Tripel Karmeliet, Bosteels

Tripel Karmeliet 8%

This is a multi-award winning beer, including Best Pale Ale in the World Beer Awards. It’s brewed by the Bosteels Brewery in Buggenhout, ner Dendermonde, one of Belgium’s oldest breweries dating from 1791. It was run by the sixth and seventh generation of the family until they shocked the brewing world in 2016 when they sold the business to AB InBev.

To date, the beer is unchanged and superb. The Bosteels discovered from ancient documents that in 1679 monks at a Carmelite monastery in the area had brewed a beer using three grains – barley, wheat and oats – in both malted and unmalted form. The beer today is brewed with those three grains with Styrian Goldings hops. Water comes from a well in the grounds: the water is low in salts and rich in calcium.

It’s a bronze/gold beer with a rich aroma of biscuit grain, vanilla, banana and spicy hops. Ripe fruit, creamy malt, vanilla and hop resins fill the mouth while the finish is long, complex , rich, fruity, malty and with a final tart, quinine-like bitterness from the hops. The vanilla and banana character comes from the house yeast that is also used to ferment Bosteels’ other beers, including Kwak and Deus.

The 750ml bottle, with a driven cork and cradle, is £5 in branches of Morrisons and Tesco. 500ml bottles are available in Waitrose.