![\"Belgian](\"http:\/\/www.beersyndicate.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Belgian-Quad-and-Belgian-Dark-Strong-Ale-1.jpg\")
[“\u2204” and “\u00ac\u2203” are the logical symbols for “does not exist”.]<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/div>In this article, we’ll attempt to shed some light on the following questions:<\/span><\/p>\n 1. What’s the difference between the Belgian Quadrupel (Quad) and the Belgian Dark Strong Ale (BDSA) beer styles? \u00a0Is there even a difference at all? The difference between a Belgian Quad and a Belgian Dark Strong Ale can be a bit of a tricky subject.<\/span><\/p>\n The quick and dirty answer is that a Belgian Quad could be considered the most alcoholic version of a Belgian Dark Strong Ale (BDSA), where the BJCP describes the overall impression of BDSA style as “a\u00a0dark, complex, very strong Belgian ale with a delicious blend of malt richness, dark fruit flavors, and spicy elements.<\/span> Complex, rich, smooth and dangerous.”<\/span><\/p>\n Of course the more accurate\u00a0answer as to the difference between a Belgian Quad and a BDSA is that it depends on who you ask.<\/span><\/p>\n To explain, some sources like the Brewer\u2019s Association (BA) Guidelines classify \u201cBelgian-Style Quadrupel\u201d and \u201cBelgian-Style Dark Strong Ale\u201d as two individual styles of beer, albeit with quite a bit of overlap. Meanwhile, the BJCP Beer Style Guidelines does not consider Belgian Quad as an official beer style, but rather it essentially equates Belgian Quads with the Belgian Dark Strong Ale beer style. [\u00a0Respective beer style descriptions below.]<\/span><\/p>\n In fact, the only mention of \u201cBelgian Quad\u201d in the entire 2015 BJCP Beer Style Guidelines<\/a><\/span> is this: \u201cSometimes known as a Trappist Quadruple, most [Belgian Dark Strong Ales] are simply known by their strength or color designation.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n But\u00a0it\u2019s really not as simple as saying that a \u201cBelgian Quad\u201d is just a stronger (more alcoholic) version of a Belgian Dark Strong Ale because looking at the BA\u2019s<\/span> Beer Style Guidelines<\/a><\/span> (the organization that draws a distinction between the two beer styles), you can have a BDSA at 11.2% ABV, and a Belgian Quad at 9.1%.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n Using only the BA Guidelines, at best\u00a0we could say that a Belgian Quad may<\/em> be stronger than the strongest BDSA because, according to the BA\u2019s Guidelines, a BDSA is max 11.2% ABV whereas a Quad’s max ABV is 14.2%.<\/span><\/p>\n We could also say that what the BA Guidelines consider a Belgian Quad could more or less be at the upper ABV range of what the 2015 BJCP Beer Style Guidelines consider a BDSA, although the max ABV for a BDSA per the BJCP is 12%, which is a bit below the BA’s maximum 14.2% ABV Quad limit. \u00a0And it’s in this sense that\u00a0a Belgian Quad could be considered the most alcoholic version of a Belgian Dark Strong Ale (BDSA).<\/span><\/p>\n Perhaps this is what some people mean when they say that the Belgian Quad style is simply a sub-style<\/em> within the Belgian Dark Strong Ale style. \u00a0Though to be clear , it is certainly not the case that the BJCP description of Belgian Dark Strong Ale completely encompasses the BA description of Belgian Quad, let alone the BA description of Belgian Dark Strong Ale.\u00a0 Not even the BA\u2019s description of Quad is contained within the range of \u00a0its own description of a BDSA. \u00a0In other words, if we take the BA’s guidelines at face value, a Belgian Quad as described by the BA could not be\u00a0a sub-style contained\u00a0completely\u00a0within<\/em>\u00a0either the BA’s or BJCP’s description of the BDSA style. \u00a0So in that technical sense, a Belgian Quad is not a sub-style within the BDSA style.<\/span><\/p>\n Strict definitions aside, it’s hard to have a discussion about Belgian Quad or Belgian Dark Strong Ale without talking about their history and their relation to their Trappist cousins.