Ode to Orval

To prepare for last week’s Top Shelf Thursday, I found myself delving into the beer library (as in actual books) & revisiting sections on the Trappists.  While I love the overarching character of the Trappist ales – the sweet, fruity, candy-like tones – that one anomaly always stands out.  Orval is the stick in the spokes of the collective Trappist oeuvre, posing a challenge to ever really comparing all the beers side-by-side.  It’s fascinating to learn about, & just as fascinating to taste.  Sure, Rochefort 10 is my (& many others’) favorite, but that’s just among the more “conventional” offerings.  Orval is in a category of its own, a fantastic & mysterious liquid that defies comparison.

Mysterious?  Maybe mystical is more like it.  The abbey’s origin is itself the stuff of legend: centuries ago, a countess from Tuscany lost a ring to a lake nestled in the valley.  She prayed for the ring’s return, pledging to build an abbey in the valley if the ring was brought back to her.  A trout surfaced from the lake holding the ring in its mouth, & the countess fulfilled her promise by constructing the Abbey of Notre Dame d’Orval.  Even more fabulous, Orval means “Valley of Gold”.  This legend is depicted in the art deco image of the ring-bearing fish on the label & bottle cap (ironically pagan-ish).  The site has withstood its share of ruin over the centuries, after falling victim to a fire in the 13^th century & then ransacked during the French revolution (it was believed Louis XVI was en route to the abbey when he was captured).  Its current, more modern structure was conceived in the 1930s by architect Henri Vaes, who also designed the signature Orval glass.

The liquid has a mystique of its own.  It’s its own style, bordering on the saisons that are also native to Wallonia, the French-speaking southern region of Belgium.  It begins life simply enough, with pilsner & pale malts, continental hops, & a traditional primary fermentation.  Then things get interesting: it’s dry-hopped with German Hallertau, Styrian Goldings, & French Strisselspalt.  It then undergoes a secondary fermentation in the bottle with brettanomyces.  The combination of dry-hopping & wild yeast give it a complex aroma that’s herbal, floral, perfumy.  The brett ferments thoroughly, leaving the finished beer dry & crisp, but with a pillowy effervescence.  The brett character also develops over time; whereas the hops are fresh for the first six months or so, they are eclipsed by the leathery, earthy, even funky or tart character of the yeast.  Side-by-side verticals of different aged Orval are not uncommon; the beer matures & changes in a remarkable way. 

Also remarkable about Orval are the tributes it’s inspired.  It’s proven itself to be one of the most revered beers in the world, & personalities as esteemed as Michael Jackson, Garrett Oliver, & Vinnie Cilurzo have either explicitly or implicitly named it as their favorite beer.  Russian River’s first foray into brettanomyces – Sanctification – is basically an interpretation of Orval, & there are a number of other beers that have been created in similar homage: Green Flash’s Rayon Vert; ToOl & Mikkeller’s collaboration Ov-ral; Tomme Arthur’s collaboration with De Proef, Signature Reserve Ale; New Belgium’s Le Fleur Misseur.  Goose Island christened their tribute “Matilda”, after the countess in the legend.  I can’t think of another single ale that others have so admittedly attempted to “cover”.  Styles?  Sure.  But how many brewers explicitly say “This was brewed after Pliny the Elder”.  In this way, I liken Orval to a jazz classic like “Summertime” (also a personal favorite), redone & reinterpreted in many ways, with subtle & personal variations, but never losing the essence.

I’d be willing to assert that the reverence for Orval has been a driving factor in the recent fascination with brettanomyces & “wild” ales that’s overtaken the craft beer world.  Lambics have contributed to a large part of this as well, but Orval’s brett character is much more pronounced & clear, whereas it’s at least partially obscured by other “bugs” in lambic’s case.  More & more breweries are experimenting with brett – Crooked Stave Artisan Ales ferments all their beers with 100% brettanomyces, an undertaking that’s a little bit mind-blowing.  It doesn’t take too great a logical leap to trace this movement & captivation back to one simple but infinitely complex ale in the south of Belgium.  Guess this kind of turned into another “love letter” post, but I can’t think of a beer more worthy. 

