Tröegs Scratch 3

Formerly brewed at Tröegs Brewing Company
Style: Abbey Tripel
Hershey, Pennsylvania USA

Serve in Trappist glass, Tulip

A: The pour is a very turbid golden orange color with a thin white head forming a ring around the glass. S: Lots of spice to it and intensely sweet. There’s an almost meaty character to it, too. Fairly decent floral with lots of sugary notes and sort of oxidized. T: This beer is pretty sweet. Caramel sauce, sugar, brown sugar, and fairly oxidized. There’s some floral and maybe honey notes. Definitely old, but not bad. M: The body is medium with a moderate level of carbonation. D: Surprisingly decent for a three year old tripel. I probably wouldn’t want to have this again, but good enough for the tick.

A solid pour into my 25cl tulip glass produces a two finger thick, pale tan tinged, off-white colored head. The beer is a lightish gold hue that shows a brilliantly clear, bright, yellow-gold color when held up to the light. The aroma smells of ripe melons (more honeydew than cantaloupe, but a hint of that too), overly ripe tropical fruit as well as quite a bit of clove that I somehow at first missed. There is a touch of mustiness that mixes in with the spicy clove aromatics and there might even be a touch of oxidation, but that too seems to be well hidden by the other notes found in the nose. I think that the oxidation might be accentuating the noticed fruit aromatics.

Lightly sweet tasting, but quite light bodied for a beer of this strength. It does have some viscous heft to it as it clings just a bit to the palate. The beer finishes with spicy clove and a hint of woody pepper notes. Up front fruit flavors of pear and floral apple are more noticeable than the melon from the aroma, but there are some honeydew melon flavors here as well. The malt has notes of freshly crushed pale malt, a touch of cracker character, as well as some sweet grain character. A touch of oxidation seems to add a hint of almost caramelized character to the malt towards the finish; it boosts the complexity more than anything. A touch of higher alcohols accentuate some warmth towards the finish, but much of this is due to the 10.1% abv alone and this is actually fairly muted given this beer’s strength.

This one is barely showing its age yet. There is a hint of oxidation around the edges, but it is so light still that it is only accentuating other components of this beer. This is still quite a nice Tripel and even tastes in better shape than many a “fresh” overseas example that sometimes shows up in stores here in the states. I can’t see this aging a whole lot better here on out and would recommend drinking these now; any more oxidation will likely start to hurt the flavor of this beer.

Bottled. An unclear golden beer with a thin beige head. The aroma has strong notes of peaches and other fruits as well as medium notes of malt and yeast. The flavor is sweet with notes of malt, peaches and other fruits, grain, and yeast as well as light notes of milk, leading to a lightly alcoholic finish. The moutfeel is smooth.

12 oz. bottle shared by shawnm213- thanks again, Shawn! Pours a cloudy yellow-gold color with a very small eggshell white head that doesn’t do much. Aroma of honey, straw, yeast, candi sugar, fruit juice. Flavor is more of the same, with some breadiness to it. Medium-bodied, with a sticky mouthfeel and sweet finish. Pretty sweet all the way through, actually. Good tripel.

bottle. pours a hazy yellow golden with a tiny offwhite head. notes of candy suger, bread. peary yeast. decent. a little too sweet for my liking, but not bad for the style.

Hazy golden with a medium white head. Sweet aroma with yeasty and malty notes. The sweet flavour was grainy and malty with caramel notes.

Bottle:   Straw colored, cloudy, loads of sediment, large white frothy head, nice lacing.   Very soft floral/spicy nose.   Has a Witbier element to it.   Bready flavor, meaty, very clean.   More malty than floral, which is classic American.   This is 10.1%?   Certainly does not taste like it.   It is very warming, however.   Thick, bready, but not as floral/spicy as I got out of the nose.   Moderate to full body and mouthfeel.   Lingering breadiness.   Pretty simple, but fairly clean, and certainly on the hot side.   A little mealy too.   Enjoyable, just wished it was a little brighter in the floral sense.   Thanks Dan for this unexpected bottle!

Poured gold with a white head. Aroma of fruit and spice. Some spice but more fruit. Don’t believe its 10.