<\/span><\/p>\n So to\u00a0give a bit of context, some classifications systems list Belgian Quads as the strongest in the continuum of Trappist (or abbey) ales arranged\u00a0by\u00a0ascending\u00a0alcohol content. \u00a0In order, these include Enkel (Single), Dubbel (Double), Tripel (Triple), and the Quadrupel (Quadruple).<\/span><\/p>\n Trappist vs Abbey Beers<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n To briefly explain what “Trappist” ales are, Derek Walsh writes in The Oxford Companion to Beer<\/em>, “Trappist breweries are breweries located within the walls of a Trappist abbey, where brewing is performed by, or under the supervision of, Trappist monks. \u00a0The name “Trappist” originates from the La Trappe abbey located close to the village of Soligny in Normandy, France, where this reform movement of the Cistercian Order of the Strict Observance was founded in 1664. Despite beliefs to the contrary, Trappist beers as they are now produced have only existed since the early 1930s, when Orval and Westmalle developed their first commercially available beers.”<\/span><\/p>\n Abbey beers, on the other hand, “are beers produced in the styles made famous by Belgian Trappist monks, but not actually brewed within the walls of a monastery.” \u00a0The need to make a distinction between Trappist<\/em> and Abbey<\/em> beers was due to the fact that non-Trappist brewers who may or may not have had any connection to actual Trappist brewers were attempting to profit by using the name “Trappist”\u00a0and the\u00a0good reputation that authentic Trappist brewers had earned for producing quality beer.<\/span><\/p>\n Eventually a legal line was drawn on February 28, 1962 by the Belgian Trade and Commerce court in Ghent in the form of a ruling which stated: “the word ‘Trappist’ is commonly used to indicate a beer brewed and sold by monks pertaining to a \u00a0Trappist order, or by people who would have obtained an authorization of this kind… is thus called ‘Trappist,’ a beer manufactured by Cistercian monks and not a beer in the Trappist style which will be rather called ‘abbey beer’.”<\/span><\/p>\n Today, there are eleven monasteries producing Trappist beer including six in Belgium (<\/span>Orval, Chimay, Westvleteren, Rochefort, Westmalle and Achel), two in the Netherlands (Koningshoeven and Maria Toevlucht),\u00a0 one in Austria (Stift Engelszell), one in Italy (Tre Fontane Abbey), and one it the United States (St. Joseph\u2019s Abbey).<\/span><\/p>\n What’s in a Name: Belgian Enkel, Dubbel, Tripel, and Quad<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n To be clear, the terms\u00a0Dubbel<\/em>, Tripel<\/em>, and Quad<\/em> refer to the relative<\/em><\/span> strength of the beers in question, and are not<\/span> double<\/em>, triple<\/em> or quadruple<\/em> the alcoholic strength of an Enkel (Single), respectively.<\/span><\/p>\n That said, there is some debate over how the individual Trappist ales (Enkel, Dubbel, Tripel, Quad) got their names. Garrett Oliver notes that “Both Trappist and secular breweries in Belgium have brewed brown beers for centuries, and beers were probably designated “dubbel” or “tripel” based on a fanciful allusion to their relative alcoholic strength.”<\/span><\/p>\n With respect to the Belgian Tripel, Derek Walsh seems to support this idea when writing “The term “Tripel” refers to the amount of malt with fermentable sugars and the original gravity wort prior to fermentation. \u00a0One theory of the origin is that it follows a medieval tradition where crosses were used to mark casks: a single X for the weakest beer, XX for a medium-strength beer, and XXX for the strongest beer. \u00a0Three X’s would then be synonymous with the name “tripel.” \u00a0In the days when most people were illiterate, this assured drinkers that they were getting the beer they asked for.”