What exactly is tripled in a tripel?
The short answer is, technically nothing! The style’s name is a nod to, but not a precise calculation of, the stronger alcoholic content in this delicious style of beer.
More than ever, there is confusion about beer styles—and understandably so. While they may sound related, styles like dubbel and tripel have no relationship to double or triple IPA’s. Tripel is a beer style with roots in the Belgian Trappist beer tradition; only beer brewed by a protected and certified order of abbey monks may be called Trappist. Secular breweries will use the moniker “abbey-style” to reflect beers brewed in the Trappist tradition. The name tripel was generally used for the strongest beer in a monastery’s repertoire. The story goes that barrels were traditionally marked with X’s to signify strength, so three X’s would be for that abbey’s tripel.
