Mikkeller In May
15. Mikkeller Belgian Tripel 9.0%

Tripel. The term comes from the Low Countries and indicates a strong pale ale, but being a Mikkeller beer they've added a few tweaks, using wheat and oats in addition to the barley and ehancing it with candy sugar, orange peel and coriander. It's another beer brewed at the De Proef Brewery in Belgium (see Mikkeller review 9. It's Alive), the story goes that this was supposedly only brewed for the Italian market but an error during shipment meant achieved a much wider distribution. Not sure if I'm totally going for that, the back label is printed in English for a start (perhaps that could be the error?) but whatever the tale it's time to see what it's like.
Pouring a beautiful orange sunset amber, it has a cream coloured head which collapses erratically to leave a beautiful disc of foam. A big yeasty coriander, lemon and honeysuckle aroma has some herbal peppery notes. It glides smoothly over the tongue at first before some dry biting astringency changes the whole dimension on the palate. Some coriander orange and white pepper flavours move seemlessly into some floral honey and candy sweetness before the orange peel comes into play, but almost as an afterthought. There's some dry chalky coriander seed bite in the finish before the alcohol, and remember this is a 9.0%, beer, reveals itself in an understated but resonating light boozy sweetness.
This is another delicious beer from Mikkeller, it has all the qualities you would expect of a Belgian tripel with a nice little touches, smoothing out some of the alcohlic edges you can occasionally experience with this style. But if you really want to know if it's any good, then I'll leave you with the image of the cat of the back label: