La Moneuse Triple X

A new Blaugies beer, now here is something we do not see every week or even every year… Eager to try this one, out of sympathy for the friendly Blaugies staff and their respect for – and mastery of – local saison traditions, from a 75 cl bottle with cork and muselet, part of Belgian Beer & Food’s monthly Beerseeker box. Opens with smoke escaping from the bottleneck, no gushing though. Thick, frothy, membrane-lacing, quite coarse and large-bubbled but firmly retaining, egg-white head over misty warm orangey peach blonde beer bordering on amber, with fierce sparkling throughout. Aroma initially a tad lightstruck (ammonia-like mercaptans – this is a green bottle, so…) but as usual, this fades quickly and makes room for the true character of the beer, giving off impressions of persimmon, old wrinkled apples, rusk, bread crust, sweet carrot juice, ‘oude jenever’, barbecue sausages somewhere, hay, turnip, cold French fries, ripe apricot, banana peel, moist paprika powder, pear, cloves and a vague dash of iron. Fruity, estery onset, peach and banana peel, persimmon, tamarillo even, sweetish with sourishness brought by lively, minerally carbonation; pleasantly bready malt sweetish body soaked in yeasty fruitiness, rusk and bread crust aspects, some sweeter caramel, phenolically spicy finish (quite outspoken cloves, even fresh thyme) with an earthy yeastiness beneath it, straw-like and floral hoppiness with eventually a somewhat quinine-like, effective but not overly harsh bitterness and warming, ‘jenever’-like alcohol, well-placed and not too obnoxious; lingering bready and yeasty aspect. As expected, a beautiful and very traditional example of a strong saison, a bit fuller and more intense than the regular Moneuse, but still very Moneuse, or very Blaugies in general. In some ways Blaugies’ answer to Dupont’s famed Bons Voeux. Lovely old school strong Belgian with Hainaut farmland associations.

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