Green’s Quest

I admit, I’ve always been curious about these Green’s beers. Never curious enough to pull the trigger, but one of the consequences of being a huge beer nerd is that when my birthday rolls around, people give me beer that I normally wouldn’t buy (just to be clear, this is not something I’m complaining about). In this case, I got a rather awesome six-pack, picked out by my nieces and Brother (who had steered them towards the Belgian aisle, bless him). I got some Chimay and a Westmalle Tripel, and a few others, including this beer – a gluten free “Tripel Blonde Ale”. Yep, no barley in this at all. In it’s place, we’ve got Millet (whatever that is), Buckwheat (Ohhhh Tay!), Rice (I know what that is!), and Sorghum (does not sound like a foodstuff, but let’s go with it). That doesn’t sound too appetizing. On the other hand, it clocks in at 8.5% ABV, so maybe there’s some hope? Ehh, not so much:

Greens Quest Tripel

Green’s Quest Tripel Blonde Ale – Pours a golden yellow color with lots of fizzy, big bubbled head. Smells of sweet green apple and not a whole lot else. The taste kinda leans towards that green apple character too, with a light tartness and big, cloying sweetness. Mouthfeel is actually kinda heavy, highly carbonated (which does help cut the sweetness), but not quite what you want out of a tripel. Overall, it’s not an outright abomination, but it’s not really that good either. C-

Beer Nerd Details: 8.5% ABV bottled (500 ml). Drank out of a goblet on 9/22/12. Label sez: “Best Before 05/01/17”

Yeah, so I can’t say as though I’m going to run out to try more gluten-free beer. I’m just going to be thankful that I don’t have a gluten problem. Let’s just chalk this up as a loss in the great game of Belgian Beer Roulette. And such loses only make the wins that much sweeter.

2 thoughts on “Green’s Quest”

  1. Millet is a grain, kind of a cross between rice and couscous. It’s not half bad, and fairly cheap. Buckwheat is a pseudo-grain, actually a flower seed that has a distinctive flavor (soba noodles are traditionally buckwheat, though mostly plain old wheat these days. Sorghum is another gluten-less grain that shows up in animal feed, but actually makes a nice flour and baked goods.

    My wife has gluten sensitivity issues (not celiac, thankfully, but severe enough, hence me knowing about various esoteric, gluten free grains. We’ve tried our share of gluten free beers, including the Green’s “Belgian.” They uniformally suck. The one minor exception is New Planet raspberry ale, which has the virtues of sucking less than the others, and also tasting strongly of raspberry, thus blocking the off tastes from using oddball grains. Gluten free beer is a bit like decaf coffee to me, I’d rather go without than drink an ersatz imitation, but then again, my digestive system is not forcing me to make that choice, so I guess it’s easy to say so.

    Chrome informs me that “uniformally” is not, in fact, a valid English word.

    Reply
  2. Yeah, that was my assumption when it came to the grains involved in this beer. I’ve definitely had and enjoyed buckwheat pancakes, but for the most part, I’m thanking my lucky stars that I don’t have any issues with gluten.

    Have you had the Dogfish Head gluten free beer? Forget what it’s called, but I could see that being a step above most gluten free stuff out there… (if not quite as good as regular ol’ glutenated beer.)

    Reply

Leave a Comment