{"id":3316,"date":"2012-08-03T10:59:01","date_gmt":"2012-08-03T16:59:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davintosh.com\/?p=3316"},"modified":"2012-08-03T10:59:01","modified_gmt":"2012-08-03T16:59:01","slug":"the-perfect-beer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/2012\/08\/03\/the-perfect-beer\/favorite-things\/","title":{"rendered":"The Perfect Beer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I understand fully that one man&#8217;s meat is another man&#8217;s poison &mdash; what one person finds absolutely delicious might taste terrible to another &mdash; but I believe I&#8217;ve discovered the perfect beer; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hetanker.be\/ target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Hetanker Brewery&#8217;s<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hetanker.be\/DeBrouwerij\/AlOnzeBieren\/Cuv%C3%A9evandeKeizerBlauw\/tabid\/68\/language\/en-US\/Default.aspx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Cuv\u00e9e van de Keizer Blauw<\/a> (aka: <a href=\"http:\/\/beeradvocate.com\/beer\/profile\/1534\/35344\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Gouden Carolus Carolus D&#8217;Or &#8211; Grand Cru Of The Emperor.<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/my_carolus.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"my_carolus\" width=\"500\" height=\"378\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-3563\" \/><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/iR2U4BVl37U\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Finding this beer was pretty serendipitous; it&#8217;s a Belgian strong dark ale, and it was being served by one of the vendors we visited at a trade show I attended in Germany this spring (I&#8217;m reasonably sure there are harsh punishments for serving anything but German beers in Germany!) The vendor &mdash; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.xeikon.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Xeikon<\/a> &mdash; has their manufacturing and R&amp;D center in Belgium, so bringing a local brew to the show was a natural thing. The sales guys invited us back to their display area for drinks after the show closed; there were two beers on tap &mdash; a light and a dark, as is the custom there &mdash; and this was the dark beer. <\/p>\n<p>Another European custom is to serve a beer in glasses designed specifically for it; most every beer has its own glass. The Gouden Carolus glasses weren&#8217;t very big, but after quickly downing my first glass and getting into my second I discovered that the stuff also has a pretty potent alcohol content. Another evening after the show I found myself asking for a third glass, and I can safely say that that&#8217;s as drunk as I have been since, oh, 1984 or so. <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve looked high and low locally looking for this brew, and have been unsuccessful, so far. Looking has had its benefits though; one never knows how many beers there are until one starts looking. Actually, I&#8217;m just kind of guessing what beer it was, but I&#8217;m betting that I&#8217;ve found it. The beer I had in Germany was definitely brewed by Hetanker, and it was called Gouden Carolus (the glasses told that tale.) In June, having only the name &#8220;Gouden Carolus&#8221; to go by, I found <a href=\"http:\/\/beeradvocate.com\/beer\/profile\/1534\/4106\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Gouden Carolus Classic<\/a> could be purchased online from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.france44.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">France44.com<\/a>, &amp; ordered three bottles. I disappointed when I tried it though; it wasn&#8217;t the one. I still have two bottles left. It&#8217;s good, very good in fact, but not it.<\/p>\n<p>Sioux Falls has two locally-owned stores that carry huge selections of beers &mdash; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gsfw.com\/index.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Good Spirits Fine Wind &amp; Liquor<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/siouxfallswine.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">JJ&#8217;s Wine, Spirits &amp; Cigars.<\/a> Good Spirits carries two brews from Hetanker, but so far the owner has been unable to get his hands on any Grand Cru. I think he&#8217;s getting tired of me asking about it. <\/p>\n<p>Since I couldn&#8217;t find exactly what I was looking for, I wondered if there were other beers that were similar, so (poor me) I bought a few to give them a try. Some have been OK, some have been downright awful (they&#8217;ll go unnamed), and some have been very good, but not quite what I had in Germany. There are a couple of beers stocked by the local shops that carry the Grand Cru moniker; <a href=\"http:\/\/beeradvocate.com\/beer\/profile\/826\/34084\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Abbey du Val-Dieu Grand Cru<\/a> is excellent, and is thus far the closest match to what I had in Germany (a second 750mL bottle is waiting in the fridge downstairs for a special occasion!) It&#8217;s an excellent beer in its own right, and I was happy to find it. <a href=\"http:\/\/beeradvocate.com\/beer\/profile\/112\/71265\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">North Coast Grand Cru<\/a> is another, but at $18 for a 500mL bottle, it&#8217;s hard for a cheapskate like me to justify, just to try it. The paltry 78 rating at BeerAdvocate.com doesn&#8217;t help. The Val-Dieu sells for about $9; I happily pay that, but cracking open a bottle requires a reason and a partner &mdash; once the cork is out it doesn&#8217;t go back in without a fight, and even if it does the beer won&#8217;t keep. At 10.5% ABV, there&#8217;s no way I could finish a 750mL bottle myself. Well, I could, but&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been in the process of writing this post for several weeks now, and thought I&#8217;d finish it up today. And oh happy day&#8230; Just now I went back to find the link to the page for Gouden Carolus Classic at France44.com and found that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.france44.com\/browse.cfm\/gouden-carolus-cuvee-van-de-keizer-blauw-2012\/4,10307.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Grand Cru is in stock!<\/a> So excited&#8230; I just ordered five bottles. Now, the wait&#8230; It&#8217;ll be worth it!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.belgianfamilybrewers.be\/site\/brewerdetail.php?l=en&#038;br=hetanker\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Belgian Family Brewers Brewery Het Anker page<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I understand fully that one man&#8217;s meat is another man&#8217;s poison &mdash; what one person finds absolutely delicious might taste terrible to another &mdash; but I believe I&#8217;ve discovered the perfect beer;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,12],"tags":[418,419],"class_list":["post-3316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-favorite-things","category-fun","tag-beer","tag-belgian-strong-dark-ale"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3316\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}