Dubbel, or double, is one the more popular beer styles to emerge from Belgium’s Trappist monastery breweries. Belgians themselves are not often given to defining beers within stylistic borders, but dubbel is one of the few Belgian beer styles that is clearly recognizable. Both Trappist and secular breweries in Belgium have brewed brown beers for centuries, and beers were probably designated “dubbel” or “tripel” based on a fanciful allusion to their relative alcoholic strength. The modern dubbel style was essentially invented by the Trappist brewery Westmalle in 1926. Before then, Westmalle had produced a brown ale alongside the monks’ table beer, but the monastery was still recovering from the effects of World War I, and the beer was apparently not reliably good. In 1926 brewer Henrik Verlinden came to Westmalle and worked with the monastery to improve the beer, and the stronger russet-brown “Dubbel Bruin” emerged. It was quickly copied and versions of dubbel are now widely brewed in Belgium and beyond.

Unlike British and German brown beers, dubbel gains much of its color not from roasted malts but from a highly caramelized version of a sugar syrup called “candi sugar.” See candi sugar. Whereas roasted malts tend to give flavors that recall coffee and chocolate, candi sugar gives an aromatic reminiscent of burnt sugar and raisins. The sugar syrup, which appears nearly black, is usually added to a golden wort in the kettle. All dubbels have warm fermentations, and the Belgian yeasts give them distinctive herbal, fruit, and phenol notes. The beers are usually technically very dry, but sometimes taste slightly sweet because hop bitterness tends to be restrained. The best of them are bottle conditioned, but less refined versions are sometimes filtered. Generally speaking, dubbels have at least 6.5% alcohol by volume, but they stray as high as 8%, with beers stronger than this considered to have moved into a different category. Dubbels, unlike their stronger cousins, do not tend to show their alcoholic strength on the palate. Rather than being perfumey, a good dubbel is a balanced and even delicate beer, a surprisingly good pairing for seared scallops or washed-rind cheeses. Although the stronger golden tripel style seems more popular among craft brewers in the United States, the dubbel has recently inspired new beers in Scandinavia, Brazil, Italy, Switzerland, and many other countries.

See also abbey beers.