1001 Beers

Beer No: 46/1001
Page No: 347
Category: Blond

Happy Mother's Day all.

For Mother's Day, I of course headed over to my parents house where my brother, my dad, and I cooked up crab legs and steak and enjoyed them with a nice salad, some bread, and some good beer.  And before someone says something, yes, I know you shouldn't serve Chimay in a PINT glass.  But, my parents are wine drinkers and don't have any Belgian beer glasses.  I probably should have used a wine glass like I did for tomorrow's beer, but for the Chimay, it tasted just fine out of a Stone pint glass.

The Chimay was not paired with my dinner, but instead had with the appetizers that I provided - one was cream cheese with an apricot chili pepper jam which was sinfully good and the other was a hunk of Chimay cheese.  I didn't know Chimay had their hands in cheese making, but I saw two bricks at Whole Foods last week when prepping for my Spotted Pig burger, so I picked up the cheese that had beer added and it was very good too.  We ate most of it on Cinco de Mayo and I was going to break out the Chimay then, but stuck to the Mexican beers and wisely saved the Chimay for me to drink all by myself today.

Paired with the steak and crab legs, I figured a darker beer would work well and the 10 Commandments from Lost Abbey worked wonders.  The raisins and spice paired perfectly with the lighter crab legs and blended with the steak as well.  Just like red wine goes with red meats, this darker 10 Commandments really complemented the steak well.  We finished the night with a brownie-crusted cheesecake I made last night which would have paired perfectly with the Bourbon County stout I gave to my mom in her Mother's Day basket, but she wanted to save it for another time, so I settled for some water while everyone else enjoyed coffee with the cheesecake (I don't drink coffee or caffeine).

My review, cross-posted at RateBeer.com:

Chimay Triple / Blanche (White) from Chimay

Aroma: 8/10
Appearance: 3/5
Taste: 9/10
Palate: 4/5
Overall: 15/20

Rating: 3.9 / 5.0

Had from bottle. Pours orange-yellow with slight haze, good carbonation, and small to medium head. Aromas of citrus, spice, malts, banana, and caramel. Taste is complex mixing the caramel malts with a good hop citrus and nice spiciness to balance it all out. Very well done, easy to drink triple. Those monks know what they’re doing.