It’s the holidays, so it’s off to the Midwest with me (and not the parts where fun beer photos will be taken, alas). So here’s a little photographic holiday memory from 2010 I unearthed in my archive:
My wife and I had made a trip to Montreal in 2010 and brought back a couple bottles of Quelque Chose (literally, “something”) from Unibroue’s rather corporate-looking restaurant in the city’s convention district (tasty food and drink, but yeah, in a convention center). Sadly their brewing facility didn’t do tours, at least not to individuals. In any case, I recall this was their last batch of Quelque Chose since the contract brewer making the kriek had closed up shop.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not into the ‘hey look at this photo of a rare and/or expensive beer I took on Instagram’ scene. For us, this was a fun late-December night in which two just-into-it beer fans clumsily went about dealing with this rather idiosyncratic beer. Quelque Chose is basically a beer version of gluhwein: a generously spiced blended kriek/brown ale with very little carbonation, meant to be consumed either mulled or on the rocks. Needless to say, beer warming in a pot on the stovetop was an unusual sight.
We tried it both ways alongside some tangy cheese fondue. The takeaway was that there’s a reason this beverage has a long cellar life. It was best mulled, but several years of aging probably does it a solid in terms of mellowing. It was a fun holiday memory for the two of us. Now go have a fun beer-y holiday as well, folks.
Disclaimer: I don’t shill for Unibroue, and yes, I know the beer is sitting in a tumbler and not a chalice.
