This may be an early distant warning, but it’s for an event you won’t want to miss. On Tuesday, January 26th, the Beveridge Place Pub will welcome representatives from Elysian Brewing and New Belgium Brewing as they host a Trip vertical tasting party. Details are still coming together, but one thing is for sure: they’ll have all five versions of the Trip on tap.
As we reported last January, New Belgium and Elysian cut palms and shook hands to form a collaborative partnership. Not a merger or a take over, but a simple agreement to work together to make great beer. A wondrous offspring of that collabeeration, the Trip is a Belgian-style triple/IPA hybrid. They have released four different versions of the Trip in the last year. Each version of the Trip is unique. They are wildly different, yet unmistakably related.
Personally, my favorite is the Trip II, though the Trip III is not far behind and I have yet to try the Trip V. Recently, I had the opportunity to sample the Trip IV. It reminded me of reading Ulysses by James Joyce. Although it was a thoroughly enjoyable and rewarding experience, it was not necessarily easy. The beer, like the book, was challenging and complex. The final chapter of Ulysses is a single, 45-page-long, un-punctuated sentence — a rambling trip through the mind of the protagonist as he drifts off to sleep. It is a stream of consciousness that you are supposed to absorb and not necessarily interpret. Perhaps the same can be said for the beer. Suffice it to say, the Trip IV is not an entry-level craft beer experience.
Ulysses is one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. It changed everything. The fact that I am comparing the Trip IV with Ulysses is not insignificant; however, it is possible, if not likely, that they both went way over my head.
We will be reminding you again as the event nears. In the meantime, mark the calendar. You will not want to miss this opportunity to taste these five amazing beers side by side.
