Boom! Boom! Pow!

Let me begin by offering an apology to the entire nation of Belgium. To think we could even begin to adequately survey the diversity of brews the country has to offer in a single tasting is pure folly. However, it should come as no surprise that no one on the panel has any care in avoiding folly. Indeed some seek it out. So we tasted nine "Belgian Ales": four domestic, four Belgian, and one Acadian Canadian.



From the motherland: Chimay Cinq Cents, Pauwel Kwak from Bosteels Brouweij, Delirium Tremens, and the classic Duvel. The States contributed Monk's Uncle, a tripel from Seattle's Pike Brewery; Raging Bitch Belgian-Style IPA from Flying Dog (who else?); Weyerbacher's tripel Merry Monks; and a real whopper, coming in at 11.75% ABV, Quad from Harpoon's Leviathan series. And to round everything out, la Fin du Monde from Unibroue.

Following the tabulation of results, there was some concern that tasting order affected scoring, but upon closer inspection, order only explains ~14% of the variation in scores (see below). Although omitting the third beer tasted (Monks Uncle) leads to an increase in r² (to 0.26), I'd like to believe the random number generator in charge of ordering the beers just got lucky.


Among other things not fit for print, the panel had this to say about the contestants:

• Flying Dog's Raging Bitch "Tastes like forest"


• La Fin du Monde was described as "if George Clinton brewed a beer in the bathtub of the mothership." which might have made more sense at the time, but there's no guarantee.


• The beast from the deep, Harpoon's Quad, reminded someone of "Swine truffle farts" What are you people drinking?!? Oh, right, Belgians.


• And finally, according to one panel member, Chimay Cinq Cents "sticks to my moustache" (For the glabrous crowd, that's generally a good thing).

So, who's it gonna be? The grandfathers of the craft, cloistered in monasteries in the mountains (are there mountains in Belgium?) or do the colonies once again show up the old masters (yes, it's a mixed metaphor, but Belgium does share a border with the Netherlands)? In homage to the creators, Weyerbacher's Merry Monks takes the top honor, followed very closely by Chimay's Cinq Cents. Third, well, nothing to incite controversy by including an entry from Flying Dog. Their Raging Bitch Belgian-Style IPA is neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an...wait, sorry, wrong script. As you can see below, the categorization of Raging Bitch as a "Belgian" was contentious, with the second highest variance in scores (following la Fin du Monde).



Prizes! No, nothing tangible, just a warm glowing feeling like when you drink Rogue's Shakespeare stout:

• Katy barely loses the hater award to Rachael, who provided a stingy 4.2 average score.


• Not surprisingly, Skip was the biggest fan of the beers on tap this night, and the most consistent in scoring (Average score of 6.6 & Variance of 3.4)


• In an astounding discovery, Rona is apparently Belgian, given that she had the lowest SSE compared with the internal control (Geraldine, a Belgian courteous enough to refrain from laughing too hard at us gringos).


• By this same metric, Angela is the least Belgian. Or the most German. It's hard to say.

Which leads to the next target of the panel's discriminating focus: Mexico!