The 2nd Perfect 5 - St. Bernardus Tripel

I headed up to Lucky Baldwin's in Pasadena during another school break on Wednesday, looking forward to their Oktoberfest celebration this week. Unfortunately, and as is often the case, they were out of many of the oktoberfests. So I decided to pull one from the standard menu that I hadn't yet. My friend Loren had recently given me a recommendation for the St. Bernardus Tripel after he had had it a few weeks ago at the same location. They served it in the St. Bernardus chalice (different than pictured) and it looked amazing. Great hazy golden color, great fluffy white head and the aroma was standard Belgian yeast earthiness and tiny malty/sugary sweetness. The taste was a perfect balance. Everything about this beer I couldn't imagine being better. It now joins Russian River's Sanctification as the only other beer I've rated a perfect 5 on BA.

In quick addition to that, it was also Urthel Night on this particular night. They had 3 (or 4) Urthel beers on tap and a complementary Urthel glass offer with purchase of a beer. So I ordered up their quadrupel called Samaranth. It was standard high strength, 12% ABV, but when it came I seriously thought they poured the wrong beer. It was a dark golden, not the dark brown that I expected. But apparently that's actually the quadrupel. And it was strong. It started out with a nice and very sweet fruity taste but the back end brought lots of alcohol, mostly causing a bitterness at the end and then a minor burn. I gave it a 3.75 on BA, but at least I got a cool Urthel tulip glass as well.