Leffe Blond: A lager?
For the record, Leffe Blond, an official abbey ale brewed for Notre-Dame de Leffe by Interbrew/InBev, is an ale. Brewers pitch yeast at 64 °F (18 °C) and fermentation temperature rises to 77 °F (25 °C) during four or five days of primary.
Nonetheless, Leffe grabbed a bronze medal as a lager in the recently judged Brewing Industry International Awards in Munich. This is one of the most esteemed international competitions.
Today, Steve Hannigan posted this note on a mailing list I subscribe to:
The Morning Advertiser of 29th September:
“Originally brewed by monks in Leffe near Dinant, Belgium, Leffe Blond continues to be brewed to the traditional recipe created in 1240 in the monastery.”
All I can say is if that is so, then the monks in 1240 must have been way ahead of their time . . .
No fooling. For one thing, after a high temp ale fermentation, Leffe Blond is cooled to 30 °F (-1 °C) for two weeks. Not sure how monks would have pulled that off in 1240.
December 2nd, 2005 at 12:34 am
Please tell me the correct pronunciation of Leffe
December 27th, 2005 at 4:24 pm
I was wondering why I kept seeing this site in my stats, so I finally came to check it out.
I’m hardly a source of beer pronunciations!! I did ask around a bit, though and was just in Belgium over Thanksgiving. And yes, it is indeed pronounced with a single syllable. Plenty of beer names are mispronounced by many, including bartenders. You know how to pronounce Hoegaarden and Duvel, right?
Keep on trying new beers. There are so many great ones out there! Leffe is just scratching the surface of amazing Belgian beers.
April 24th, 2006 at 8:40 pm
Sipping a Leffe as I type. Distributor not more than 3 minutes down the road sells it for about $36USD a case so about $1.50 a bottle. Not bad seeing as PA has some bad blue laws. If I want to buy less than a case of anything belgian, I have to drive 15 minutes and pay around $4 a bottle if I want some Tripel Karmeliet or Maredsous or something along those lines.
Still pronounce it phonetically though.. is it more like “Luff?” I’ve had to order “hoe-gardens” when a bartender looks at me funny when I ask for
a whoharden…
September 16th, 2006 at 9:45 pm
Leffe end with a silent “e”, so it is pronounced Leff and it should sound close to Laiff. Whenever I end up in Belgium, at Brussel Airport (Zaventem) arriving from the US, I somehow always get pulled to a bar at 7AM. They have all over the airport the Leffe on tap, the Blonde and the Brown (Brune, pronounced “bru’n”). In Belgium you’ll find 4 Leffe, anyhow, I once found 4 different ones. I know Inbev tends to slash brews (remember the Rodebnach alexander?) The Leffe Radieuse was my favourite.
August 2nd, 2007 at 9:43 pm
If you go to www.leffe.com you will find that it is pronounced LEFF-eh. 2 syllables. Maybe they Americanize it for us foreigners, but I’ll have to go with how the company pronounces it themselves.
December 20th, 2007 at 12:09 pm
Leffe is pronounced like “Jeff” with a silent e, not Leff-eh. Leffe is a beer from the province of Wallonie, which is French speaking. In French the “e” at the end of a word is always silent.
My name is pronounced fee-leep (with the accent on the second syllab), not fee-lee-pee or fee-leep-eh
Oh and my distributor in Pittsburgh PA sells the case of 24 (4×6 packs) for $37.50. Not bad, considering that bars here charge 4 to 5 bucks a bottle.