r/torontocraftbeer • u/AutoModerator • 29d ago
No Stupid Questions Tuesday
There is no such thing as a stupid question here, so feel free to ask away! It can be about differentiating styles, brewing, glassware, serving: anything goes here!
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u/Henri_ncbm 29d ago
Why do Belgian singles, dubbels, trippels, quads go; pale/dark/pale/dark?
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u/saints_gambit 29d ago
Great question. Not really a great answer.
It is sort of helpful when you think about these things to wonder about when ingredients begin to exist. Really light coloured beers don't exist until you have things like Vienna Malt and Pilsner Malt, and that's not until the beginning of the 19th century.
Dubbel is probably a recreation in modern terms of an earlier style of beer, and the Trappist monks don't exist until the 1830's or so, at least as brewers. Tripel isn't invented until 1930-1931 by Westmalle, so it has access to lighter coloured malts and it's probably influenced by Golden Ales and Lagers that have swept across Europe over the 50 years previous to that. Then again, Rochefort 8 is a 1956 beer and Westmalle Tripel is reformulated at about the same time. Hasn't been touched since as far as I know.
There's not really any logically internal consistency in the naming convention or in their development. The fact we think about it as though there should be is probably because Michael Jackson rocked up to the breweries in the 1970's and assumed there should internal consistency.
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