhile, was busy examining the label on one of the beer-bottles. "I perceive this to be Old Burton,' he remarked approvingly. "Sensible Mole! The very thing! Now we shall be able to mull some ale! Get the things ready, Mole, while I draw the corks."

The Winter Ale, by St. Peters is, is called a strong ale but I think it is really a porter. It is dark and rich with strong flavours of coffee and licorice. Smoke and burnt raisin and a lot of other flavours I would want to have wind up in a figgy pud. The advocatonians are as one and all shout hurrah! OK......point taken...but I have been reading Master and Commander the last few days and I am a wee bit pip, pip and all but really if you are going to write about these ales you have to get into the mood of it all. Instead of say porter, take a long draught of this one and shout "PORTAH!". You will get the point.

I got a few interesting emails today and one was from one of my favorite beer writers Lew Bryson announcing an update to his website setting out what he has been up to lately. He has down the right side of this is 13th news letter digest of sort a great feature "What I've Been Drinking" which is basically Pennsylvanian micro-brews. Tröegs Mad Elf looks like a particularly good brew. Go read Lew's news. He is a hero of mine. His picture of Tapwerks in Oklahoma City alone is worth a visit...so I will copy it. Please note. Those are all taps of different drafts. Herself suggests that this image aligns somewhat with my notion of heaven. Sadly Lew indicates that without a big client-base this heaven's brews were too often off, sour.

While on the road, I chanced by a depanneur near the pulp mills in downtown Hull and found an artifact, Labatt Porter. This beer is a vestige of an earlier style of Canadian beer which died away as lagers came on to the scene. Old lumberjack taverns up the Outaouais may still have old sign for porter painted on their outside brick walls. Ten years ago Molsons still produced a competing beer under the brand Champlain Porter. Now only this one is left and likely has one of its few remaining bases of popularity, such as it is, on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River. It is really a sweet milk stout. It is chocolatey, lactose sweet, a bit like a richer cola with low carbination and the aroma of new baked bread and caramel. It is not hoppy like the Sleeman Fine Porter or roasty like Cooperstown Benchwarmer. Not profound but comforting. Probably the best tasting beer for style Labatt still brews - which is not a great compliment. It may be gone itself in another decade. Click on the photo for a better view.

Last night before going to see the Pixies, the siblings and I took advantage of the moment to visit an old friend, Irene's pub in Ottawa's Glebe district. Irene's is a neighbourhood bar which means it is not necessarily the place to take someone on a first date unless you are on a serious testing night-out. If she agrees to go to Irene's again, she wins. If she suggests going to Irene's again, you win.

Opened in 1985 as a sort of Maritime Canadian bar in Upper Canada, its almost 20 years of experience shows in the honeying pine of the wainscoting and the furniture, the colour of good real pale ale. I have seen bands play there, ended work weeks there with pals, had dinner parties collapse into it and wished often I lived nearer to it. People there can be loud. They can also be worse for wear for the night - or even for the decade. A little harder than the Pilot House in Kingston but the same idea. The beer selection is pretty good but not great. The Guinness moves well, however, meaning it is always fresh. Upper Canada Dark on tap is also a good choice. I was driving so those were the brother's choices.