Reviews of movies, music, books and more by David Goody.

Sunday, September 06, 2009

Pass The Corkscrew...


There's a first time for everything. I've had a number of beers with champagne corks that required a firm tug but last night was the first time I've had to use a corkscrew to get into a bottle of beer. The beverage in question was the French Biere de Garde 3 Monts by St Sylvestre and thankfully my hosts for the evening did have a corkscrew to hand.

The beer comes in 75cl bottles, is blond in colour with a frothy head. It's rather potent at 8.5% and single bottle happily saw me through an evening. This is definitely a sipping beer with a restrained hoppy and alcoholic edge and a bready mouthfeel. It gave the feeling of looking out over the French countryside on a warm day - no bad thing.

On Friday night I had a couple of Chimay trappist beers and was again slightly underwhelmed by them. The Chimay Blue is certainly a good beer and the Chimay Red is decent but there is a generally view that when monks brewing beer some kind of divine intervention occurs to make their beers better than commercial rivals. However I'd take Moortgat's Maredsous beers over the Chimay's pretty much everytime.