Top Shelf Thursday, March 2014: The Trappists

Another Top Shelf Thursday has come & gone, another flight of beers tasted.  For this month’s event, we turned to a family of beers apropos to the Lenten season, embodying both the worldly & the divine: the beers of the Trappist breweries.  It’s easy to fall into a reverent tone when writing about these beers, as both the means & the ends speak to beer’s transcendent potential.  Among brewers & drinkers, the Trappists are a revered brotherhood, creators of some of the most esteemed & imitated styles in the world.

The word “style” is used loosely here.  While many of the Trappist-produced beers share some common characteristics – top-fermenting, inclusion of Belgian candi sugar – there are no strict guidelines for flavor profile or recipe.  That said, although there are outliers, many Trappist brews bear a strong family resemblance: on the sweet side, with notes of fruit & spice, typically with subdued hops.  The majority skew dark, ranging from light chestnut to the color of molasses.

There are currently ten Trappist breweries in operation; due to varying distribution, we were able to sample the seven in our inventory.  Though the majority of Trappist breweries are in Belgium, we started with a beer from one of two Dutch producers, from the La Trappe line of Bierbrouwerij De Koningshoeven.  This was their Jubilaris XXV, brewed for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the installation of their abbot, Dom Bernardus.  It was a good introduction to the night, hitting notes of dark fruit & spice, while relatively restrained at 6% ABV.

We followed with a non-conformist among the Trappist club: Orval.  It’s relatively light, both in color & alcohol (6.2% ABV).  It’s dry-hopped, giving it a little more bitterness & a perfumy nose.  It also undergoes a secondary fermentation with brettanomyces, adding some leathery & subtly funky notes to the nose, as well as a dry, mild tartness to the taste.

Things veered back into more familiar territory with Chimay Premiere, the red-labelled dubbel from the world’s most recognized Trappist brewery.  One of the archetypal dubbels, the Red covered the bases with notes of raisin, brown sugar, & a dry finish.  And though it pushed the boundaries for ABV, the Achel 8° Bruin, from the youngest of the Belgian Trappists, also carried the familiar refrain, making for a good side-by-side comparison with the Chimay.

As mentioned before, the Trappists aren’t generally concerned with stylistic adherence, as illustrated by the line of Rochefort’s ales.  Their Trappistes Rochefort 8, coming in at 9.2%, seems to fall under the general category of Belgian strong dark, hitting again on the previously trodden ground of dark fruit & spice, but with a bright & lasting finish of molasses & caramel.  

Tripel has become a universally acknowledged style, though it was not always in its present pale, ester-heavy form.  Formerly, tripel was just a demarcation of strength, until the abbey at Westmalle fashioned its modern embodiment in the 1930s, giving it a lighter color with a slightly hoppy & boozy finish.  Westmalle’s Tripel remains an excellent standard-bearer to this day.

By this time, we were into the big boys.  Every abbey brewery has a crown jewel in its repertoire, sometimes called “grand cru”, “abbot ale”, or just indicated by a high number.  These are generally dark, strong, & again strike similar chords, with notes of dark fruit, spice, toffee, molasses, a notable alcohol character, maybe even a little cocoa or banana.  Many liken them to a port.  We revisited the Achel brewery for their Trappist Extra, &, while most agreed that there were superior examples, this hit all the right places.  Next came an offering from the newest of the breweries represented this evening: Gregorius, from the Austrian Stift Engelszell.  Those in attendance were generally impressed by the Gregorius, especially considering its makers’ relative novice status, having only begun brewing in 2012.  La Trappe Quadrupel elicited a lot of discussion about what defines a quadrupel, what distinguishes it from other Belgian strong dark ales.  Folks were content not finding a clear answer, as they sipped the 10% ale.  And we rounded off the evening with Trappistes Rochefort 10, the top of the Rochefort line, which did not disappoint.  Rochefort 10 is often found on unofficial lists of the top three abbey strong ales, sharing a place in the “Holy Trinity” with St. Bernardus Abt 12 & the coveted Westvleteren 12, for reasons very apparent to the crowd.

Speaking of Westvleteren, hopefully there will come a day when we can enjoy the fruits of their labors, along with the other two absent: Spencer Trappist Ale of Massachusetts, & Maria Toevlucht of the Netherlands.  As always, thanks to all who came out to share fellowship over some great beers.  There’s plenty more information out there on the history & practices of the Trappist breweries, well worth checking out.

