Now That's a Tripel

Jay over at the Hedonist Beer Jive posted about how underwhelmed he was with Victory's Golden Monkey Tripel, a beer I was very disappointed with myself. Read the comment I left (under the userame muddball) for the reasons I didn't like it.

I had planned to cold condition my tripel for another week or two, but after tasting the sample I brought to the Barleywine Meeting I just couldn't wait. I kegged half of the batch (5 gallons) today. I was planning to only keg 2.5 gallons, but again my desire to drink this beer got the better of me. Since it had been cold conditioning for two weeks @ 40° already, I was able to force carbonate it right away rather than having to wait overnight for it to chill. After I let it sit for a couple hours to settle, I pulled off the first glass. Mmmmm. Now that's a tripel. I may be slightly biased, but the only bad thing I can say about this beer is that it's a little dark for the style, and since it is still very young it will (hopefully) only improve with age. Even my wife was impressed ("It tastes like a tripel, like the tripels you tell me are good." - OK, she's not a big Belgian beer fan).

The other half of the batch is destined for the bottle. I have 19 750ml Belgian beer bottles (and counting) that most of the remaining 5 gallons will go into, complete with corks and wire cages. The rest will go into 12 ozers. Those will be allowed to condition and age while I nurse what's in the keg.