Introducing ‘BEAR-ly Getting Started.’ A new series that shares information, education and great conversation about beer. Our co-host is Craig Altobello, beer cicerone and owner of Magic Bear Beer Cellar. Our first series talks about the history and makeup of Trappist beers with lineage dating back over 180 years. What is required to hold the "Authentic Trappist Product" label? Featuring Orval Trappist Ale from Brasserie d'Orval S.A. in Orval, Florenville, Belgium.
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Jason:
The Buffalo Brews Podcast. Folks if you are listening to the sound of my voice, you are listening to a brand new segment here at the Buffalo Brews Podcast where we talk beer history and teach you about the paths to great drinking. And I am Jason Edinger and with me is Craig Altobello, he is a beer Cicerone, he is the owner of Magic Bear Beer Cellar, and he's in my personal circle he's starting to be known as the Lord of Larkinville.
So if you listened previously to episode 25 you learned about Craig's beginnings, your management at 716, and then to present with the success of Magic Bear which you're now past your first anniversary and whether it's you just stop in for a cold one or your new collaboration releases that you're doing all the time or Trivia Night which I'm proud to brag that I'm undefeated in Trivia Nights. So you can choose also from a dozen ever rotating selections on TAP here, there is a can and bottle selection like no other, some of which we're about to tap into today. Speaking of TAP, because we've got sponsorships, so the TAP and Craft Festival that's coming to us on Saturday, October 21st at the Niagara Falls Convention Center, you've got a major hand in that coming up as part of the VIP curation, so you've got some work ahead of you with some great selections.
I teased about it last episode, I didn't give away the farm because there's some great selections on hand, I just didn't say from whom.
Craig:
We're working on that as we speak, we just want to make sure it's a good festival.
Jason:
So what are we sitting down, what are we drinking here today to start off with?
Craig:
So we are starting off today, we're going to kind of dive into Trappist beers of Belgium. We're going to be kind of exploring over the course of the next few episodes of this, just the Belgian culture and the Belgian style, whether it be from Belgium or the Belgian styles. But to start I wanted to dive into Orville, which is a Trappist beer.
So a lot of people might have heard the term Trappist, Orville is not one of the big ones that pop out to people, but I always like to introduce people to Orville because it kind of breaks the mold of what a Trappist beer is, because most Trappist beers, if you're thinking of Trappists, let's talk about the styles first, you have a single, a double, a triple, and a quadruple. Very difficult to remember those. Funny part about that is they actually don't know exactly where the names came from, obviously there's a lot of historians through literature and then the time frame have decided it most likely was brewed that way because you do a type of brewing or mashing where you take the strongest part of the wort and you make, it's called the first running, it's kind of like when you do maple syrup.
That's the thickest, most viscous, and heaviest in sugar with the highest degrees Plato or original gravity, which we'll jump into that in a further episode. And you can make bigger, stronger beers with that. Stronger is ABV.
So then they thought, all right, they'll probably start with a quadruple and then the next runnings and the next runnings and so on and so forth. But they used to label them with 1X, 2X, 3X, kind of like the cartoons, you would see those X's on the barrels because these breweries and Trappist monasteries were during the time where the majority of people were illiterate. So they literally kind of indicated, hey, how strong is this beer?
It's a single, double, triple, or quadruple, which meant you know how good it was alcohol wise and you also knew how much money you're going to have to dish out. Similar to that is kind of like Scottish ales where they had shillings. So there was a 60 shilling, 70 shilling, 80 shilling because it was less about what did you call it?
Didn't have to have all these fancy names that we have now or cool labels and this, that, the other to draw you in. It was how much is it going to cost me? And then I want to know how much bang for my buck am I getting?
So that's one of the cool things about the styles is there's not a ton of them. So this Orville breaks the mold a little bit. It's a little, leans more towards the Cezanne style, which is Southern Belgium in the Wallonia area and Cezanne literally translates to season.
So this beer is more to be consumed kind of as a refreshing beer as opposed to some of the other Trappist beers we'll try, which are a little bit more slower sippers and you know, bigger and bolder in flavor, kind of more your dinner or late night enjoyable beers. This guy Orville only brews two beers. They brew Orville and Petit Orville.
So the actual style of this beer being a Cezanne, we should kind of talk a little bit about the Cezanne style. Okay. First, I think we should do is look at this beer, try this beer, and then, then we'll dive into the style.
