I am only tangentially familiar with St. Bernardus. I've had the abt 12, I know there was once some type of tie in to Westvleteren. And I know they're not recognized as a Trappist ale anymore, and there's some story about that. Notice I've attached a link to all of that stuff so that you can really color inside the lines. I've written a bunch of newsletters for this beer exchange while checking out dozens upon dozens of websites, and this could easily be the biggest internet rabbit hole anyone could ever have the experience of jumping down.
So what did we find out after we opened these...
(Editors Note: St Bernardus has confirmed that Best By Bottle Dates are 4 years after bottling. So note that the US bottle was 5 months old, basically as fresh as it gets, and the France bottle was a little over a year old.)
Well, first, we needed to decide what we were going to drink for the second edition of IMOL, and as they say, 'Tis the Season. Especially for Holiday Beers. We threw around a handful of ideas, and the France half of our group very intelligently suggested that we make this one a Holiday Edition. SBX had been acquired on the France end, so it was time to find a bottle. I was able to get one at The Beer Shoppe in Ardmore, and luckily enough for me, I didn't have to buy a bomber which seem to be pretty prevalent in area Whole Foods and Wegmans. Side note: The Beer Shoppe has just gone through some renovations, and now have a much larger tap selection. It looks great in there. Below you'll see the pictures of the back of each bottle. Extremely similar. The US bottle is A 08 07 20 and the France bottle is A 01 09 19.
Assuming St Bernardus puts best by dates 5 years in advance for all markets, the US market bottle was a little over a year old (although I think fresher and am trying to confirm, bottle dating is not the easiest thing to find information on) and the France bottle was about a year and a half older than that. For style though, we didn't think there would be that much change, which is one of the reasons we picked this beer. The abv on this is 10% and most of the St Bernardus Abbey Ales are known to age well.
The beers looked pretty identical. A rich/deep auburn. The US bottle kept it's head a little better, and stuck around through most of the session. Both stayed pretty well carbonated, and were pretty active as you tipped the glass back and forth. Neither had very much sediment at the bottom of the bottle (which is also something that makes me think they're fresher bottles than 1-2 years.) After that amount of time for a Belgian Abbey Ale, I would expect a much more grubby body with a decent amount of sediment.
Outside of the head (France confirmed it dissipated pretty quickly after the pour,) there didn't seem to be much different about the beer. The alcohol is hidden extremely well. This could have been because they may or may not be aged a little bit, and truth be told, I was kind of hoping for bottled on and best buy dates like the France Hitachino bottle had. If they are a year or more older, that would certainly mellow out the alcohol a little bit.
France pointed out bubble gum, just your plain old double bubble, which I didn't really get until I was looking for it, but once it was mentioned definitely got at the beginning of every sip. Another yeast quality was baked banana, although not super strong. I was expecting a pretty big vanilla/root beer note, but didn't really get that. France picked up Coke, spiced bread. We both got cinnamon notes right off the bat. Definitely tasted like Christmas (think clove/spice.)
A picture of the Sister beer in an undisclosed location in France:
Overall, this beer is pretty fantastic. It's something that's definitely worth hunting down for the Holidays, and makes me want to get more for winter, as well as go through the balance of the St Bernardus catalog.
We're still Throwing around more ideas for what we can do next. It would be pretty interesting to try to find a beer that may be a little more fragile, or even one that's made in two different breweries. Stone is starting to distribute out of their brewery in Germany, and Brooklyn has a decent distribution to France. If you have other interesting ideas, I'd love to hear them.
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