The beers of Futenma: Achel Trappist blonde bier

Today I have my final Trappist brewery, Achel. This is their blonde, but I also have their bruim (brown) to review later. The monks who made these beers, the Abby of Saint Benedict, built a chapel in Achel, Belgium in 1648. Years later this became an Abby, which was regrettably destroyed by the French during the revolution. In 1844 the monks of Westmalle rebuilt the Abby and started brewing operations in 1852, eventually becoming a full Trappist monastery in 1871. The Abby unfortunately had to be temporarily abandoned in 1914 due to German occupation, during which the Germans raided the brewery for its copper. Achel Abby did not begin brewing again until 2001 with help from the monks of Westmalle and Rochefort.

The Achel chalice has a very modern look to it, looks more like a wine glass than a beer chalice, no agitator, it has the modern Achel Trappist logo. The bottle has the same Achel logo, it is a slender long neck bottle with a white cap. It says it's contents are 8% alcohol by volume, other than that it's all Belgian French. So let's open this up and see how it heads.

Not much of an aroma from the bottle, we'll see how it is from the glass. The color is definitely blonde when held up to the light, but a sort of orange otherwise. It has a light citrusy nose, a little bit floral. It maintains a light, but creamy head. This is probably due to all of the life within the glass. The first thing I notice about this beer when I sip it is not even the flavor, it's the mouthfeel. It almost feels as though it's acidic, but it's not really that acidic at all, it's the alcohol giving an almost immediate warming feeling, which seems odd to me as this beer is only 8%. Body is medium full. The flavor is very grassy, citrusy hopps. Online, allot of people have said it has a cheese note to it. Usually I disregard descriptions like this, but after rolling this beer around for a minute, I find it to be true. This is kind of like an IPA really, if an IPA was not actively trying to be hoppy. I'm going to let this warm up and see if the flavor changes.

It becomes much more fruity when it's warm. The cheese flavor is definitely much more pronounced as well, however, so is the alcohol. That seems to be a desired quality in European beers, I must say that as an American I don't particularly enjoy this, open minded as I try to be. This is honestly like having a completely different beer, I cannot remember having a beer that has switched it's character as it warmed so drastically. I do prefer the colder version though. That may be my partiality to hoppy beers over fruity ones.
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This one was good, I can check it off the list. Would I have it again? It was an interesting beer, but I wasn't that impressed. It was well crafted as all Trappist beers are, but I feel like it's very general purpose, which is to say, it didn't have enough of any one particular element to make me drawn to it.
In other news, all of the Hacker-Pschorr at the PX is 93¢ a bottle