<\/span><\/p>\n For a somewhat different prospective about Trappist nomenclature, in\u00a0a piece entitled\u00a0Beer Made by God’s Hand<\/em> from All About Beer magazine, Roger Protz writes about the brewery Westmalle, credited with producing the first Tripel. \u00a0“Nobody at Westmalle knows where the designations Dubbel and Tripel come from. The beers were first called, simply, brown and blonde. From its inception, the brewery always made a brown beer. \u00a0The revered former head brewer, Father Thomas, added blonde in the 1950s. \u00a0The change of names to Dubbel and Tripel possibly reflects the fact that other Trappist breweries produced a lower strength beer called a Single and Westmalle was keen to stress the distinctiveness of its own beer.”<\/span><\/p>\n Follow the Money<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Economics may have played a part in the origin of the terms\u00a0Enkel<\/em> (Single) and Dubbel<\/em> (Double). \u00a0For example, Stan Hieronymus writes that\u00a0“as far back as the sixteenth century, brewers learned that they could charge more for strong beer, considerably more than the additional ingredients and labor would cost. Dubbele clauwaert<\/em> was introduced in 1573, and quickly supplanted enekle clauwaert<\/em> as the best-selling beer”.<\/span><\/p>\n Hieronymus seems to suggest\u00a0that<\/span> dubbele clauwaert<\/em>\u00a0was brewed from “first runnings” and enekle clauwaert<\/em>\u00a0was produced from “second runnings”.<\/span><\/p>\n First<\/em> and second runnings<\/em>\u00a0are brewing terms related\u00a0to an old brewing technique called parti-gyle brewing where multiple beers of different alcoholic strength could be made from the same batch of malt. You might compare parti-gyle brewing to using the same tea bag to make subsequently weaker cups of tea.<\/span><\/p>\n For example, the first step of parti-gyle brewing\u00a0is to mash a batch of malt (mashing is the process by which malt is\u00a0soaked in hot water for about an hour in order to convert the starches in the malt into fermentable sugars). The resulting sugary liquid is called wort.<\/em>\u00a0The first runnings<\/em>\u00a0is the most sugar-concentrated wort which is drained off and transferred into a separate vessel, leaving the malt behind. \u00a0Second runnings<\/em> is the result of the same batch of malt being sparged (rinsed with hot water),\u00a0which yields a less sugary wort and therefore produces a weaker beer. \u00a0Third runnings would be a third even less sugary wort produced by sparging the same malt, once again\u00a0resulting in an even weaker beer, and so on.<\/span><\/p>\n In his blog<\/a><\/span>, Christopher Barnes notes that the\u00a0MBAA (Master Brewers Association of the Americas) theorizes that the parti-gyle system of brewing could be the origin of the names of Enkel<\/em>, Duppel<\/em>, and possibly Tripel<\/em> as the sugar content of \u00a0the first runnings would be about 22.5%, second runnings about 15%, and third runnings 7.5%. \u00a0This results in the Dubbel having two times the sugar content as the Enkel (Single), and the Tripel having three times the amount of sugar as the Enkel (Single).<\/span><\/p>\n Of course this theory only works out as neatly as it does if we have three runnings, because with only two runnings, the first runnings do not contain double the amount of wort that second runnings contain (15 x’s 2 = 30, not 22.5). In other words, it’s not exactly clear how this theory accounts for the\u00a0dubbele clauwaert<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0enekle clauwaert\u00a0<\/em>from 1573\u00a0that\u00a0Hieronymus mentions above. \u00a0We seem to be missing the Tripel\u00a0clauwaert…<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n In any case, Hieronymus concludes that “commercial brewers often saw little value in producing a beer from second runnings, because the cost of goods and labor exceeded what they could charge for weaker beers. Well in to the twentieth century, the Trappists had a built-in consumer base for their smaller beers, the monks themselves, making the production of stronger beers more cost-effective. \u00a0That changed as the need to supplement their diet with beer diminished and the number of members of each monastery dwindled, but by then the practice of using second runnings had pretty much disappeared as well.”