Midnight Sun Epluche-Culotte (Panty Peeler Tripel)

Aroma: 9 | Appearance: 8 | Mouthfeel: 9 | Flavor: 8 | Overall: 9

Pours a hazy, barely transparent dark apricot. Strong, fruity aroma has a good yeasty underpinning. Bold, mainly fruity flavor has notes of pear, apricot and banana. Texture is firm and strongly fizzy, and leaves a fruity finish. Peel yer panties for this one!

Aroma: 8 | Appearance: 7 | Mouthfeel: 7 | Flavor: 8 | Overall: 8

NorCal December '07 - I honestly had no idea this was a Midnight Sun beer until the other day, after I had drank it, that I was looking around for information on it. A very fruity beer with notes of apricot, raspberries, and honey. Appearance is a golden/orange color with a nice fluffy two finger thick head. Flavors had a wide array of variability. Notes of light fleshy fruits, white wine, vanilla and honey. If tripels were more like this, I might actually start to like them. A very nice beer.

Aroma: 10 | Appearance: 8 | Mouthfeel: 5 | Flavor: 6 | Overall: 7

Bottle courtesy of Bu11zeye: Poured a slightly cloudy bright yellow color ale with a super huge foamy pure white head with great retention and great lacing. Aroma of spices (pepper?) and floral malt is quite enjoyable. Taste is surprisingly dominated by spices, sweet floral malt and huge alcohol which really destroyed the beer. Body is about average with some aggressive carbonation and alcohol is way too prominent. If there was a way too take some alcohol out of there and reduce the level of carbonation, I believe I could have found one good trippel with a good balance between floral notes and spices.

Aroma: 7 | Appearance: 7 | Mouthfeel: 6 | Flavor: 7 | Overall: 7

Orange hazy colour. Yeasty and orangey aroma. Dry flavour of oranges and minerals with sweet undertones of apricot. Sweeter finish of marmelade and brown sugar. A bit too sweet and sticky.

Aroma: 8 | Appearance: 9 | Mouthfeel: 6 | Flavor: 10 | Overall: 9

The body is a dark, cloudy amber with a smaller head than the Maitresse du Moines, but still sizeable. The aroma has a huge touch of lemon fruitiness with a backing load of apricots followed up by a yeasty spiciness that is just wow. The tingling touch of alcohol in the background just adds to the aroma. The flavor has a bit of toasty malt in it and is lightly sweet. The yeasty flavors flow and intermingle wonderfully to make perhaps the best Belgian tripel-style beer brewed in America. Better than even the Maitresse overall.

Aroma: 8 | Appearance: 8 | Mouthfeel: 7 | Flavor: 8 | Overall: 8

This triple has one hell of a name! It pours a nice orange color. There was an explosion of tight white foam at the top. It is very persistent at first but as the beer seem to warm, it left. Mild fruity nose meets the senses, a bit of citrus, clove and yeast. The taste is malt with some of the fruit tones mixed in, a bit of sweetness and alcohol. A nice smooth feeling in the mouth and even though I mentioned the alcohol in the taste, it is barley noticed. Overall…YUM! Try it if you can get your hands on it.

Aroma: 8 | Appearance: 8 | Mouthfeel: 8 | Flavor: 8 | Overall: 8

Midnight Sun Epluche-Culotte poured a nice golden color with a decent white head that left some lacing. The aroma was a mix of alcohol and citrus. The taste was a nice blend of citrus, and sweet with a bit of a bite. Nice belgium from AK.

Aroma: 8 | Appearance: 8 | Mouthfeel: 8 | Flavor: 8 | Overall: 8

Okay not sure what to do with this one, its called a Tripel, that i am not buying. As a beer though, good. Poured a red/orange color with a creamy head which lasted the entire beer. Aroma was of apples and grapes. The flavor shocked me, apples a honey and vinilla. Not super sweet with a hop finish which was done right. Like i said not a typical Tripel, but good beer.

Aroma: 8 | Appearance: 8 | Mouthfeel: 7 | Flavor: 8 | Overall: 7

Bottled 2nd week of December (04?). This was really hard to rate, because I don't think it is close to much anything within style. However, I found it to be fairly creative and interesting. Poured with a reddish amber-orange color and very nice and well-sustaining creamy white head. Carbonation bubbles steadily rose to the top of the glass. The aroma stunned me with apples, cherries, and grapes coming through (Is this really a tripel?). The flavor had many of the same elements in the background, but was different. Pineapples were pretty strong with vanilla and honey also in the flavor (some pina-colada type tastes). Not overly sweet like some tripels, and the hop finish was there, but not pronounced. The wheat base was rather hidden. Very interesting and enjoyable, but not the poster child for the style.

Aroma: 7 | Appearance: 8 | Mouthfeel: 8 | Flavor: 9 | Overall: 8

First off, anybody know how to pronounce the name of this beer? "Eee-Plushy Cool-Lot?" ;)

But seriously, this is a seriously nice beer. I was impressed with the previous hoppy-as-hell beers I've had from Midnight Sun (especially the CoHoHo Imperial IPA), but wasn't so sure what to make of their attempt to make a diehard Belgian-style Abbey Tripel. But in the same way that the hop meisters at Stone have been able to make both a very good Dubbel (VE.03.03.03) and Tripel (Sawyer's), Midnight Sun seems quite able to make both hop monsters and delicate Belgian-esqe beers at the tip of a hat.

Poured this with some care into my Piraat glass -- the extra care ended up being a bit unneccesary, since the foam never got as out-of-hand as I normally see from "real" Tripels. In fact, I was disappointed that the foam not only didn't rise up much, but disappeared altogether all-too quickly.

Big alcoholic nose, with the classic Belgian Sugar aroma, and fruity (apricot?) aroma.

A little vineous in my first impressions of the mouthfeel -- normally a negative thing in my opinion, but this works pretty well for this sort of beer. Lends itself well to emphasizing the nicely complex flavor profile. Alcohol is never too far away from your senses, but at the same time, never gets in the way of you enjoying the malty sweetness, and complex fruit-and-spice vibe to the entire presentation.

Finishes a little on the rugged side, especially if you allow it to warm up a little too much. But that's a rather small quibble about a beer that is quite nice, overall. $6.49 for a 22-ozer isn't bad when you end up with something this interesting, IMO. Recommended.
//TB