10 Reasons Why Lagunitas Is Awesome

Tonight I’m sipping on a Lagunitas Sucks.  I’ve developed a moderate obsession with this brewery over the past two years or so.  It’s gone from me not really caring or thinking about them much at all, to ranking easily among my favorite American breweries right now.  This obsession has two identifiable geneses: the release of Lagunitas Sucks, the first brew of theirs that really made me sit up & take notice, having since become one of my favorite DIPAs & seasonals; & an interview with founder/owner Tony Magee by beer writer/podcaster Slouch Sixpack on the Aleheads podcast from spring of 2012.  There are very few breweries that get “love letter” space in the blog, but I’ve wanted to sit down & outline what it is I find so magnetic about this brewery.  Here goes!

1.        The way their beers taste.  Kind of a no-brainer, right?  That’s why I started with it.  Many of Lagunitas’ brews have a signature commonality in their flavor profile, a balance of bright hops, a more subdued kind of poundcake sweetness, & an anchoring dankness, a really resiny flavor that pulls you in.  This is right in my wheelhouse for where hoppy beers should be, & their catalog has that thread running through it.  Maybe it’s a house yeast strain, a recurrent hop schedule, or something, but man does it hit home.

2.       The familial resemblance among their beers.  This kind of ties in with the first one, but some have said (disparagingly or not) that Lagunitas basically makes myriad versions of an IPA.  Which is cool, in my book – they’re all tied in to the same kind of vibe, like a band making different records with their own sound but based on the same unifying aesthetic.  Lagunitas’ repertoire is distinctly theirs, each beer has their recognizable thumbprint on it.

3.       The Stone comparison.  Again, related to the first two: Stone seems to have a commonality among their beers – namely, abrasive bitterness & arrogant aggression.  Lagunitas is like Stone meets Cheech & Chong, with a mellow, laid-back, sun-baked kind of motif.  Hop-driven, but with homage to hops’ infamous & euphoric cousin.

4.       The can take or leave style.  While all somewhat IPA-adjacent, much of Lagunitas’ repertoire abuts on IPA, double IPA, American strong ale, west coast barleywine, brown ale, you name it, all at once.  They seem to not much care for those categorizations, but more for brewing what they want.  One story goes that a homebrew club contacted the owner, asking to know the specific style of one of their releases.  Magee’s reply: “Uzbeki Raga Ale”.  And the chagrin commenceth, with the gnashing of teeth…

5.       They’re dead cheap.  For a west coast brewery producing the caliber of beer they do, their prices are awesome.  Hop Stoopid retails in our store for $5.00.  A bomber.  That’s an awesome price for such a damn good DIPA.  Just about everything they make falls into line.  Don’t know why this is the case, but it makes them all the easier to love. 

6.       Their marketing.  Their fuzziness with style kind of translates to the fuzziness found in their marketing.  Their label art is like looking at someone’s sketchbook, both simplistic & underdeveloped but with a rich trough of detail.  Tony does their copy, & often the cramped text on the labels reads like something out of Kerouac or Burroughs, stream-of-conscious, sometimes conveying a point, sometimes huh?  (Another parallel to Stone)  To this point, they have a beer called Lagunitas Sucks, another called WTF, another called Undercover Investigation Shutdown, another formerly known as The Kronik, etc.  In fact, I found myself dipping into his style the more I write while drinking the beer…

7.       They made a line of beers based on Frank Zappa’s catalog.  Okay, I can’t stand Zappa.  But this is an awesome idea.  They got five deep, brewing a different beer based on each album, until the Zappa estate withdrew.  This is the kind of idea that I’d want to base an entire brewery around.  I only hope no-one’s done it with the Wu-Tang Clan yet…

8.        The drug stuff.  In the above-mentioned Aleheads interview, Tony Magee said of his employment practices, “We have a strict drug-testing policy.  You have to have tested drugs at least once.”  I’m not a head myself, but it’s always been amusing & kind of captivating how open Magee & the company are about the use of cannabis.  They had a beer known as The Kronik, now called CENSORED, as the name didn’t pass label approval with the Tax & Trade Bureau.  Undercover Investigation Shutdown was brewed to commemorate the time the brewery got a twenty day shutdown as a slap on the wrist after law enforcement caught visitors smoking pot during tasting hours, a ritual the owner apparently condoned. 

