{"id":8309,"date":"2019-12-28T19:24:31","date_gmt":"2019-12-29T01:24:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/?p=8309"},"modified":"2020-08-23T09:47:31","modified_gmt":"2020-08-23T15:47:31","slug":"12-beers-of-christmas-2019-7-struise-tsjeeses-reserva","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/golf\/lifestyle\/8309\/12-beers-of-christmas-2019-7-struise-tsjeeses-reserva","title":{"rendered":"12 Beers of Christmas 2019 – 7: Struise Tsjeeses Reserva"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the midpoint of the 12 Beers of Christmas<\/strong> we took a hiatus yesterday, our day-long festivity of the 19th birthday of our grandson, Nate. As the young lad has spent all his Christmas days here, so he has spent almost all of his birthdays here, too, coming as it does two days later.<\/p>\n\"sb<\/a>\n

Every other year since 2015 we also managed to take in the latest installment of \u201cStar Wars,\u201d and so it was yesterday, too, with \u201cThe Rise of Skywalker.\u201d This was Episode IX of the series that began (with Episode IV) in 1977, 23 years before Nate was born. He\u2019s caught up since, and was able to fill in his father and me on the Episodes I-III we mostly missed, and while in his critic\u2019s role said, \u201cYou didn\u2019t miss anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, it\u2019s been a family affair all along. I took Nate\u2019s dad\u2014my son, Mike, to see \u201cThe Empire Strikes Back\u201d (Episode 5) back in 1980 and we sat through it twice. Yesterday, even though we could pretty much see every plot turn coming, we all enjoyed the wrap. If we didn\u2019t have to head home for Nate\u2019s birthday dinner we just might have pondered a second viewing. Hey, an epoch doesn\u2019t come to an end every day.<\/p>\n

Nate\u2019s visit, along with his two sisters and parents, did come to an end today, so it seemed like a good time to take to the couch and recover from the best Christmas ever. And sipping a couple of snifters of the 10% Tsjeeses Reserva should only have me sinking more deeply into the cushions.<\/p>\n

The Struise Brewery of Oostvleteren, Belgium has made numerous versions of Tsjeeses. The regular starts out as a strong spiced blond ale matured for eight months on different stonefruit. There have been numerous barrel-aged vintages\u2014in port barrels, cognac, gavignet. The most successful seem to be the bottles I have, aged in bourbon barrels. This particular vintage is 2014, bottled in 2016, opened in 2019. By now the beer is no longer blond, but if poured off leaving the yeast in the bottle a lovely clear reddish amber.<\/p>\n\"sb<\/a>\n

And it\u2019s loaded with all sorts of aromas and flavors, all enticing, and just what I\u2019d hope for from a Belgian winter ale. Both my wife and I picked up a prune note in the nose amidst the strong toffee character and some alcoholic heat. The palate is sweet, the mouthfeel huge, with flavors of brown sugar, licorice, oak to be sure. Spices, not so much; they would appear to have been overpowered in the process, not that they\u2019re really missed.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s little noticeable hop presence here, no big surprise, but there\u2019s a pleasing tannic ping and alcohol bite in the finish. This is one to linger over, to be sure. That should give you time to contemplate the label art, which looks like a hipster Jesus wearing sunglasses and sporting a Santa cap. But the brewery website is worth quoting in this regard:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026 Tsjeeses was born out of a 5 year brewing experience regarding x-mas beer without being capable of finding a suitable name all that time. With the name came a face, a caricature actually, that was drawn on the day Urbain, our brewing slave, drank too many Tsjeeses\u2019s. Every time he drinks one, he says \u2018Tsjeeses, what a beer.\u2019 Therefore the name is more an expression of stupefaction than a curse. We have had already many discussions around the pronunciation of \u2018Tsjeeses.\u2019 Very close would be that you say \u2018cheeses\u2019 or cheese in plural.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cStruise\u201d means \u201csturdy\u201d and the brewery proudly strides along accordingly, having just opened its own brewery in Oostvleteren that will be part of the brewery trip mounted next year by the U.S. importer Shelton Brothers. But \u201cStruise\u201d is also Flemish slang for \u201costrich\u201d and indeed the brewery started back in 2001 in a small barn at an ostrich farm. It still proudly bears an ostrich as part of its logo.<\/p>\n

\"New<\/a>

New GOP logo?<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Struise<\/a>

Struise website<\/p><\/div>\n

Not that the brewery gang would know what I\u2019m talking about, but clearly the willfully blind GOP should immediately adopt Struise as their official brewery. Indeed, now into my second bottle I\u2019m starting to feel a little like Jeff Sessions: \u201cLordy, I do declare sir, I believe I have the vapors!\u201d<\/p>\n

Or maybe I\u2019m just drifting off into a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away\u2026.<\/p>\n

\"sb<\/a>Name: Tsjeeses Reserva
\nBrewer: De Struise Brouwers, Oostvleteren, Belgium
\nStyle: Belgian Strong Ale
\nABV: 10%
\nAvailability: Shelton Brothers now distributes to 45 states and Washington D.C. Check their \u201cLocate Our Products<\/a>\u201d list to see if the beer might be near you.
\nFor More Information: struise.com<\/p>\n

[December 28, 2019]<\/em><\/p>\n

< 12 Beers of Christmas 6: Weird Beer Black Christmas<\/a>
\n12 Beers of Christmas 8: Wormtown Blizzard of 78<\/a> ><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the midpoint of the 12 Beers of Christmas we took a hiatus yesterday, our day-long festivity of the 19th… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":8310,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[939,627,18],"tags":[1016641,1029838,1029839,1029840,748,370990,749,676069,708480,975741,1002722,1006467],"class_list":["post-8309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beer-on-tap","category-tap-beer-of-the-week","category-lifestyle","tag-nate-bedell","tag-tsjeeses-reserva","tag-de-struise-brouwers","tag-oostvleteren","tag-belgium","tag-star-wars","tag-christmas","tag-christmas-beers","tag-shelton-brothers","tag-12-days-of-christmas","tag-12-beers-of-christmas","tag-mike-bedell"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2019\/12\/sb-b-g.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8309"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8457,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8309\/revisions\/8457"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}