So first and foremost, cheers. Cheers. So with every good Belgian beer, especially the Trappist, very high carbonation.
And when you talk about Cezannes, they're all over the board. Because there's actually lighter Cezannes and then more amber Cezannes. But the main characteristics of what a Cezanne should be is it should be highly carbonated, very dry and well attenuated.
That basically just means you've allowed the yeast to do the job well enough to eat up as much as the sugar as possible. So kind of like with wine, you know, dry means it doesn't have a lot of residual sugar. So we want it to be refreshing because the Cezanne is considered a part of the farmhouse sales and farmhouse sales are exactly that.
They would be brewed on the farm by the farm hands for a multitude of reasons. The biggest one is for refreshment, you know, it was easier to have beer than potable water because a part of brewing beer is boiling it. So we would ensure that our workers didn't get sick by providing them with their beverages, which you knew were sterilized because you boiled them.
And then they would basically take ingredients they had and add spices and add junks that they would have nearby. And when I say add junks, I mean, you know, are we adding fermentable sugars, not from grain? You know, are we adding cherries, are there cherries on the farm?
Are we adding some apples? Is there, you know, a ton of leftover rye that we're going to throw into the grain bills so that, you know, it's got a little spice to it. So that was the main thing, refreshment.
But also, if you had a good farm hand and they were kind of like your full-time employee and you didn't want to lose them during the winter, you would employ them to brew the beer. So they were brewing beer to be able to keep a job going even when the weather wasn't great because Belgium is known for many things, but it's not, you know, it's not your beach destination. And then the last thing is when you, you know, brew beer, you have what's called spent grain at the end of it.
You've got a bunch of this barley, wheat, rye, spelt, you name it, leftover and it is delicious for those farm animals. So even to this day, most breweries, I don't know of many breweries that don't team up with a farmer where they come and pick up their spent grain. So that's kind of like the reason for Saison.
And if you think about them brewing in the wintertime for summer refreshment or basically harvest refreshment as well, that's where the season comes from. It's brewed in one season to be enjoyed in another. And that's kind of what Orville is.
Orville is just meant to be because it's, you know, it's the name of the monastery as well as the name of the beer. But when we drink this, it's a refreshing, welcoming sip every time. So really good with dinner.
It's really good on a hot day. It's one of those beers that really can be drank on any occasion. And that's typical of the Saison style.
Some people ask me, hey, what's your favorite beer? And I've drank so many beers and the easiest answer I have been coming up with lately is whatever beer is in my hand. But if I had to pick my desert island beer, which I call it, which means if you only drink one beer style or one beer for the rest of your life, it's the only thing that's left on the island.
Saisons, to me, they provide a lot of character, a lot of flavor without being too much. So that's kind of my first dip into it. You know, we could dip a little bit more into Trappist Breweries, but I'm going to let Jason do a little talking here.
I've already, I'll do a couple more sips and see what he has to think of this beer.
Jason:
So one, one, one characteristic that you can see right away is what they call the lacing on the glass after those first couple of sips. It really clings nicely to the to the glass. So we're talking like barley malt.
Some cases we're doing candy sugars, the rare occasion, the hops, wheat. It's definitely has a dry, a dry sip on that or the dry taste on that first sip.
Craig:
And it's a nice, you know, not quite amber, but not a light, you know, we talk about the SRM or the standard reference method for, you know, the colors of beer. And, you know, it's got this great, just slightly hazy, you know, not like a hazy IPA or anything, but you know, it's got this just light gold, if not, you know, golden hue to it, bordering on, on, on the cusp of being almost amber, but it, it's still in the golden family. So, you know, pleasing to the eye, pleasing to the palate, you know, you bring up that Belgian lacing and, and one of the main reasons they call it the Belgian lacing is because there is so much carbonation and there, there's so much proteins in the beer that it provides nice head, nice foam.
When I first poured this beer, it was about half foam, half beer. And then, you know, it slowly drips down the glass, but you should see a concentric circle ring as you're drinking, kind of go down the glass for every slip, sip. And that is A, because of the beautiful head that Belgian beers create from the yeast that really does provide a nice rocky, thick, dense head, but also clean glassware.
