BEER WITH A (BELGIAN) SOCIALIST: Thanks for the Abbaye des Rocs Triple Imperiale vintage one-off. Now can I please have St. Bernardus Tripel on tap?

It should come as no surprise that I've had to learn the beer programming game all over again since my return to the biz at Pints&union.

Ten years ago when the wholesale supply chain was starting to be told that establishments intended to rotate draft beers as much as humanly possible, the middlemen gazed back at us in baffled "who is this space alien?" amazement.

Now it's the same reaction when I tell them I just want to keep the same beer on tap all (or most) of the time, and never mind this was the default standard operating procedure for something like 70 years following the end of Prohibition.

Right now, at this precise moment, if I could snap my fingers and make it so, there'd be a draft line at Pints&union pouring Spezial's elegant smoked amber lager from Bamberg, flown over monthly just for us at an eminently reasonable price point.

Okay, so that's utterly impossible.

Restricting my wish to the attainable, this draft line would function as such:

Pour two sixth-barrels of St. Bernardus Tripel in a row, followed by one sixth-barrel of a kindred rotating traditional Belgian ale style; rinse, and repeat -- and if the Tripel maintains popularity, skip the rotating slot every now and then.

In fact, this is so very possible that for a few months at the end of 2018, it actually was occurring. Our customers enjoyed St. Bernardus Tripel, as I knew they would. Then one day I ordered more and the wholesaler was out of stock. This kept happening, and I kept asking. As usual, it took a while to get to the bottom of it, but eventually it was conveyed to me that the inventory was depleted because there were no plans to order any more.

Turns out we were the only account in the whole damn state of Indiana selling sixth-barrels of St. Bernardus Tripel, and in case you're wondering, this brand is my preference because (a) I'm a huge fan of St. Bernardus, and (b) I know what the hell I'm doing when it comes to making intelligent classicist choices like this.

My natural response: "But maybe both the wholesaler and the importer would be delighted to know that I intend to sell St. Bernardus Tripel on draft for roughly 2/3 of each year, and since the St Bernardus ABT 12 is still coming to Indiana in kegs, how hard could it be to accommodate me?"

The wholesaler duly inquired, and came up with this: the importer will ship only full pallets of St. Bernardus Tripel, not split pallets, and this would mean bringing in 20 kegs at once, and despite the very long shelf life, the wholesaler views this as far too many for a brand it apparently hasn't been pushing anywhere else, anywhere, apart from the bizarre new account directed by one hellaciously obstinate contrarian in New Albany.

Silly me. I was expecting to hear importer and wholesaler reply in unison: "GREAT. Now all we need to do is sell a handful of kegs elsewhere in the ENTIRE STATE OF INDIANA to make this work."

Mind you, I like this wholesaler. It's a company chock full of good, helpful people; if not, I wouldn't have gotten the lowdown prompting this rant. Credit them for answering my questions, even if there's a disconnect somewhere higher up, because what I really needed to hear, and still do, is this: "We'll get on this and figure it out."

I sent a detailed e-mail to the importer asking if they'd reconsider the "no split pallet" decision and received ... absolutely no reply in return.

St. Bernardus remains a great personal favorite. I can't say much for their representation in America, at least yet, although I fully expect at some future point someone will call me and say "wait -- I get it! You want to sell one of our products most of the time and will do so, though only if we send it to the wholesaler first!"

Um, yep. That's the size of it.

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At this point the story gets even more weird.

The wholesaler carries a serviceable substitute brand, Abbaye du Val-Dieu Tripel, albeit at a higher price point than St. Bernardus, so I asked to be sent a keg of that one. It arrived looking a bit battered, but okay; that's not unusual for imports. It sat for a week in the cooler, then it was time to tap it.

Out came liquid that did not look or taste like a classic Belgian Tripel, and did not match on-line descriptions or my own memories of the brand. To be truthful, it tasted wonderful; dark and strong, though turbid and with some brown-sugary oxidized character. To be truthful, it tasted like some of the vintage Belgians we used to drink at 't Brugs Beertje when Daisy would haul up examples of the cellar stock.

I reported all this to the wholesaler and took a close look at the keg label, which revealed a completely different brewery.

It wasn't Val-Dieu at all, but Brasserie des Rocs, a wonderful artisanal brewer. The words "Triple Imperiale" were plainly visible. I might have looked closer when it arrived. It seemed as though an honest mistake might have been made in the warehouse.

Now the fun began in earnest and a conversation commenced. The wholesaler could not find any record of such an ale in its inventory. Shortly thereafter, the importer was contacted -- the same one that brings us (or more accurately, doesn't bring us) St. Bernardus draft -- and they asked the wholesaler how on earth it had a keg of Abbaye des Rocs Triple Imperiale in stock when the brand no longer was being imported, and hadn't been for at least three years.

