#352: Tsjee Party

A holy trinity of De Struise's Tsjeeses variants were entombed for a number of years in the cupboard before being miraculously unearthed in the past few weeks. As is only proper, all three were opened at once and, with the help of the Sober Destrier, a fully blind tasting was conducted to parse the influence of wood (or lack thereof) on the beer.

Kerstbier 2013

The three varieties opened were the 2013 Kerstbier, a Bourbon BA, and a Port BA. All three date from 2013, and were given different coloured labels for note-taking purposes.

First up was Green, though it pours a slightly hazy ruby-orange. It's rich and raisiny on the nose and has the fruit and sweet spice of a wintery fruitcake to taste. It's lightly boozy throughout, as the touch of brown sugar turns to a caramelised malt afters. There's no discernible wood character and the light spice and sweetness makes it a logical Christmas beer, so the Kerstbier is my guess.

Pink pours clearer and with less foam, and produces a darker, richer and almost pungent aroma. It seems dryer too, at least at the finish, with some tell-tale wood-related oxidation, all sherried with dried dark fruits. There's also some real bourbon hints with this one - the typical vanilla and wood shaving stuff that plagues lesser bourboned beers but compliments others quite nicely. This is beer occupies the latter category for the most part, though I feel the bourbon character in particular adds a pungency that hampers the richness and fullness effect evident in the other two beers. Of course, my guess for this is the Bourbon B.A.

Port B.A.

Last but not least is Orange, which is sweeter on the nose than the previous but in a darker, richer sort of way, all jammy fruits and booze. This appears in both aroma and flavour and has throwbacks the the Green (Kerstbier) with its plum pudding and raisin depths. There isn't much port character here exactly; no tawny aged character, no woody leathery maturity, but on the strength of the straight-up dark-rich-sweetness (as well as by process of elimination) I'm emboldened to think this is the Port B.A. rendition.

It turns out my guesses for all these were correct, but it must be said that in practice this was rather easier than expected. As for my preference, I would lean toward the Kerstbier for being arguably the most complex despite and apparent lack of wood interference, while the Port B.A. does offer the straightforward quad-like fullsomeness that sometimes you just need.

All that being said, the high quality is apparent across all three versions, even if they don't quite inspire me in the same way as the Pannepot (new or old) or XXX Reserva from the same brewer.