Quadrupel beer

Quadrupel beer

The quadruple is a style of abbey beer born very recently, the first beer being the Quadruple Trappe brewed for the first time in 1988.

The name refers to the double and triple classification, which served as a measure of both the quantity of raw materials used and the alcohol content in the finished product.

Basically, there are twice as many malts as in a double. And no, quadruple does not mean four fermentations, as double or triple do not refer to the number of fermentations. This is a classic mistake made by many beer lovers who are still novices.

La Trappe Quadruple was created to celebrate the 25^th anniversary of the monastic vows of an important monk of the abbey community, Dom Bernardus.

The appearance of this beer led other breweries to brew beers of the same type, a well-known example is the Straffe Hendrik which emerged a few years later.

It was one of the first marketing operations using an unknown style of beer. Indeed, the fact of placing “quadruple” on the bottles increased sales.

Recently, it is the IPA style that has fallen victim to this naive consumer craze. It is sometimes all the more difficult to find it because the beer styles do not have restrictive specifications, so all breweries can put the IPA name on the labels of their beers.

Because unlike wine, beer has very few protected markets. There is the Trappist label and the term 'Oude Geuze', but the majority of beer styles do not have unions or an organization that protects their names.