Three Rules of Authentic Trappist (Dubbel Special Edition)
(has 1 batch)

Monday 18th November 2024, beer share at my place, just four of us and a load of old and new beers. 750ml bottle, cheers Simon for this one. Slight red hue to the brown body, light brown head, wispy. Interesting collaboration and an interesting beer, bready malt aroma and initial taste, semi-sweet overall, spicy, yeasty and tasty.

Yes this is a top notch dark nearly black dubbel. Combines the qualities of these three breweries seemlessly. Wildeman ams

6/XI/24 - 75cl bottle from Geers (Oostakker) @ Syntra Zytho class, BB: 10/III/27, 11:27 (2024-1191)

Clear burgundy brown to purple brown beer, solid creamy beige head, pretty stable, a little adhesive. Aroma: spicy notes, pretty yeasty, some banana peel, green banana, red forest fruits, a hint of cardamom and other spices, apples, gentlest of roasts, dried fruits, raisins and figs. MF: ok carbon, medium to full body. Taste: surprisingly sourish start, gentle roast, a hint of chocolate, green coffee, a little sweet, caramel, yeasty, some banana. Aftertaste: some dried fruits, pretty dry, bitter roast, red fruits, bread crust, a little yeasty, a hint of banana, nice one!

Very dark brown with thin lacy head. Layers of malt and caramel but it's not sweet. Some yeast and clove. Very dry finish.

Bottle. Nice label. Drinking side by side with ordinary La Trappe Dubbel. Color: Clear copper, very light brown head. Almost the same as the Dubbel. Aroma: Sugary, caramel. Also almost the same. Taste: Caramel, malty, some roasted malt, licorice, candy sugar, herbs (gale from Zundert). Over moderate sweet. Moderate bitter hoppy backbone. Medium body, just below average carbonation. A bit less sweet than the orinary Dubbel and some more complexity, as a result of which I prefer the Three Rules. (Although I overrated the ordinary Dubbel 3.9 back in the days, as a beginning rater in 2017) Nice Dubbel, but definitely overhyped by the smart marketeers of the Trappists.

Even the old trappist tradition has, on several occasions, proven to be suggestible to global craft beer tendencies, one of which is the phenomenon of collaboration brews; the two Sinergia beers and the collabs of La Trappe with BrewDog are illustrious precedents. Now, for the first time, we get a 'Holy Trinity' of trappist breweries working together to create this Three Rules of Authentic Trappist in the kettles of the old Schaapskooi, with the malt being provided by Tynt Meadow, the spicing by Zundert and the yeast by La Trappe. The result is a 'special edition dubbel', limitedly presented in corked 75 cl luxury bottles with golden letters on the label. A 'gadget' for the lovers of trappist beers for sure, announced with quite a bit of (social) media attention and now available on the market. Pours with a medium thick, pale greyish off-white, patch-lacing, slowly breaking yet generally stable head and crystal clear ruddy-bronze robe with coppery glow and very fine yet active strings of sparkling. Aroma initially intensely caramelly, after which impressions pop up of freshly baked to even lightly toasted brown bread and nut bread, pronounced spiciness of thyme, coriander and even some liquorice, coffee cream, chewing gum, butterscotch, tea, wet clay, perhaps a background touch of peat (but nowhere near the iodine-like scent of typical 'peated' beers - luckily in this case, perhaps), quite some bayleaf, industrial caramel candy, some clove, dried fig, ground walnuts, baked banana or banana bread, 'graanjenever', limestone, vague burnt rubber and, alas, that typical 'cooked cloth' smell of pasteurisation. Sweetish onset, glucose syrup indeed (actually used) but not too cloying and balanced by an underlying sourishness accentuated by sharp, stingy carbonation; relatively clean for a trappist ale, with primarily 'dried' fruity notes, as in dried banana and dried fig, perhaps vague raisin and dried apple peel. Smooth, full mouthfeel, heavily caramelly with brown-bready edges, a touch of toast and again very light peat faraway in the background, not unlike indeed Tynt Meadow's dark trappist ale, but 'emptied' a bit by that glucose syrup and perhaps overly clean and slick; from moderately sweet, the flavours are increasingly directed to bitterness, from the toasty aspect of the malts and from herbal, tea-like hops, but mostly from an overdose of spicing - coriander seed, perhaps thyme and bitter bayleaf, more outspoken than the spiciness in Zundert's ales and even acting rather astringent. 'Jenever'-like alcohol sits at the back and becomes just a bit too prominent, even adding to the astringent effect of the spices. Retronasal caramel, coriander and bayleaf linger, with this typical bubblegum and dried banana effect you will find in La Trappe's yeast profile. Indeed all three trappist breweries are identifiable in the three main parts of this beer - assuming it was also La Trappe which provided the water and the hops - but especially Zundert's spicing is unnecessarily exaggerated, with a less pleasant, rather wry effect I was not expecting. Remains utterly clear and clean too - this beer was obviously filtered, which in itself is something deplorable, as it takes away so much 'life' and depth... Sadly not as 'artisanal' as I wanted it to be, but then I am Belgian and basically grew up with the classic trappist beers, so maybe my expectations were false; nevertheless, I think anyone with experience in trappist beers expects something more, well, 'authentic'. Feels like it was produced by Moortgat or another brewery of similar volume... Maybe I would rather have seen a collab between Orval, Westvleteren and Westmalle, but in all, this one is still quite enjoyable, even if the astringency of the spices and the overly clean, 'cooked' and semi-industrial feel kept bothering me a bit throughout. Expected more, but who knows if extended cellaring may yield pleasant surprises, which is why I bought a second bottle just in case.