Dubbel the Flavor, Dubbel the Pleasure
Written: Nov 06 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Soft rounded malt flavor with hints of plum and raisin
Cons: Limited distribution area
The Bottom Line: Tasting New Belgium's Abbey is like sampling the soft sweet culinary treasures of Belgium -- here's why...
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| mrkstvns's Full Review: Abbey Belgian Style Ale |
I've heard so many great things about New Belgium's Abbey beer that I couldn't help but pick up a six pack last time I was shopping at one of Houston's best-stocked beer retailers (Specs). I was a bit surprised to see them being sold in Houston, but several New Belgium brews were available. I'm always happy to see wider distribution of America's better craft beers -- and I definitely include New Belgium in that category.
What I Expect to Find in Abbey Beers
New Belgium's Abbey follows loosely in the footsteps of the great monastic brewers of Belgium. In Belgium, the abbey beers are usually similar to Trappist dubbel (or sometimes tripel) style ales, but they use the name "abbey" as a general descriptor because only the priests and monks of the Trappist order are allowed by law to call their beers "Trappist". New Belgium Abbey is essentially a dubbel -- and a pretty good one.
Dubbel is all things sweet and brown. It has a complex flavor profile of caramelized malt and sugar combined with a rich milieau of yeast-produced flavors and aromas, ranging from fruity esters (especially plum and raisins) to various spicy signatures, like those of cloves. Dubbel is a fairly big beer with lots of very rich, smooth, sweet malt character. It will usually have a very soft and round mouthfeel with a full body. It can have fairly high alcohol levels, so watch out! One of my favorite abbey dubbels is Affligem Dubbel, and I think New Belgium comes fairly close to the high quality levels set by that fine beer.
Abbey in the Glass
I bought a six pack of this beer, and while most of these notes reflect only the glass of beer that I'm sampling as I write this review, I can't help but include some reflections and comments from previous bottles. Normally I'd confine myself to the beer at hand, but there's a good reason why I don't want to do that here: the beer changes considerably depending on the sample temperature. One of the bottles I sampled earlier was far too cold to enjoy properly. This beer really shines when it is served at about 50 degrees -- cool, not cold.
This is also a beer that definitely rewards the critic who drinks it from appropriate glassware. For beers of this complexity, I would always go for a round goblet shaped glass that lets you swirl the beer around to release its more delicate aromatics and that allows those fleeting essences to concentrate at a smaller opening where they can be more easily appreciated.
Appearance:
Beautiful glass of beer! With its deep brown color with flashes of ruby red highlights at the edges, its bright clarity, and its slight creamy colored head, this beer has my mouth watering like Pavlov's dog.
As with many of the Trappist beers, the head is thin and fragile. Scant minutes after pouring, I'm left with only a thin ring of foam around the rim. This is good since excessive carbonation would interfere with its soft mouthfeel.
Aroma:
Fruit cake! That's what I think of when I first smell this beer. It's the aroma of plums and dark sugars. The bottle that I sampled when cold did not carry this complexity through well. Instead, that bottle smelled sharp on my first pass -- like a faint smell of carbonic acid. It was not appetizing, and I doubt that the brewers suggest anybody serve their beer iced down that cold.
Flavor:
Sweet and decadent is the flavor of this brew. There's a soft velvety smooth malt base with a sugary sweetness and a complex fruity flavor that's not just the plums that I smelled before, but also raisins. There's a slightly sharp peppery flavor that probably comes from the hops, and I feel that it really adds a nice balancing touch and brings some added complexity to the table.
About New Belgium
New Belgium Brewing Company was started in 1991 as essentially a basement operation run as a labor of love by brewer Jeff Lebesch. They've grown remarkably fast, due to their strong local focus and the tendency of Colorado beer consumers to be much more sophisticated and discerning than those in most states. Today, New Belgium is one of the larger craft breweres in the United States with a capacity of more than 100,000 barrels per year.
The brewery makes a variety of beer styles, concentrating on traditional Belgian ales. Their beers have won wide critical acclaim: the abbey won gold medals in the Great American Beer Festival three times! More info about the brewery is on their web site: www.newbelgium.com.
Abbey Normal?
By some bizarre quirk of neural firing orders, whenever I think about Abbey beers I start to chuckle. Not because the beers are funny -- they're definitely some serious brews -- no, it's because I'm thinking of a line from Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein: the doctor asks Igor whose brain it was that he brought back to the lab. "Abbey somebody. Hmmm. Abbey Normal." Okay, okay. I thought it was funny...
New Belgium's Abbey is a fine brew -- sweet and malty with a nice mix of fruity flavors and aromas. I consider it to be quite close to Affligem Dubbel, but in my opinion New Belgium has somewhat less complex aromatics and the fruity esters don't have quite the depth that would make me unhesitatingly rate it as 5 stars. This beer is close to that level -- very close. But epinions is charging me for stars today, and since I'm probably at about the 4-1/3 level, I'll leave my final rating as 4 stars. I hope epinions management sees fit to give us Edit capabilities, because this is one that I might very well rate higher on another day...
If you're pairing this beer with food, this is the kind of beer that can stand up to even the strongest food flavors. I'd consider it a natural to serve with something like grilled venison with a green peppercorn sauce. Or maybe even a nice fat Christmas goose, eh?
If you're looking for a good example of an American-brewed dubbel, New Belgium Abbey is a good place to start. It's stylistically accurate and downright tasty to boot.
Bon Apetit!
Recommended:
Yes
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