We pride ourselves on hand-washing every glass here at Magic Beer, but you will not get that Belgian lacing with just any washed glass. You know, you have any type of lipstick or residue, any type of soap still in that glass, you're going to see just random dicking to the sides with the bubbles. And especially if you see it, you know, not sticking whatsoever.
Jason:
People don't think that a, quote-unquote, dirty glass would change the characteristics of a beer, but it certainly will. Oh, absolutely. You were talking about food pairings.
One of the things that I actually pulled from their website where they made recommendations as far as food pairings, they talk about, there's where I need my readers there. First time I've ever had to break out the readers for an episode, you know. A lot of detail when it comes to the Belgians.
That's right. So they talk about mild, semi-soft cheeses, warm brown breads, fresh pear, steamed mussels or clams done in a pear and cream sauce, oysters, smoked, so we're definitely like a lot of Belgian ales, very much into the seafood family. So they, and then one of the notes I took off of here was talking about the lacing.
They were the first ones that I read about where it talks about the Belgian lace, quote-unquote. And then they said it's excellent with a homemade cigar as well.
Craig:
There you go. I mean, few things aren't good with a good cigar. But if you notice all that food, one of the big things there is they're all kind of fatty or kind of rich.
A lot of cheeses, cream sauces. And what makes Belgian beers and specifically something light with a touch of bitterness like this Oroville, but that high carbonation cuts through all of that. You know, you want a beer with some good carbonation for anything.
You know, those types of cheeses, those semi-soft, they kind of coat your mouth, you know. You're chewing on them and next thing you know, you're tasting that cheese on every next bite that you have. So you have a couple of sips of beer, kind of refreshes, cleanses your palate.
So you're ready for more cheese, more food, but definitely more beer. So that's one of the beauties of pairing beer with food. The Belgians do it the best.
They actually have what they call beer a la cuisine or roughly beer, you know, the cuisine with beer. So not only do they respect beer as a part of the meal, not just a drink to go with it, but they often cook with it. You talk about the seafood and the mussels, a lot of times you'll hear of moulet frites where they're actually using the beer within the broth.
They are putting the darker beers into their breads and it kind of just has this harmonious because we talked about the Saison style and then this Oroville being similar to it. They're very open to the brewer's interpretation, but one of the consistent things about Belgian beers is everything should have a balance to it and this beer definitely has a balance. You have the spiciness, a little bit of bitterness from the hops, you have a nice grain malt flavor, that fermentation brings that spiciness, but then some esters.
So when you're drinking and you hear about yeast flavors, basically you're getting esters which are fruity like pear or apricot, and then you have phenolics which are more like your clove or some of your baking spices. We get a lot of that with this yeast and then, you know, talking about yeast with Oroville, one of the other cool things that they do, and most Trappist and Belgian beers do what's called bottle conditioning where they leave a little bit of viable yeast still in there which means the yeast can still convert sugar to alcohol and what it does is it scavenges all the air that's in there because what it'll do is it eats up the air, it eats up the sugar, and then it produces carbon dioxide and alcohol. Two things that we love, bubbles and alcohol in our beer. But what Oroville does is they use the yeast around them.
Talk about, you know, using what you have nearby, they'll use wild yeast to bottle condition which one of them is brettanomyces, which means the British fungus, but what it, you know, in the field we call it brett or, you know, enthusiasts, they call them brett or brett beers. That one really is good for aging beers because it will continue to eat anything that's in this bottle and really just make sure that it doesn't oxidize. However, it does provide a lot of what they call barnyard flavors.
So it could, you know, that's a weird term to use, but, you know, to me I like saying funky, you know, because we're a little bit more with funky cheeses, but, you know, when we talk about barnyard or horse blanket or horse sweat, it's not the most appealing definitions or characteristics that you'd want to say about your beer or food, but what it really kind of means is it's got this, you know, kind of hay-like rustic type of flavor to it, you know, where you kind of feel like you are sipping on the farm and, you know, taking a quick break from work in the field and enjoying a nice little libation and refreshment.
Jason:
Yeah. Not overly bitter in that characteristic. This one here actually coming in at about 32 IBUs, so nice and easy going, 6.9 ABV. One of the interesting things I read about this was it says that the original gravity on this is a 1.055. Now, there's people who are listening to this right now probably cocking their head to the side wondering what, but for home brewers, that's a little more of an important number because I guess this beer starts in at about five and a quarter ABV and it heats up to where it gets to that 6.9 in a relatively short time. So that makes it really appealing and again, it brings out that, to me, I mean, it's not the right word, but it's the word that I'm thinking of. It brings out that almost earthier, flatter taste, not bitter, and it reminds me so much of a farmhouse. I know of a lot of people that you can either take or give that type of style.
