Ale, Beer, Stout appreciation

Beavertown Paleo Pinhead Imperial coconut porter is lovely but didn't see the 9% on the can #veryspecialbrew

What's it like there these days? Fell outta love with it after they painted over the dog mural, staff changes etc... never been back despite it being close.

As a Lidl shopper, whose beer is terrible, I have been blown away by how excellent the beers from Aldi are, since one opened down the road from me. There’s nothing world changing, but it’s cheap as you like - value is superb. The bog standard French lager (4.8%) is 89p for 500ml

https://www.aldi.co.uk/sainte-etienne-lager/p/062813030886300

The Coffee porter and Red IPA are 99p and absolutely delicious. They’re ‘just’ from Brains and Twickenham, so far from artisan craft yadda yadda, but much recommended, especially if you don’t always want to drop a tenner on three/four bottles...

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The Lidl French bottles are decent value and remind me of the day trips to Bolougne when I was a kid.

I also got some Simpsons beer during their American week to put away for Christmas, I’m sure it will be bland but it’s got the lols factor.

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Anyway, not being a total heathen I was very happy to receive a nice Christmas gift from a wine shop client of mine today who knows what I like

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^ Brilliant.

Just a good stout here, defo the season now.

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https://flic.kr/p/21Mh3mo

Cherry cola sour! Birthday beers at Magic Rock Tap.

Belgiuminabox.com are cheap as chips

Rochefort 10 £2.50 and shipping is a flat £8.50 up to 32kg!

Appreciate I'm opening myself up to a barrage of abuse (and rightly so, if you think it's crap), but a friend and I just started a craft beer column for About Time Magazine. Slightly vanilla beers for our first week, but it'll get more adventurous. Intrigued to hear people's thoughts... https://www.abouttimemagazine.co.uk/drink/taming-of-the-brew-craft-beers-week/

Had a Kernel Pale in Old Red Cow last week. Been ages since I'd had any Kernel stuff. I like it. #csb

Had a Brew York - Tonkoko Milk Stout at Vocation in Hebden on Saturday. Tasted like a Bounty, pretty good.

That sounds great.

Can anyone here recommend a beer along the lines of Rochefort 10? Basically, I don't like the Belgian yeast flavour to be very prominent, and I find it relatively subdued in Rochefort 10. And I like the rich raisin/prune/rum flavour. Ta.

Any of the high ABV options will tend to be sweeter and have less of that (lovely) Belgian yeast hit. Presumably because higher alcohol requires more sugar and tends to kill yeast.
Tried the 8? How do you feel about strong blondes like Tripel Karmeliet?
Look for other big hitters like St Bernadus Abt12 and La Trappe Quad or anything else high %
Oh, and what about the darker stuff - stouts? They again tend to be more prominent chocolate, coffee, caramel rather than yeast and hops so could be a goer. I'm a big fan of Imperial stouts from anywhere in the world normally.

Magic, thanks. I'm not a fan of the strong blondes for the yeast reason (the banana, phenolic aroma). I've tried the Rochefort 8 and liked it, but not as much as the 10 which blew me away.

Is the St Bernardus Abt12 likely to float my boat then? It's only £2.15 at that web shop.

There's only one way to answer that and I think £2.15 is a small admission fee :)
Buy a six-pack and if you don't like I'll buy the rest off ya. :)
There's also some cheap quads you can get in a Belgian sampler. Guden Draak or similar along with the 9000 Quad. My local shop stocked them.

These are the Belgian quads I've tried from untapped:

Sint Amatus - Oostvleteren 12 (2013)
De Struise Brouwers
11% ABV

Brouwerij De Prael
Belgian Quad
11.5% ABV

Préaris Quadrocinno (2015)
Vliegende Paard Brouwers
10% ABV

Grimbergen Optimo Bruno
Brouwerij Alken-Maes
10% ABV

Malheur 12°
Brouwerij Malheur
12% ABV

Keyte Oosténdse Dobbel-Tripel
Brouwerij Strubbe
9.2% ABV

Préaris Quadrupel
Vliegende Paard Brouwers
10% ABV

Kasteel Donker
Brouwerij Van Honsebrouck
11% ABV

Trappist Westvleteren 12
Brouwerij De Sint-Sixtusabdij van Westvleteren
10.2% ABV

Quintaceratops
Brooklyn Brewery
10.9% ABV

Gulden Draak 9000 Quadruple
Brouwerij Van Steenberge
10.7% ABV

Komes Poczwórny Bursztynowy
Browar Fortuna
10% ABV

Three Philosophers
Brewery Ommegang
9.7% ABV

Abt 12
Brouwerij St. Bernardus
Belgian Quad
10% ABV

Monk's Brew
Mikkeller
10% ABV

Trappistes Rochefort 10
Abbaye Notre-Dame de Saint-Rémy
11.3% ABV

Monk's Elixir
Mikkeller
10% ABV

Stochasticity Project: Quadrotriticale
Stone Brewing
9.3% ABV

Abstrakt AB:16
BrewDog
10.6% ABV

Partizan Brewing
Belgian Quad

There's another bunch that come under Belgian Strong Dark Ale that would also probably suit your tastes but I'd have to find extract tasting notes for them all and ICBF.

Old Tom strong ale has that fruitcake thing going on and is definitely in the same vein as the quads and in most supermarkets. Complex but with bit more hoppiness and less sugar.

Westvleteren, Rochefort 10 and Abt 12 are all supposed to be as good as each other (lots of people do blind taste tests on Youtube and get varying results) it's just the rareness of the Westy that makes it so desirable.

I didn't bother mentioning that because it's too hard to get.
Obviously I have some bottles in my "cellar" :)

Defo Rochefort over Abt12 for me but now that you mention it I don't think I've ever had both in the same session. I've got a Belgian night coming up so let's try and change that.

Old Tom strong ale

3 for a fiver if you shop around too

To try this one at home pick any standard ale, then add mouthwash and aniseed balls to taste.

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Chimay Blue or the Grande Reserve version are pretty good options too

Also any of De Struise's dark stuff

Thanks for this tipoff - hadn't heard of them. 4 days later and I've £60 of Xmas booze en route!

Crate of 24 Rodenbach's for about £27 is solid value.

Their packaging is pretty epic 1:15

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J62BKTJ6cv4

@Calben I’ll read again. Bottle Apostle had a 500ml Kernel Pale tonight for £3 which seemed good value and I recognised the brewery from your review, it was a good pickup