The End of the World, Indeed
The Fin du Monde clone can clearly no longer be called a Fin du Monde clone. Behold, the side-by-side comparison:
Chris wants to call it the Tripel Threat. So we'll go with that for now.
At first glance, you can tell the color is quite different. That comes in part, we surmise, from our addition of crystal malt, which the recipe calls for and which helps with head retention among other things. Chris has also just told me about something called the Maillard Reaction. The higher concentration of our wort (the liquid you're left with after boiling all of your grains and hops and malt extract) promotes these types of reactions, which is sort of like caramelization.
The first Tripel Threat pour.
Despite the color, the taste is somewhat similar. Our is, however, really, really strong (in fact, most of our beers have turned out to have a higher-than-anticipated alcohol content, something we've yet to figure out). My underdeveloped-beer-tasting-vocabularized self might say it tastes a bit like raisins. And sherry. To be even more vague, it's quite "spicy" and "sweet" at the same time. I'll work on these descriptors, I promise. At any rate, if you've ever had a Fin du Monde, the real deal is quite a bit more dry than our version. You can also taste the malt more than in the original.
The beer in its original form is a pretty classic Belgian Tripel. From what I've read, it's a tough one to brew, so the fact that ours 1) tastes good and 2) tastes anything remotely like its namesake is heartening. It will take a bit more tinkering, for example, to more artfully mask that strong-beer taste, get the color closer to the original and get rid of some of the malt flavor. Just cutting out the crystal malt might help o those fronts.
So, the moral of the story is either ignorance is bliss or love the one your with or maybe even if at first you don't succeed, try, try again. For now, we're content with enjoying our Tripel Threat and calling it a night.
Ok, so ours isn't quite this dark...
At first glance, you can tell the color is quite different. That comes in part, we surmise, from our addition of crystal malt, which the recipe calls for and which helps with head retention among other things. Chris has also just told me about something called the Maillard Reaction. The higher concentration of our wort (the liquid you're left with after boiling all of your grains and hops and malt extract) promotes these types of reactions, which is sort of like caramelization.
The first Tripel Threat pour.
Despite the color, the taste is somewhat similar. Our is, however, really, really strong (in fact, most of our beers have turned out to have a higher-than-anticipated alcohol content, something we've yet to figure out). My underdeveloped-beer-tasting-vocabularized self might say it tastes a bit like raisins. And sherry. To be even more vague, it's quite "spicy" and "sweet" at the same time. I'll work on these descriptors, I promise. At any rate, if you've ever had a Fin du Monde, the real deal is quite a bit more dry than our version. You can also taste the malt more than in the original.
The beer in its original form is a pretty classic Belgian Tripel. From what I've read, it's a tough one to brew, so the fact that ours 1) tastes good and 2) tastes anything remotely like its namesake is heartening. It will take a bit more tinkering, for example, to more artfully mask that strong-beer taste, get the color closer to the original and get rid of some of the malt flavor. Just cutting out the crystal malt might help o those fronts.
So, the moral of the story is either ignorance is bliss or love the one your with or maybe even if at first you don't succeed, try, try again. For now, we're content with enjoying our Tripel Threat and calling it a night.
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