<\/span><\/p>\n Fitting a Square Peg in a Round Hole<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Of course, when it comes to discussing Belgian beer styles, it\u2019s important to remember that the concept of grouping beer into categories called \u201cbeer styles\u201d is relatively new, originating with Michael Jackson\u2019s 1977 book The World Guide to Beer<\/em><\/a><\/span>.\u00a0 In 1977, Jackson did not refer to the \u201cBelgian Quad\u201d or \u201cBelgian Dark Strong Ale\u201d beer styles by name at all, but he did identify \u201cTrappiste\u201d beer as a style that contains within its range a few sub-groups which of course included the golden-colored \u201cTriple\u201d style.<\/span><\/p>\n In Jackson\u2019s defense, it wasn\u2019t until 1991 that the very first so-called \u201cQuadrupel\u201d was produced by La Trapp (Koningshoeven brewery), although Jackson does mention St Sixtus, noting that the brewery \u201chas a selection of excellent dark ales, ranging in alcoholic content from four to twelve percent by volume.\u201d \u00a0The twelve percent beer would, by some modern classifications, be considered a \u201cQuad\u201d.\u00a0 Jackson also includes a photo of a bottle of Trappistes Rochefort 10 (11.3% ABV), which was developed in the late 1940s and early 50s, and is also today classified by some as a Quad.<\/span><\/p>\n To illustrate the nature of attempting to group pre-existing kinds of beer into different categories, Gordon Strong, president of the BJCP, underscores that \u201cThe Belgian beer came first, and people are trying to categorize it.\u201d \u00a0To expound on this point, Strong has also noted that \u201cthe Belgian Dark Strong Ale style is an artificial American judging construct, not an authentic Belgian brewing constraint. [The beer style is] a \u201ccatch-all\u201d category for large, dark Belgian beers that fall with \u201cCategory S\u201d (a legal classification for Belgian beers with an original gravity of 1.062+).\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Randy Mosher echoes this idea in Tasting Beer<\/em>, noting that \u201cThis [Belgian Strong Dark Ale style] really is a catchall category rather than a style with a specific history.\u00a0 As the work of Lacambre points out, there were a number of historic strong, darker beers, but there is no clear lineage from these older brewers\u2026\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n And Stan Hieronymus reminds us that \u201csome categories emerge in full focus- dubbel and tripel mean something specific to Belgian beer drinkers- but others don\u2019t.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Hieronymus had next to nothing to say about \u201cBelgian Quads\u201d aside from a small line in his 2005 book Brew Like a Monk <\/em>referring to the \u201cquadrupel\u201d style that\u2019s \u201cnot quite a style.\u201d \u00a0And like Strong, Hieronymus also lumps beers some consider to be Quads under the category of Belgian dark strong ale.<\/span><\/p>\n When discussing Belgian Quads in relation to Belgian Dark Strong Ale in the entry on \u201cabbey beers\u201d in\u00a0The Oxford Companion to Beer<\/em>, Garrett\u00a0<\/span>Oliver writes \u201cA style sometimes referred to as \u201cBelgian strong dark ale\u201d or \u201cabbey ale\u201d intensifies the character of the classic dubbel, bringing more alcohol and fruit character at ABVs of 8% to 9.5%.\u00a0 Above this range, all bets are off, and waggish craft brewers, rarely Belgian, produce \u201cquadrupels\u201d at ABVs up to 14%.\u00a0 \u2026 Some quadrupels can show a wonderful plummy, figgy fruit quality, but many are merely hot.\u00a0 The Belgian brewer will often mutter under his breath that these beers are distinctly un-Belgian, but the American, Brazilian, or Danish beer enthusiast who loves \u201cquads\u201d is entirely unconcerned.