Well, here's how: our wholesaler acquired the rights to St. Bernardus from another wholesaler roughly six months ago. When the deal was done and the stock was transferred, this orphaned keg hopped a ride from the storage area where it long ago had slipped under the radar.

This answered one question, because if the previous wholesaler didn't even know what it had in stock, perhaps the same caliber of neglect had allowed St. Bernardus Tripel to go to seed in terms of statewide sales.

So, did I want to pour Abbaye des Rocs Triple Imperiale at Pints&union or send it back?

To reiterate, to me it tasted good. Obviously it was vintage, which would not have sufficed for a Carlsberg, but this one was big enough when fresh to have developed nicely as it aged.

It made me think of a sunny fall afternoon in 1995 in Antwerp, Belgium.

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We’d started drinking early at the Elfde Gebod (Eleventh Commandment) café, where religious statuary both sacred and creatively profane lined the walls. The eccentric tableau was just creepy enough to be inspirational, and viewing “Jesus with the head of a dog” while sipping Westmalle Tripel made Elfde Gebod my kind of place.

Borrowed image. My photos are somewhere.

Later that afternoon, my pot of North Sea mussels steamed in dry white wine was superb. Endless, graceful “bollekes” of locally brewed De Koninck amber ale were equally fabulous, and later we found Rodenbach on tap somewhere at a bar upstairs on the other side of the cathedral.

Belgium’s diamond capital was a city filled with food, drink and nightlife, and the conclusion of our lengthy Antwerp session came at the famous beer bar called the Kulminator, where Dirk was featuring ten-year-old vintage dark ale called Breughel, brewed by a long defunct brewery and supposedly salvaged from a forgotten stash hidden in a friend’s garage (since then it has been revived as a going concern).

Miraculously, the process of aging had been quite friendly to the Breughel. Oxidization offered a velvety patina of sherry-like nuttiness to concentrated fruitiness, on the order of plums, pecans and toffee. I drank one, ordered another, and lit an authentic Havana: The Romeo y Julieta Churchill, purchased a few days earlier at a tobacconist’s in Brussels.

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I decided we'd serve the Abbaye des Rocs Triple Imperiale, and I hope at least some of you have enjoyed a glass of it by now. As of Sunday it was pouring, so those of you interested might wish to stop by early in the week.

I'll make every effort to convey this nostalgic essay to the wholesaler and importer in the hope we'll be allowed to do what we'd like to do, which is:

Pour two sixth-barrels of St. Bernardus Tripel in a row, followed by one sixth-barrel of a kindred rotating traditional Belgian ale style; rinse, and repeat -- and if the Tripel maintains popularity, skip the rotating slot every now and then.

As always, I'm strangely optimistic rationality will prevail.

PINTS & UNION PORTFOLIO: St. Bernardus Tripel (heritage) and Sierra Nevada Narwhal Imperial Stout (serendipity) to debut new draft lines this Thursday, September 20.

Or, a beer list's incremental progress.

Regular readers already know that I'm a pendulum theorist. As the pendulum pertains to the wonderful world of better beer, it recently has been swinging back toward the center. Old-school is the new counter-revolution.

For me, comfort beer is a fastball with no movement, right down the center of the plate. Accordingly, my aim as beer director during the first eight weeks of Pints&union has been to re-establish the concept of a beer list purposefully designed to showcase world heritage classics -- not ignoring contemporary craft creativity, but contextualizing it.

In short, you can't know where you're going unless you know where you've been.

As such, phase one of the bottle and can list at Pints&union largely is complete. We have a few housekeeping tasks to complete with regard to storage, then phase two can commence, boosting the everyday list to around 50 selections, with room for a few rotating guests.

Meanwhile draft sales have been the steady engine we hoped they'd be, and in spite of being frustrated by wholesaler outages, a firm template is in place: eight lines, six of them fixed and two rotating, albeit it very slowly on a seasonal basis.

We're using a basic, short-draw keg box system for draft, and all along there has been space in each box for a 1/6 barrel keg. I wanted to take a few weeks to assess the sales landscape, and accordingly we can now begin to use these two draft lines, beginning on Thursday (September 20).

In terms of formatting, one of these taps will be devoted to heritage, and the second to serendipity.

By "heritage" I mean ales like St. Bernardus Tripel.

Belgian Tripel derives from the Trappist brewing tradition, and especially in terms of its typical deep golden-orange hue, it stands as a relatively recent adaptation of old-school brewing methods.