For me, I really enjoy it. There's a couple of breweries around the Western New York area that specialize in that. One that comes to mind is down in Mayville, the folks down at Big Inlet really sit on a nice farmhouse down there and it's kind of the right territory for it too, farmland out there, rural Chautauqua County.
It's very nice.
Craig:
Yeah. When you think of these beers, you think rustic. You think about not being too over the top.
It's just about having a good beverage and then you think about, what am I eating? Who are the people I'm with? Not that it takes a back seat.
It's just, it doesn't need to be the star. It doesn't have to hit you with a million different flavors. It just needs to be a good beer.
The Belgians did a good job, specifically the Trappist breweries did a good job at producing great beer. Let's talk a little bit about the Trappist Monastery. They brewed beers in the beginning for two main reasons.
It was to welcome foreigners or any guests of the monastery. You would provide them with some beer. It's basically the rule of Saint Benedictine.
You originally had the Benedictine monks, which back in the thousands, and the rule of Benedictine, Saint Benedict, his rule was basically, you have to be self-sufficient. You got to work hard and your life is dedicated to God. You would work and provide for yourself only what you needed and you would welcome others into your home.
Everything that you did was more about your prayer. It was less about self and more about the whole. Then down the line, things got a little bit lackadaisical.
People were giving up. There was the Cistercian order of the monks, the Saint Benedict monks. A different order of monks came out and they said, hey, we are getting away from what Saint Benedict wanted to say, so we really want to revisit this.
Then those were the Cistercian monks. Fast forward to a little bit after that, there became the strict order of the Cistercian monks, which were originally the Benedictine monks. Now they're saying, hey, we are going to follow the exact rules of Saint Benedict.
That became the Trappist monastery, which had a brewery. Some rules about being a Trappist monastery and then having a brewery. To be a Trappist beer, three main things have to happen.
One, you have to be brewed on and by the supervision or by monks themselves and it has to be brewed on a Trappist monastery. If it's not brewed on an actual Trappist monastery, it's not a Trappist beer. Then its profits are solely to be used for the upkeep of the monastery and anything beyond that is donated to charity or to help their surroundings.
Finally, the last thing was to make sure that this beer was used to welcome people and it was used more, it was secondary. It wasn't, hey, we brew beer, secondary to their virtues, secondary to their daily life. You didn't open up a Trappist brewery to make money.
It wasn't your primary goal. It was always supposed to be secondary. This is a good means to, with the upkeep financially of the brewery, but also the sustenance to the monks and visitors that came to the monastery.
You had to follow all three of those to the point where people were calling themselves Trappist beers and then in the 90s or 1900s, they came out, and I think it was the late 80s, they came out with an ATP or the authentic Trappist products. Authentic Trappist product was basically the seal of approval by the International Trappist Association, the ITA, I believe. Basically, you had to follow everything and then the ITA would deem you an ATP or an authentic Trappist product.
This goes for cheeses and other things produced by Trappist monks, but if you didn't follow the rules, you were taken off, so much so, just recently, the monastery that brewed ACL, A-C-H-E-L, they lost their Trappist designation because, unfortunately, the last monk moved to, I think, Westmall, and he's living in, or he moved to another brewery, he's kind of getting too old to be living on his own, so there is no more monks at ACL, so they're still brewing it.
It's still a Trappist beer, but it's not an authentic Trappist beer because it's not brewed by an actual monk. Westmall, actually, I believe, took over the brewing operations to try and keep it, however, I believe a private party ended up purchasing...
Jason:
That's what I read, yeah.
Craig:
Yeah, a private party purchased the monastery. I don't know who or why, but somebody out there is running around in their own little monastery now and they've got to, you know, hopefully...
Jason:
That's a mon-o-stary. There you go, that's for sure. Yeah, they had been around since 1850.
Craig:
Yeah, and so as soon as that was no longer under a Trappist supervision, you know, there was no way the ITA was going to allow this to continue to be called a Trappist beer, so unfortunately, ACL, you know, you can still drink it, but it's not going to be Trappist, but still delicious. So the beers that are brewed in the same fashion or same styles, they're called Abbey Ales, so you might hear that. One of the big ones is, you know, Brewery Omagon here in Cooperstown, New York, not too, too far away.
