Les Trois Mousquetaires, located in the South Shore of Montreal in a pretty lively suburb called Brossard, is like the sweetheart of Montreal, Quebec. They are very well known and everybody wants a piece of them, especially their Double IPA. Although many of their beers are year round and others are released during certain seasons of the year, the Double IPA, is released only once a year on a special day called Double IPA Day. On this day a large crowd gathers at their brewery to stand in line, purchase the beer, sample the years delights and enjoy the glorious Montreal summer heat. This year the DIPA day was delayed due to an unsatisfactory batch of the DIPA. It took place earlier this month and I was lucky enough to get my hands on some. The release itself was a huge success for the brewery, and many people turned out Friday morning to collect their goods.

During the DIPA release they also had a surprise Baltic Porter release limited to 800 bottles. This years event was meant to span two days but due to the high turn out the 425 cases of DIPA and the 800 bottles of the Porter were gone by 3pm. During my visit, the head brewer, Alex, was kind enough to show me around the brewery.

Let me tell you this much, for a brewery that produces so much beer they sure are small! And when you wonder why their DIPA can’t become a rotational monthly series or a year round availability, after having a look at the brewery you tend to understand why. Even though their beers are widely distributed and available almost everywhere, theyre brewing capacity is actually small. Currently they are still brewing a lot of beer as compared to the size of the brewery. Thanks Alex for accommodating me during my visit! This is a beer I have been looking forward to trying for a long time, and I have heard nothing but fantastic things about this beer. Now to the delights of my loot!

LTM DIPA
DIPA || ABV: 8.0% || IBU: 80
Bottled: Dec 2, 2016 || Drank: Dec 10, 2016

The aroma on this beer is absolutely out of this world. It has an amazing explosion of hops and the strength of the beer really shows on the nose. The fruity explosions on the nose are to die for. The appearance is your typical NEIPA hazy and very cloudy like a Trillium, Treehouse or Bissell. It’s a very nice juicy pungent beer with crazy hop flavors, a nice palpable fruitiness and a very palatable bitterness. It has an amazing mouth feel and and the strength doesn’t show as much in the taste as it does on the nose.

With Trillium’s Vicinity you can really smell and taste the strength, however with this beer the focus of the flavors is in the hoppy fruitness. I am absolutely floored! This beer has taken any hype towards it and lived up to it. There is always a fear that the hype will kill the beer, but this beer stands on its own away from the hype. On my second trial a week later, the fruit notes came out even more and really began to shine. This is a beer that can last fresh for sometime without losing its hoppy fruitness. Maybe the nose might give away a bit, but the flavor is sure to stay around for sometime. This is my top DIPA to come out of Quebec, it is absolutely stunning! Well done Alex and the LTM guys!

4.25/5

For those that did not get a chance to get their hands on this wonderful DIPA good news is, since the release was delayed we are now only 8 months away from the next release! I hope someday they can add this to their main releases and release it every month like their IPA, which by the way if you didn’t try the new batch, you must give it a taste, it blows all other IPAs out of the water.

Written by HopCitizen. Photography by HopCitizen.