9.       Tony’s twitter feed.  The company doesn’t send out press releases or do much publicity – Tony tweets about it, usually serially over the course of a few minutes, & the press picks it up.  The decision to open a second brewery in Chicago went out over twitter, & became news.  Tony aired some angry opinions over Sam Adams’ covert tactic of “going after” west coast IPAs, & a buzz starts.  Tony announced his opposition to cans & bauxite mining via twitter, & folks take notice.  It’s both a kind of lazy & kind of genius way of handling publicity, & it’s one of the most interesting twitter feeds in the craft beer world.

10.   Tony.  If you can’t tell by now, a lot of the appeal of this brewery has to do with the brains behind the operation.  Dude’s become sort of a cult of personality for me, & some others.  He’s both completely chill & fascinatingly contrarian & iconoclastic.  He’s publicly fired shots at New Belgium & Sierra Nevada, asking what a “f***ing rich business” is doing accepting public funds to build a new facility.  His background is in music, once touring with a reggae band & writing musical arrangements for Pizza Hut, Bud, & Hallmark commercials; he still jams regularly at the brewery during tasting hours.  He’s full of stories, insights, & seems to have an opinion on just about anything.  A big part of Lagunitas’ appeal is the personality that comes through, but the very fact that the brewery is such a clear expression & extension of its founders is a beautiful thing.  This is part of what’s so awesome about craft beer in totem, another relation to art: the more creative control & idiosyncrasy is allowed to remain, the more honest & authentic - & good - the end product feels.  To me, Tony & Lagunitas embody that approach to the art & business of beer.

There you go, another long-ass, gushy post.  If you’re interested, I strongly recommend you listen to the Aleheads podcast interview with Tony; it’s my favorite beer-related interview, & the only episode of a beer podcast I’ve ever listened to repeated times.  And I know I gave it the bump last entry, but check out Tom Acitelli’s The Audacity of Hops; a lot of info on Lagunitas & Magee in there, plus it’s just a damn good read anyway.

Rambling Thoughts While Drinking a Bud

Tonight, I cracked a Budweiser.  This may shock you.  What can I tell you?  I’m a complicated guy.  An enigma.  I’d been tempted for a while, & tonight was the night.  It had been a long time since I last had a Bud.  I can’t tell you when.  I’d wager a bet that, in the past ten years, I’ve had more Westy 12 than I’ve had Bud.  Not bragging, just saying it’s that infrequent. 

But I’d had a craving for a while, a yearning to revisit that most American lager-ish of American lagers.  What brought this on?  It seems that, amid the craft beer world of extremitsm & experimentation, simple lager has a niche appreciation.  A cult following, if you will.  Among the fans?  He-e-e-ell no – they still avoid it like the plague they think it’s made from.  It’s the professional brewers that go for the stuff.  I’m not saying Budweiser, specifically, but the buzz is that many pro brewers, when they’re drinking on the reg, go for lagers.  Obviously, I can’t speak from experience (not being a pro brewer & all), but it piqued my interest.  It impressed me that, in a recent article in BeerAdvocate, the founder & brewer of Boneyard Beer - one of Oregon’s cultest upstarts & known for its killer RPM IPA – shared that he loves lagers & drinks mostly Busch & Busch Light.  

Whu--?!  Brewers all over (begrudgingly or not), give Anheuser-Busch props for making an incredibly consistent, clean, simple product.  In reading Tom Acitelli’s book, The Audacity of Hops, I was also impressed by the fact that David Geary, founder of New England’s first craft brewery, was booed – BOOED – at the 1996 Association of Brewers’ conference for suggesting the same: “You would kill to have the consistent quality they have,” he told the ass-hurt crowd, “You may not like the style, but it’s not bad beer.”  This at a time when small brewing en masse was suffering from a significant quality control issue that was hurting its reputation.  There seems to exist a nearly closeted appreciation for these basic, clean beers, & many brewers will testify that a straight-forward lager is not easy to brew.  The winning entry of this past year’s National Homebrewers’ Conference, amid thousands of entries across every acknowledged style, was an American light adjunct lager.  This sense of underground, viral acknowledgment had been gaining on me for a while.

