Rare Vos is a Rare Find
Written: Nov 01 '04
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Interesting complexity, with fruit and yeast dominating
Cons: Hard to find; More mild than other Ommegang beer
The Bottom Line: This is a very good beer with lots of enjoyably complex flavors.
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| Bryan_Carey's Full Review: Ommegang Rare Vos |
Belgian- style beer is often a nice alternative from ordinary brew. This type of beer is known for its fruity nature and spicy character and it makes for a nice change of pace from the usual flavors you find in most commercially sold beer products.
One brewery that produces Belgian style ales but isn’t located in Belgium is the Ommegang Brewery in Cooperstown, New York. One of this brewery’s products is Rare Vos, a Belgian Ale whose name is Flemish for “Sly Fox”.
Basic Characteristics of This Beer:
This beer pours out to an orange/tan color with a good amount of foaminess that leaves lace on the glass as you consume. The aroma is fruity and citrus- like, and also a little bit spicy, although I could not quite put my finger on the precise type of spice I could detect.
Tasting this ale, it was much easier to identify the flavors. One can quickly discern the taste of yeast and fruit, along with a fair amount of malt to make the beer a little different from other Belgian ales. I could taste plums, prunes, purple grapes, cherries, figs, dry hops, and maybe a little bit of cinnamon. There was also a distinct caramel maltiness that seemed a little bit chocolaty, but only slightly.
Ommegang brews this beer to be a little less bold than its other products, although it still ends up more full- bodied than your typical mainstream beer. The alcohol level is 6.5 percent by volume.
Food Compatibility:
This style of beer would match up best with pasta dishes and seafood, as well as light appetizers like salads. The fruity flavors make it a good beer to drink with many different fruit- flavored snacks. And its taste matches up nicely with the flavors found in tomato pasta foods, like lasagna, spaghetti and meatballs, and others.
Final Thoughts:
Ommegang Rare Vos is another good- tasting beer from the people at Ommegang Brewery. This brewing establishment creates mostly full- bodied products, but Rare Vos is actually medium- bodied. This would be enough to make it the most flavorful beer for most brewing operations but for Ommegang, it is one of the more mild products offered.
This beer emphasizes the taste of fruit but rather than the citrus/hop flavor so common in other fruit- enhanced beer, this one features other fruit flavors, like plums, cherries, and grapes. In a way, it almost seems like a bottle of wine and the fact that it is sold in 750 ml bottles with corked tops further emphasizes the similarities to wine. But this product is beer, through and through, with a good dose of maltiness that makes it taste like caramel toast with just a dab of chocolate flavor and plenty of spice from the yeast.
Speaking of yeast, there is yeast sediment in the bottom of each bottle, and the addition of this will affect the taste of your ale. If you pour the ale and avoid allowing the yeast to make its way into you glass, you will taste more fruit. If you let the yeast come into your glass and drink it, there will be a little more pronounced flavor of yeasty spiciness. I prefer to let my yeast makes its way into my glass, because in my opinion it adds to the complexity of the final product. Without the yeast, it tastes a little too similar to other common beer products.
Ommegang doesn’t distribute its products as widely as I would prefer and consequently, you may not be able to purchase Ommegang Rare Vos in your local area. The products are distributed throughout much of the Northeastern U.S., but in fewer than half of the states. The brewery’s web site, Ommegang.com, offers sample packs for sale on- line but these shipments at present can only be made within the state of New York.
Overall, this is another very good tasting brew from Ommegang Brewery. I don’t like it quite as much as the company’s other products (like Three philosophers and Hennepin) but it is still a very good brew, one that combines a good amount of yeastiness with some interesting fruit flavors to make for a tasty beer suitable for most any occasion.
Recommended:
Yes
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