Battle of the Bulge

Sorry it’s taken me all week to give you my rundown of the Belgian Beer Fest we attended last Saturday. I certainly got my fill of that classic Belgian beer flavor and the lunch fare was certainly appropriate but overall, I don’t think I’ll be going back next year

This shouldn’t really be a surprise to any who’s heard me rant about Belgians before. While I appreciate Belgian brewers willingness to the push limits and try out new ideas, even when something seems really truly intriguing, most of the time I’m left wishing I’d ordered something else. Still, I went into this festival hoping they could make a convert out of me. Needless to say, this didn’t happen, but I still managed to find a few high quality brews among the over-carbonated, extra sweet, craziness that everyone around me was drinking.

Stone impressed me with their 08.08.08 Vertical Epic Ale, I had a nice conversation with one of their brewers and he explained that while the base of this beer is just plain old pale malt, they use oats, candi sugar, and a clove yeast, all of which combine to give it a light but really interesting flavor. There’s no fruit in this beer but the combination of hops they used create a citrusy flavor that was a hell of a lot more potent than my own attempts at citrus beers. It was weird for me to drink something from Stone that was as light as this; up until Saturday, Stone and Arrogant Bastard were pretty much synonymous to me. Kudos to these guys for being able to brew all over the spectrum.

I’d never had anything by Rohrbach before but I was drawn to them (perhaps because from across the room I misread their name). Their dubble and trippel were pretty standard but their Au Naturale Blonde was surprisingly good. Rohrbach is based in upstate New York, so unless a miracle happens, I probably won’t get the opportunity to try much more of their stuff.

Haverhill Brewery’s Honing Honey Pale Ale was fucking delicious. I spent the rest of the festival sampling other breweries' honings but none matched up. I was so intrigued by this one that I’ve already started researching honey beers and the best way to homebrew them. I love mead and I love beer so I should have known this day would come. Also Haverhill had the coolest taps at the festival. A staff member explained to me that when they moved into one of the old mill buildings they operate out of, they just found all these old wooden shoe molds and decided they couldn’t just toss them out. 10 bonus points right there.

Best in show would have to be Corsendonk’s Apple White. Hands down my favorite at the festival. I’d never had a good apple beer before and I’m not usually a witbier fan but the combination of the two, with relatively low carbonation, made for an exceptionally drinkable beer. The apple really was the strongest flavor but I don’t want you think this was like some strange apple juice concoction. This was still a beer, a beer with an awesome apple flavor.

Corsendonk’s people weren’t actually at the festival (an importer brought their stuff) so there wasn’t anyone well informed enough to answer my many questions about their brewing methods. I did do some research online afterwards and discovered that the Apple White is only 3.1% ABV! That’s incredibly low for any beer but especially for a Belgian. I knew it was light, but that’s lighter than Natty Light. This may be the least alcoholic good beer I’ve ever had. Could that be the secret to the maintaining the strong apple flavor? Nick = Confused. I have many many more questions about this beer’s lack of alcohol but for now let’s put all that aside and remember that it deserves a very strong endorsement.

Deciding on the worst beer at the festival may actually be the toughest question. I’ve narrowed it down to two, both from Lost Abbey: Orphan Annie and Ten Commandments. These beers had so much wrong with them (and that’s not counting being named after two movies that make me want to gouge out my eyeballs). There was a lot of buzz around the Orphan Annie because it’s left to ferment in used bourbon barrels. That’s a cool idea and an interesting piece of trivia but the beer still sucked. It was just too heavy and the alcohol taste was overpowering, which is pretty disappointing considering the many beers at the festival that had equal or higher ABVs and didn’t have nearly as much of alcohol taste. Mark said it tasted like a bad barley wine, which I think is an insult to barley wines.

Ten Commandments was equally awful. The guide provided by the festival called it a “Dark Farmhouse Ale with caramelized raisins, honey, rosemary, and Brettanomyces.” I call it sludge. Between this and Raison D’Etre, I am now completely convinced that raisins have no place in beer. Not to make this entire post about alcohol content, but this beer was listed at 9.5%, which is nothing to is nothing to scoff at and would definitely be a feat to mask completely, but like the Annie, the alcohol was the prominent flavor. Hey Lost Abbey, if I wanted to drink rubbing alcohol, I’d go to a rubbing alcohol festival but this is a beer festival.

All right, that’s my two cents on the Belgian Beer Fest. Hopefully, Mark will check in sometime soon with his take.