L'Impératrice Triple Blonde
Brasserie de la Couronne - L'Impératrice in Leval-Trahegnies, Hainaut, Belgium 🇧🇪
Brewed at/by: Brasserie DeseveauxBelgian Style - Tripel Regular
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Score
6.86
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It's been three years since The Empress took off. First brewed in the vats of Deseveaux, the triple blonde now comes out of its own facilities in Leval under the leadership of the Brasserie de la Couronne.
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Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 8
Pours rather clear, darker blonde. Big white head. Smell is sweet, yeasty. Taste ks sugary, yeasty, mild bitterness , some sweetness. Yeastbomb, very Common, blank, uninspired.
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 6.5
Deseveaux’ first commissioned beer I suppose, for Brasserie de Leval-Trahegnies, a new micro / hobby brewery in the village of the same name. Bottle from Bierhalle Deconinck. Moussy, egg-white, quite coarse but nevertheless regulary shaped, frothy head, slowly dissipating over a hazy amberish orange blonde beer, turning into a more ’genuine’ and evidently more cloudy amber with sediment. Aroma of peach or overripe blue plum, white pepper, banana and even bubblegum (isoamylacetate), ripe strawberries, apple sauce, fried pineapple, coriander seed, powder sugar, honey, orange peel, even Grand Marnier somewhere, jute, earthy turnip, spicy hints of ginger, even dried mint, vanilla and ’phenolic cloves’. Spritzy onset with sharpish carbonation distracting a bit from the flavor even for a tripel, sweet (residual white candi sugar!) with sourish edge, hints of banana, pineapple, red apple, ripe stonefruit and notable ’orange freshness’, smooth and supple body coarsened a bit by the overcarbonation, caramelly malt sweetness underlying the fruity esters, spicy phenols dancing around everywhere but not in an overly obnoxious way, lightly toasted accent somewhere at the back and even something vaguely metallic, phenols increase in the finish along with the old soapy bittersweet coriander seed effect, a brief accent of herbal and earthy hop bitterishness incapable of halting the banana and white candi sugar sweetness and - unsurprisingly seen the liqueurish touch in the nose - quite a lot of ’jenever’-like alcohol, a bit harsh and astringent, if not fatiguing in the end; lingering sweetness and bready yeastiness go down alongside this outspoken alcohol flavor. A tad darker than your average Belgian tripel, closer to a classic strong Wallonian ’ambrée’ actually, stylistically not far removed from Vapeur’s Cochonne, Silly’s La Divine, Caulier’s Bon Secours Ambrée and the like. Clearly a bit too sweet for my tooth, but with a kind of controlled ’dirtiness’ I can more or less appreciate; very Wallonian indeed, if I had tasted this fifteen years ago, I probably would have liked it more than I do now, but there are no true technical flaws here apart from that ’dirtiness’ and as a slow sipper at the right temperature and in the right circumstances, I think this might work just as well as its abovementioned relatives. Passes for me. I read that a brown (quadrupel) version called Louise is to follow and I’ll definitely give it a try when I encounter it - though this one does not particularly convince me to actively go and hunt for it.