So what the hell?  It appealed to me, & I decided to give it a try.  It poured a very pale golden yellow, absolutely transparent.  The head built quickly & dissipated to nothing.  Smells of a very light sweetness & straw-like grain profile emerged.  The taste followed suit, with the addition of a mineral quality & a subtle bitterness rounding it off.  Very little to speak of, but completely inoffensive & what was there was decent.  The only really negative aspect was a harsh carbonation, sharp like seltzer, that made it a little difficult.  Other than that, definitely doable.  I can’t see going back any time soon, but it didn’t come close to resembling any of the number of bodily fluids to which beer geeks frequently compare it.

That word “adjunct” seems to have a tone to it.  “Adjunct”.  I get the sense that people use it as a euphemism, a slightly more diplomatic replacement for “mass-produced”, “industrial”, or just plain “shitty”.  Adjunct refers to any source of fermentable sugar in the brewing process other than malt, rice & corn being the two most widely used &, not coincidentally, the most stigmatized.   Used to be that a craft brewer worthy of the name (according to the Brewers’ Association) could not brew a flagship using any adjuncts, or if they did it had to be “to enhance rather than lighten the flavor” to be considered “traditional” (the BA’s words).  The common talking point among the anti-big beer crowd has long been that brewers of adjunct lagers introduced corn & rice as a way to cut corners & shore up the bottom line, to the detriment of their own product.  Historical accounts, however, point to a motive less cynical (though profit is always a consideration – it’s still business).*  The American palate in the 1800s shifted from the heavier old world styles – Bavarian lager, English porter – to light, crisp, quaffable, & aesthetically pleasing.  This was exemplified in the Bohemian pilsners, viewed as a beer fitting an emerging modern lifestyle, a lifestyle born of industrialization.  A modern beer for increasingly modern times.  American brewers wanted to emulate this Czech marvel, but found that native six-row barley was too protein-rich & left unsightly globs in the finished product.  

They experimented with corn (which worked, but often at the risk of imparting a rancid flavor) & - voila! – rice.  This evolution was made to create a product of higher quality & appeal, a concept that may startle today’s beer geek – NOT to lighten or cheapen.  To the contrary, American adjunct lager was actually more expensive to brew than all-malt, & the result of industrial era brewers’ creativity with indigenous ingredients.  Don’t get me wrong: I’m happy that today’s craft beer paradigm is around all-malt beers & much prefer them to adjunct lagers.  However, I think that those who view this traditional family of beers as a bastardization suffer from a lack of historical & cultural perspective.  The Brewers’ Association recently modified to its definition of craft brewer to include this American tradition.  Part of me wonders, though, how much the change in the BA’s definition has to do with a broadening of ideology & how much it might have to do with wanting some of the bigger players (uh…Yuengling) under its umbrella.  Personally, I have a soft spot for Yuengling & Straub, two old school breweries that are still family-owned & independent, & who were (previously) excluded from this camp.

Speaking of historical perspective, of late I’ve also been fascinated by the process by which American beer culture may have evolved to be represented by one style.  Centuries ago, things were much more pluralistic, with thousands of breweries producing many styles from different traditions.  Over time, the number of breweries decreased to hundreds, then scores; the number of styles to, pretty much, one.  Two, if you count “light lager”.  Prohibition had something to do with it, but like I said before, industrialization & modernity had a hand as well in shaping people’s tastes.  The polyculture of American beer today is apparent, but could there exist a time when trends could gradually ebb toward a monoculture once again?  And what would that be?  The IPA has risen to dominance as THE iconic craft beer style.  Craft beer is on the rise, & big beer’s market share is slowly receding.  We’ve also seen the backlash against high ABVs & extreme beer in the push toward more sessionable beers & moderation.  Can you imagine a future where session IPAs are the next American lager?  Two hundred years from now, where the adjective “beery” refers not to the aroma of corn & musty basement, but to grapefruit & pine? 

It’s a brave new world.  No answers here, folks, just thoughts.  See?  This is what happens when I drink Budweiser.

*Info on the origin of adjunct lager comes from Maureen Ogle’s excellent history of American brewing, Ambitious Brew.  Read that first, then the Tom Acitelli book mentioned above, which picks up where Ogle leaves off.