My Bar, Your Bar

Yes, I’m reviewing another beer. I know, I know… this is a drink blog, but I do have a soft spot for a great beer and something tells me the quest to find them all will never be completely fulfilled. I’m a sucker to try any Belgian or “Belgian-style” ale and that led me to this latest purchase.

A couple details first… The Ommegang Brewery is located in Cooperstown, NY. This microbrewery takes pride in brewing “Belgian-style” beers here in America. Not too uncommon but it’s a business model that I certainly appreciate.

The Abbey Ale is a rich, dark brown beer with a full, foamy head. The nose of the beer is very fruity with hints of toffee and cinnamon. Upon tasting, the beer is full bodied but not heavy. Although the alcohol is 8.5%, it does not dominate due to the complexities of the flavors present in the beer. Roasted malt, sweet dried fruit, and a variety of spices seem to all compete together for dominance, none of which overpower the other. The ale is nicely balanced and easy to drink.

All this in a beer that costs $4.99 for a 750ml bottle. This represents a huge value for anyone who loves a quality Belgian-style beer since it runs half the price of Chimay and its counterparts. In fact the Ommegang Abbey ale is very similar in taste and style to Belgium’s Delirium Nocturnum (not yet reviewed). A quality beer offered at a fantastic value…if you can find it locally, I highly recommend it.

I consider myself to be an active man. Aging, but active. The old knees are taking a pounding they probably won’t get over as I train for a marathon this coming February. But I am determined to reach this goal, especially after being sidelined a good year and a half after I didn’t approach training for a marathon in an appropriate, feasible way. So, Lord willin’, I’ll be crossing the finish line of my first marathon next Februrary not long after crossing over the 34 year old line.

So, since I do attempt to stay active, I can appreciate the folks at Great Divide Brewing Company. The packaging for their beers feature silhouettes performing all kinds of strenous activities like mountain climbing, skiing, cycling, jumping over things, etc. This is all good and does the job of tying the company in with their outdoorsy, Colorado-based image. To be honest, this is what initially caught my eye when looking in the beer case. Since very few associate beer drinking with anything remotely active (does channel surfing qualify?), I was intrigued. (Yes, beer does intrigue me.)

The Ridge Line Amber is a fine ale that is full of character. The beer is very reminiscent of a homebrewed beer. In fact, the first thing that popped in my head after the intial swig was how similar in taste it was to an amber ale I brewed at home a couple years ago. The beer picks up where Bass ale leaves off. It smells full of malt with a hint of tartness. The taste fills up your mouth, initially with the carmel, malty flavor, but finishes with a hearty dose of hops that balances the beverage out nicely. At 5.4%, the alcohol level isn’t too overpowering. This beer is strongly recommended for those who love a strong, smooth ale that goes the extra mile in flavor.

We salute you! I also salute any beer that comes with a small, plastic goat (huh?). I understand that bock in German means billy goat, but I don’t know why the Ayinger brewery of Aying, Germany is compelled to include this novelty with each of its bottles in their four pack of Celebrator Doppelbock beer. I’ll just graciously accept this gift from our German friends and move on.

The Ayinger Brewery was established in 1878. And according to the packaging, they brew their beer “in accordance to the ‘Reinheitsgebot’ Purity law of 1516.” My initial reaction to this news was to think, “let’s hope they’ve upgraded their purity standards sometime in the last 500 or so years.” I mean, I do have to work tomorrow. After a little research on this law, it appears that it is concerned with actual ingredients and not standards of cleanliness. For more info on the law, click here.

Bocks are a lager that were typically brewed by Catholic monks to be heavy beer. Bocks and the even heavier doppelbock (”double bock”) were particularly popular during Lent when the monks were fasting. This beer served as a “meal replacement” to get them through to Easter. It makes you wonder how much of the Lent season the monks actually could remember…

Like alot of dark lagers, the Celebrator’s aroma was strong with molasses, chocolate, and raisins. Its taste was silky smooth, rich with carmel and much sweeter than I expected. The beer had a creamy texture and full body. Truly a meal in a mug. None of the above suprised me. What I did find unexpected was the bitterness in the aftertaste. The hops really comes through at the end which ended up being a nice compliement to full-throttle malty smell and taste. I highly recommend the beer. It’s an easy to drink beer with the monk’s stamp of approval, Lent or no Lent.

Ah yes. But would he have sympathy for you?

Recently, as I was browsing in my local ABC liquor store, I came across a beer ominously called “Belzebuth.” The label features a mischeivous, playful devil doing what appears to be a touchdown dance. Of course this piqued my interest, along with the in-your-face 13% alcohol level the label isn’t shy about communicating. So I purchased a three pack and headed home wondering what evil I had potentially brought upon me and my family.

In hindsight, after studying the label at the store I should have known what I was in for. But I had intellectualized too much. In our modern times most of us who believe that the devil exists think of him, well, as Al Pachino in “The Devil’s Advocate.” You know, the smooth, articulate, and well dressed man who leads the good intentioned slowly down the wrong path by playing to all our human weaknesses. C.S. Lewis does a great job in “The Screwtape Letters” of portraying just how clandestine evil is when it goes to work on us. Not many people I know believe the devil actually has horns, a pitchfork, hooves, and body odor with a distinctive sulfuric quality. You know, that in-the-face evil waiting to jump out from nowhere, yell “boo,” and give us a few jabs with a sharp object.

Well, upon opening the bottle of Belzebuth and pouring it into a frosty mug, I realized that this is definitely the “in-your-face” devil that was dancing on the label. The smell was strong with musty yeast and slighty fruity, which was all but dominated by the smell of alcohol. This translated over to the taste, which was very heavy with alcohol. The beer also contained a malty molasses flavor with a tangy finish. Again, due to the high alcohol content it was hard to distinguish much more.

If you like your beer to hit you over the head and call you names, this is the one. Note that it is bottled in 8.5 oz. bottles so that you can still get off the couch after having one. As for me, I think I’d prefer my evil beer a little more Al Pachino, smoother and seductive, as opposed to this big, scary beer that hollered “boo” and poked me in the head with a pitch-fork.