#session91 Diving into Belgophilia

 I'm sat at East Midlands airport with very little to do; so it's high time I give myself a kick up the arse and start blogging again. There's no better place to start than with the current session topic, hosted this month by Breandán at Belgian Smaak. He asks us to talk about our first Belgian beer. I unfortunately have no recollection of which it was, sampled in my hazy student days almost 9 years ago. It is guaranteed to have been something good however as it was sourced from the ever excellent bitter virtue in Southampton. It was probably Chris, perhaps Ann who led me around the groaning shelves tempting me to part with my student loan in exchange for beery libations to sup at the local punk house whilst watching awesome acoustic bands and sometimes full blown drum laden metal bands with beach dinghy crowd surfing...

Anyway I digress, the point is it could have been any number of excellent beers for which Belgium is rightly famed (though I have a sneaky suspicion it was the fruity balsamic punchy duchesse de Bourgogne). Instead I'll have to dredge through the ancient (3years old) rate beer reviews to settle on my first rated Belgian... De Struisse Pannepot. Not a bad first rate eh?!

Pannepot is a 10% Belgian strong ale which cunningly hides its strength away until you stand up at which point you promptly fall over. I may have made that last part up but it sure wears its strength well. Even in my early rating days I appreciated this scoring the beer a massive 4.5, sitting comfortably in the top 1% of my beers to date.

Here's what I thought:

A richly dark reddish brown beer which pours with a thin head that disappears almost immediately. Molasses and orange peel on the nose. First taste gives a lot of sweetness and some umami with a heavy alcohol presence and quite an abrupt finish, neither malty nor hoppy. Not unlike a bourbon in that it hints at vanilla. Very easy to drink which belies its 10%ABV. (2009 vintage 33cl)

That beer was 2 years old, I've since tried other vintages but 2 years has yet to be surpassed or perhaps 2009 was just an excellent year...more rigorous research is required.

 Struisse certainly make some excellent beers with the black Albert beers being particular stand outs,though for me pannepot is the pinnacle of a distinguished line up and should be on your beer bucket list to be dispatched in short shrift.

Breandán has been speedy with the write up, you can find it here, cheers for hosting! Next month's Session is being hosted by Jeremy short and is all about home brewing...find the topic here.

Brooklyn Local

Today its the turn of a few bottles bought a year ago and secreted in my old landlord's larder - that's one way to prevent premature drinking!

Brooklyn Brewery's "big bottles" are bottle conditioned 750ml and as such are designed to pair well with food. Today its the two Brooklyn Local beers up for review. Both are "big" in more ways than one, weighing in at 9%ABV each.

Local 1 is a strong golden Belgian ale (think Tripel) Golden coloured, with plenty of carbonation and cork popped. Fruity yeast esters on nose, banana, lively carbonation, sweet, strong malt and boozy finish with a touch of pepper. It works particularly well with St Vernier cheese from Waitrose, but any soft rinded cheese will do just as well.

Local 2 is a dark dubbel-style ale, again made with the Brooklyn Belgian yeast and refermented with champagne yeast. It makes use of wild-flower honey to give a richer texture and flavour. Another lively bottle, the cork shot across the room! The beer stayed put though. Opaque ruby with plum on the nose. Rich fruit, milk chocolate and robust malt body in this one.Works rather well with Keen's mature cheddar, but not quite so well with taleggio despite washed rind cheese being recommended as a match.

As with the Goose Island vintage range, these are decent beers, but you can get the Belgian classics for much cheaper in the UK. I'd not buy either again but happily drink them if offered.

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Brewed at Home

This post marks one year of blogging!

Gone is the association of homebrew and dishwater, today's homebrewers are much more likely to produce something close to commercially available ales than say ten years ago. They too have taken inspiration from overseas in using more "exotic" hop varieties and yeast strains to produce and eclectic number of beers. In fact, due to the small batch size, home brewers can take more of a risk on experimenting with novel ingredients and recipes. 

A number of homebrewers have gone on to become full time brewers or had their beers picked up by a full brewery as the result of a competition.  I was fortunate enough to try a few bottles from two future head brewer candidates: Broadford Brewer (Dave Bishop) and Hardknott Alex (Routledge).

Up first, a black IPA from David. Nebulous pours a brown-tinged black with decent sized head. David was worried it'd be past its best and if that's the case It'd have been fantastic in its prime. As it was it was a very good beer, well balanced citrus hops and chocolate malt with a touch of bitterness in the finish. Certainly better than a number of commercial BIPAs I've tried.

Alex provided me with a bottle number two. No label to this one but I'm informed its Fitzroy IPA (7.2%). Hopped with Apollo, Cascade and Citra. Good dose of piney hops on the nose, very smooth in mouthfeel with little bitterness at all and plenty of tropical fruit flavours. Reminds me quite a bit of Roosters Baby Face Assassin. Hazy amber in colour and forms a good sized head.Alex is now brewing under the 1248 banner.

 
Final beer is another of David's; DamnNation, a Belgian Strong Ale. Its hazy golden with a typical Belgian yeast aroma of fruity esters and some spicy hops. Carbonation is spot on and its far too easy drinking for its ABV. Another fantastic label and now customised bottle caps too...the collectors will be pleased!




All in all I'm very impressed and would have been happy to have paid money for these if I'd seen them in the shops. If anything 330ml was too small a serving! Thank you Alex and David and best of luck in your future endeavours, I shall certainly be watching closely!