Imports Again: Why You Should Drink 'Em

After my post last week about the delights of beer from foreign lands, I hafety considered a follow-up to explain why imports are worthwhile.  Alan has forced my hand:

So, unlike Jeff, I do not counsel you to get your daily serving of beer classics like the bran that's more and more in my diet.

First off, lets just dispense with the "classics" debate.  That word didn't appear in my post nor did the exhortation to drink beers because they had some status.  No, the point was to drink foreign beer because they taste good and more than that, because they're different from American beers.  This is a fact that escapes some Americans.  We brew all the world's beer styles here, but Americans brew in their own way.  We don't have to, but mostly we do. 

Source: Roger Protz

Take Westmalle, the example I was using earlier.  The monks make it exclusively with pilsner malt but also more than 15% sugar in the wort.  This is a pretty typical Belgian approach--simple malt bills that start with pilsner malt and usually include sugar.  Americans may use pilsner malt, but a lot will start with American two-row.  Many will layer in various specialty malts for color and subtle flavor (this is also typical).  Most will use nowhere near the amount of sugar Belgians do, if they use it at all.  Westmalle ferments cool for a Trappist monastery, but some monks let their temps get well into the 70s and Westvleteren lets it rise to the mid-80s (they use the Westmalle yeast, interestingly).  I have almost never encountered an American brewer who is comfortable letting fermentation go past the low 70s--it just goes against their grain.  Finally, Belgians almost always do a secondary fermentation in the bottle, the single most distinguishing feature of Belgian brewing.  Some Americans bottle-condition, but it's rare. 

Westmalle is a really basic beer.  Pilsner malt, sugar, uncomplicated hopping.  Yet you will find precious few Americans who make it the same way.  If what you've been drinking is stuff from the US called "tripel," it's a different beast than what the Belgians make.

We could go down the line.  Americans don't use Bohemian floor malts, very few use first-wort hopping, and almost none use decoction--three habits that are ubiquitous in the Czech Republic.  Americans don't use sugar when they're making English styles, and almost none of them risk commercial doom by brewing them at English strengths.  (I nod now toward Oakridge with respect.)  And on and on.

The fact that Americans don't make much of an effort to make perfect reproductions of foreign styles is a testament to the steady development of an American tradition.  We brew the way we brew.  When an American whips up an "English bitter," she actually makes an American-English bitter.  It probably has an English yeast strain and maybe one or two English hops, but it will be a 5% beer made with American malts and served on regular CO2 taps.  When she makes a tripel, she'll make similar decisions based on the expectations of her customers and her own preferences.  It will be hoppier, use less sugar, use different malts, and likely not be bottle-conditioned. 

And so if you want to know what a Belgian tripel tastes like, you gotta drink a Belgian tripel.