Beer Style: Belgian Tripel
(18C)
Recipe Type: all-grain
Yield: 6.08 US gallons
Chimay Blanche (White), or Chimay Triple, 8% abv golden tripel. In the 75 cl bottle, it is known as Cinq Cents. This crisp beer bears a light orange colour, and is the most hopped and driest of the three. Add sugar at the end of the boil - 15 minutes Named Cinq Cents in 75 cl (25.4 fl.oz.) bottles, this beer with its typical golden colour, its slightly hazy appearance and its fine head is especially characterised by its aroma which results from an agreeable combination of fresh hops and yeast. The beer's flavour, as sensed in the mouth, comes from the smell of hops: above all it is the fruity notes of muscat and raisins that give this beer a particularly attractive aroma. The aroma complements the touch of bitterness. There is no acidity, but an after-bitterness which melts in the mouth. This top fermented Trappist beer, refermented in the bottle, is not pasteurised. They denied they use wheat starch. They use wheat flour, between 10 and 15%, for head retention. This is a problem of translation, for the labels clearly state starch. Denis and Degraux say they would like to correct this but fear that if they change the labels they will be accused of further tinkering with the recipes. They are bemused by critics who accuse them of using candy sugar. It was phased out 40 years ago. Pure dextrose is used in the brewhouse while liquid invert sugar is used for secondary fermentation in bottle. Sugar accounts for 5% of the fermentable materials. As for malt extract, Dominque Denis picked up a large felt-tip pen and wrote in huge letters on a display board: "0.1%". He said the extract is added purely for colour adjustment as the main malts used, pale and caramalt, can vary slightly in colour. He said the brewery plans to buy caramalt to a better specification and will phase out malt extract. I sat in on the daily tasting of beers. We had samples of: Red (7% ABV), White (8% ABV) and Blue (9% ABV) that were two months old and were rich with malt, spicy, peppery hops, and earthy, berry fruits. 66% Malt, 22% Wheat Flour, 12% Dextrose Chimay's DominiqueDenis stated that the amount of wheat flour is in the range of 10% - 15%
Original Gravity: 1.075 (18.0° P)
Final Gravity: 1.014 SG (3.6° P)
Alcohol by Vol: 8.0%
Color SRM: 5.6 Color Sample
Bitterness IBU: 27.8
Recipe Type: all-grain
Yield: 6.08 US Gallons