Brewery Ommegang
Cooperstown, NY
Many people have told me to try various
"Belgian-Style"
beers produced by American breweries, and
for some masochistic
reason, I always give it a try. Unfortunately, no
matter how valiant
the attempt, the beer tends to fall short.
Why can't you make good Belgian-style
beers in America? It's
the same reason that you can't make good
sourdough bread outside
of San Francisco: it's the yeast. In the air,
trillions of yeast
cells are floating around... and every area has
their own native
yeasts. When you make a sourdough bread,
the sour starter (the
hyper-fermenting dough used to start the
leavening process in
a real sourdough) is exposed to the wild
yeasts, and that starts
the fermentation process. The specific yeasts
in San Francisco
don't survive well outside of their native
habitat, meaning that
the smell and taste of a good sourdough
bread can't be replicated
outside the Bay Area.
The same thing goes with Belgian beers.
The Belgian lambic
breweries, for example, don't choose any
specific type of yeast
to ferment their beers, they simply throw open
the doors of the
fermentation room and let the wild yeast settle
in the sugar-rich
malts. It was this initial wild flora that was
tamed at the great
abbey breweries into more domestic (and
reliable) strains for
their brews. Unfortunately, it seems that even
if you bring most
Belgian live yeast cultures into the US and try
to make the same
beer using the same recipe, the beer just
doesn't have that deliciously
sweaty odor that makes Belgian beers so
distinctive.
However, just as soon as I was ready to
throw my hands up and
never try another American interpretation of a
Belgian beer, I
tried an Ommegang.
Ommegang, if you have never seen it,
comes bottled in the traditional
Belgian-style 750ml short-shouldered bottle
and is sealed with
a bulbed (champagne) cork. It also comes in
a bottlecapped 330ml
bottle, but those tend to be hard to find in most
liquor stores
and are usually sold only in bars. It is an
Abbey-style ale, on
par with a Chimay Grand Reserve or any other
Dubbel/Double Abbey
Ale. It's full bodied brew with a sweet nose,
rich caramel color
and a bready yeast taste. They achieve this
traditional taste
by truly understanding that the yeast, and
specifically the flavor
the yeast imparts to the beer, is what makes
Belgian beers great.
The brewmasters at Ommegang truly had a
vision in mind when they
developed/selected the appropriate flora to
give Ommegang its
heavenly aroma and taste.
Brewery Ommegang has also released a
Singel/Single style beer
called Hennepin, which is a crisp, hoppy,
thirst-quenching beer.
Both of these beers are worth searching out,
and at $4 or $5 per
bottle, it's less than half the price of their
Belgian cousins.
As with all Belgian beers, watch out, as they
pack more of a kick
than your traditional American beer
(Ommegang 8.5% / Hennepin
7.5%)... so don't plan on gulping it down. Then
again, with a
beer this good, it's worth the time to savor it.
(Avery Glasser)
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