Hendrik Verlinden of the Drie Linden brewery, brewing scientist and yeast specialist, had been formulating a golden ale to combat the celebrity of pale beers in Europe in the early 1930s (he helped Westmalle in the 1920s as a consultant of sorts). In 1932, he released Witkap Pater (now Witkap Tripel). His beers were marketed as Trappist, which wasn’t altogether apropos with those monasteries, but because of his earlier role in assisting their brewing, he was the sole non-Trappist brewer allowed to market his Witkap Pater as a Trappist-style beer. His role in helping Westmalle develop its tripel is nebulous, but it is known that the monks were also tinkering with this new style by 1931. Westmalle introduced its tripel, and newly built brewhouse, in 1934. It is still considered the standard by many. Ever the perfectionists, Westmalle’s esteemed Brother Thomas tweaked the recipe to include more hops. It has remained unchanged since 1956.

Note that Pints&union also carries Westmalle Tripel on bottles, but the draft of the moment comes from the St. Bernardus brewery, one-time Trappist supplier, now a producer of "abbey" styles -- signifying a connection to the Trappist legacy.

Located in Watou, just 12 kilometers (about 7 miles) from Westvleteren, St. Bernardus brewed the “Trappist Westvleteren” beers under a license from the monks at Sint Sixtus Abbey from 1946-1992. There’s a billboard from that era in the St. Bernardus tasting room that reads: “Brouwerij Sint Bernardus: alleenvervaardiger van de bieren van de abdij van West-Vleteren,” or “Sint Bernardus brewery, the sole producer of the beers of the Abbey of Sint Sixtus in Westvleteren.”

That arrangement came to an end when the license expired in 1992. A new brewing facility was established in Westvleteren. Crucially, St. Bernardus retained all the recipes they had brewed for Sint Sixtus during the 46-year relationship, including that of the Westvleteren 12, a 10.2% ABV Strong Ale which RateBeer awarded “Best Beer in the World” in 2006, 2007, 2010, 2012, and 2013.

Although St. Bernardus is just a few clicks from Poperinge, a town I've visited many times, somehow I've never been to visit the brewery. This omission will be rectified in 2020. Pints&union also carries bottles of the epochal St. Bernardus Abt 12, which is the finest Trappist that isn't a Trappist at all.

Moving to the second new draft line, we'll be inaugurating it with Sierra Nevada Harwhal Imperial Stout, which dates to 2012. Interestingly, the idea of brewing stout goes all the way back to Sierra Nevada's inception almost 40 years ago.

When Ken Grossman and Paul Camusi opened Sierra Nevada Brewing Company in Chico, California, in 1980, the first beer they made was a stout. Sierra Pale came along shortly after but took almost a dozen tries to get the recipe dialed in to their liking. In his book Beyond the Pale: The Story of Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., Grossman says the pair spent a lot of time “trying to decide exactly what flavor and aroma profile our flagship beer should have. We knew we needed to create our own style of beer that would stand out as being unique and distinctive.”

Of course "imperial" stout is the boldest and strongest of the stout family.

Though the history of imperial stout is somewhat murky, it was indeed a London brewery that is credited with popularizing the style as a strong, exported stout. Around 1781, Barclay Perkins began exporting its stout to assorted ports in the Baltic region. Purposely brewed to be a formidable beer, it would easily withstand the voyage. The serendipitous extension of this attribute was that it was also perfectly suited for the cold, gnarly climate, where spirits were very much favored. When Empress Catherine II discovered it, its place in Russian legend was cemented. The commercial viability of the brew ensured that the style endured.

Recently the enduring mystery of the narwhal's distinctive "tusk" has been partially resolved: it's used to immobilize prey as an aid in fishing for food.

The narwhal is the unicorn of the sea, a pale-colored porpoise found in Arctic coastal waters and rivers. These legendary animals have two teeth. In males, the more prominent tooth grows into a swordlike, spiral tusk up to 8.8 feet long. The ivory tusk tooth grows right through the narwhal's upper lip. Scientists are not certain of the tusk's purpose, but some believe it is prominent in mating rituals, perhaps used to impress females or to battle rival suitors. Females sometimes grow a small tusk of their own, but it does not become as prominent as the male's.

Here is Sierra Nevada's description.

A malt-forward monster, highlighting the depths of malt flavor, Narwhal Imperial Stout is inspired by the mysterious creature that thrives in the deepest fathoms of the frigid Arctic Ocean. Featuring incredible depth of malt flavor, rich with notes of espresso, baker’s cocoa, roasted grain and a light hint of smoke, Narwhal is a massive malt-forward monster. Aggressive but refined with a velvety smooth body and decadent finish, Narwhal will age in the bottle for years to come.

At 10.2% abv, Narwhal Imperial Stout is a "gravity" beer and will be served in 10-ounce glasses. To me it's a dessert beer in itself, to be sipped after a meal.

For St. Bernardus Tripel, we have 25 cl signature glasses. Pair with a Croque Madame and seasoned frites.

As for what will follow these two beers, I'm not sure. I'd like to keep the Tripel on tap for at least two weeks, at least until Harvest Homecoming. Narwhal's a one-off, and I'll see what's available before rendering a decision.