Beautiful, beautiful place. One of my favorite breweries to visit. You know, they brew a lot of Abbey Ales because they're not, you know, overseen by Trappist monks or anything of the sort.
It's not a monastery. They do say on their grounds, you're very close to heaven, however, that's because of the libations, not necessarily the fact that it's a monastery, but those Abbey styles are basically, you know, the secular or non-monastery versions of the traditional Trappist beer styles.
Jason:
Yeah. And then to see, again, so much history that goes with what would be the Abbey of Orval. They're located near Florinville in Belgium.
That's a province of Luxembourg. And then the present brewery was completed in 1929, and I believe it was officially opened in 1931 when they started producing outside of the Abbey. And then their, what they call the Kittel pin style bottle, which we see here.
The old bowling pin. The old bowling pin. And then the Orval chalice, which was also introduced at the time.
So I guess over there in Belgium, it's typical that you would go and this would be served in their style of chalice, which I guess is unique to their particular taste.
Craig:
Yeah, that's one of the cool things about almost all Trappist and pretty much all Belgian brewed beers. They come up with their own glassware. They say that, you know, the glassware we've developed is the best to accentuate the attributes of the beer that they brew.
And they take their beer culture and the seriousness of their beers to such a point that, you know, if you go to a bar that's serving these beers and they run out of the Orval chalice or any, you know, if you're drinking Chimay and they don't have the Chimay glass or they're all dirty, they'll stop serving it until they can serve it to you in its proper glassware. Which is, you know, one, a nod to the breweries that, you know, this is an artisan product and if it's meant to be drank out of the glass that was invented or, you know, devised for it, then they pay respect to that. And that's just a part of, you know, how much respect there is to the beer within the Belgian culture.
Another cool thing is I'm fiddling with this bottle cap. You'll see on the bottle as well as the bottle cap, I don't know if you read about this, Jason, but it's a trout with a ring in its mouth. And there's some folklore behind where this comes from.
And basically there was a princess at one point that was hanging out by a little brook, a little, you know, small body of water and she lost her ring, dropped it in, you know, she immediately started to pray to the heavens and, you know, was just so distraught that she lost her ring. She says, if you, you know, if you return this ring to me, I promise I'll build a monastery. And out comes a trout with a ring in its mouth and it delivers it to the princess and she makes good on her claim.
And that is where the Orville Monastery supposedly had its inception.
Jason:
In 1070. There you go. Which would make it 1016 years old.
Yeah, what my notes here have that there was a large fire back in 1252 that destroyed the monastery. They rebuilt. And then the French Revolution caused the destruction of it once again.
And then they had to rebuild for yet another time. And then fast forward to 2023, where they're making great beer and something that we can enjoy here every single day. I'm glad that you had this in stock because it allowed me to really sit down and start studying Belgian culture, Abbey culture.
And then, like I said, when I came in, I'm like, I've never wanted to go to Belgium more than after doing the research for this project.
Craig:
Yeah, it is. It is amazing. And, you know, I highly recommend people try Belgian beers because it's going to be something that's like, you know, we talked about Eichel, but, you know, I don't see too many people that want to be monks these days.
You know, it's it's tough to convince somebody to live a life of solitude, silence and nothing but hard work. And, you know, the monks, they're not even supposed to laugh. You know, they're if you're sitting at dinner, it's it seems, you know, an earthly pleasure to to to laugh too much.
So there's a lot of, you know, smiling and, you know, some hemming and hawing when it comes to things. But for the most part, a very, very docile, very tempered group of individuals. So there's very few of them.
And, you know, you see it in a lot of stuff, very delicious look, liqueur, alcohol that I like Chartreuse out of France. They're another one that they're afraid will not be here much longer because the monks who also hold the recipe, they're they're slowly no longer with us. And so grab a trappist beer, grab some of these beers while you can before they're harder and harder to find, either if they're not produced or they're not being exported or we're no longer importing.
But when I see them, I grab them, I enjoy them. And we always have at least a few different varieties imported here at Magic Bear, but a lot of good places around the Western New York scene where you can grab some and do your part to help out a monk and drink some trappist beer. Help a monk drink a trappist.
There you go.
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