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n In a 2005 presentation called \u201cDesigning Great Belgian Dark Strong Ales\u201d, Strong categorized modern variations of Belgian Strong Dark ale into the following four interpretations:<\/span><\/p>\n 1. Trappist<\/strong>: drier, lower final gravity, with examples being Westvleteren 12, Rochefort 10, and Chimay Grand Reserve [blue]. For reference, directly below is the BA\u2019s description<\/a><\/span> of what it considers to be the two overlapping beer styles that are Belgian-Style Dark Strong Ale and Belgian-Style Quadrupel:<\/span><\/p>\n Belgian-Style Dark Strong Ale:\u00a0 <\/strong>Belgian-Style Dark Strong Ales are medium-amber to very dark. Chill haze is allowable at cold temperatures. Medium to high malt aroma and complex fruity aromas are distinctive. Very little or no diacetyl aroma should be perceived. Hop aroma is low to medium. Medium to high malt intensity can be rich, creamy, and sweet. Fruity complexity along with soft roasted malt flavor adds distinct character. Hop flavor is low to medium. Hop bitterness is low to medium. These beers are often, though not always, brewed with dark Belgian \u201ccandy\u201d sugar. Very little or no diacetyl flavor should be perceived. Herbs and spices are sometimes used to delicately flavor these strong ales. Low levels of phenolic spiciness from yeast byproducts may also be perceived. Body is medium to full. These beers can be well attenuated, with an alcohol strength which is often deceiving to the senses.<\/span><\/p>\n Original Gravity (\u00b0Plato) 1.064-1.096 (15.7-22.9 \u00b0Plato) \u2022 Apparent Extract\/Final Gravity (\u00b0Plato) 1.012-1.024 (3.1-6.1 \u00b0Plato) \u2022 Alcohol by Weight (Volume) 5.6%-8.8% (7.1%-11.2%) \u2022 Bitterness (IBU) 20-50 \u2022 Color SRM (EBC) 9-35 (18-70 EBC)<\/span><\/p>\n Belgian-Style Quadrupel:<\/strong>\u00a0 Belgian-Style Quadrupels are amber to dark brown. Chill haze is acceptable at low serving temperatures. A mousse-like dense, sometimes amber head will top off a properly poured and served quad. Complex fruity aromas reminiscent of raisins, dates, figs, grapes and\/or plums emerge, often accompanied with a hint of winy character. Hop aroma not perceived to very low. Caramel, dark sugar and malty sweet flavors and aromas can be intense, not cloying, while complementing fruitiness. Hop flavor not perceived to very low. Hop bitterness is low to low-medium. Perception of alcohol can be extreme. Complex fruity flavors reminiscent of raisins, dates, figs, grapes and\/or plums emerge, often accompanied with a hint of winy character. Perception of alcohol can be extreme. Clove-like phenolic flavor and aroma should not be evident. Diacetyl and DMS should not be perceived. Body is full with creamy mouthfeel. Quadrupels are well attenuated and are characterized by the immense presence of alcohol and balanced flavor, bitterness and aromas. They are well balanced with savoring\/sipping drinkability. Oxidative character if evident in aged examples should be mild and pleasant.<\/span><\/p>\n
\n2. Is the Belgian Quad style simply a sub-style of Belgian Dark Strong Ale?
\n3. What’s the difference between a Trappist beer and an Abbey beer?
\n4. Is a Belgian Quad four times stronger than a Belgian Enkel (Single)?
\n5. Where did the terms Belgian Quad, Tripel, Dubbel and Enkel come from and why are they named the way that they are?
\n6. What are the descriptions of a Belgian Quad and a Belgian Dark Strong Ale?<\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.beersyndicate.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Brewers-Associations-Description-of-a-Belgian-Dark-Strong-Ale-and-a-Belgian-Quad.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n<\/span>2. Abbey<\/strong>: fuller body, sweeter with examples being St. Bernardus Aby 12, Gouden Carolus Grand Cru, Abbaye des Rocs Grand Cru, and Gulden Draak.
\n<\/span>3. Barelywine<\/strong>: mostly malt with examples being Scaldis (Bush), Weyerbacher QUAD, and La Trappe Quadrupel.
\n<\/span>4. Spiced<\/strong>: N\u2019ice Chouffe and Affligem No\u00ebl.<\/span><\/p>\n