Forgive me Father, for I have sinned, please grant me absolution and Holy Orval...
Written: Apr 24 '04
Product Rating:
Pros: Hugely complex for a normal gravity beer...
Cons: Not sold everywhere...
The Bottom Line: You'll either love Orval or you'll hate it. It's unique, with a complexity that puts off the uninitiated. Do YOU have the Orval spirit?!?!
mrkstvns's Full Review: Orval Trappist Ale 11oz Nr 11oz
This weekend, I have Trappists on the mind. On the way home from work Friday night, I stopped by my friendly neighborhood beer warehouse and was looking for something to tempt my eye. What tempted me was not any one specific beer, but rather a shelf of classic Belgian ales. What I had in mind was simply reacquainting myself with the subtle nuances of some friends I hadn't spent time with in a while, and doing the side-by-side compare and contrast of several ales of similar styles. And so, I'm stocking up the beer fridge with fresh bottles of Orval, Chimay, Westmalle, Affligem, Leffe, Maredsous, Corsendonk, and a few choice bottles from American brewers trying to emulate the great Trappist and abbey beers of Belgium's masters....especially a range of brews from Avery (can't wait to lay lips on that Quadrupel!)
First up, my personal favorite of the Trappist ales: Orval, which I call simply "Vitamin O" -- a necessary nutrient. Do you know about Orval?
About Orval...
Orval. I always speak reverently of this unique beer from such a unique brewery. Brewed at the Abbey Notre-Dame d'Orval, Orval stands apart from its brethren Trappist ales in that this beer in hand, from its uniquely shaped ovalesque bottle, is the only beer made by this abbey -- and it stands apart stylistically too, being radically different from any of the (mostly sweeter tasting) beers brewed by brethren Trappists. It's a Trappist ale, but it doesn't taste like any other Trappist ale.
Although the abbey traces its history back to 1070, the beer itself is only known to have been made since the 1700s. Now without further ado, let's pop the top and do the pour...
A Hearty Glass of Hearty Ale...
Right beer for every beer, for most of the Trappist ales, the right glass is a wide-mouthed schooner. That's what I'm using for this pour -- and lo and behold, it's also an original Orval glass, with the hefty stem and gold leaf rim...a beautiful glass to showcase a lovely beer!
When I pour an Orval, I always do a sort of 2-stage pour. I pour about 75 percent of the beer, sample it, evaluate the color and clarity, enjoy about half of it, then I swirl the remaining beer in the bottle and pour it straight into the glass -- this is a natural, bottle-conditioned real ale, and of course, doing a pour this way dumps lots of yeast into the glass -- which is why you check the aroma, clarity, color, etc. first, then dump the rest of the beer to get the Full Monty.
Appearance:
Excellent clarity on a first pour, which kicks up a hugely vigorous head that stays thick all the way to the last sip and that trails delicate fingers of Belgian lace along the sides of the glass. Color is a bright orange to light brown (it's actually not far off in color from brown ales like Newcastle -- but trust me, the similarity ends right there).
Aroma:
Oh! This is sublime!
Soft caramel and sweet melting sugar fades quickly to a fruity, ester scent redolent with fresh apricot and peach. On a second sniff, it's really almost more of an apple fruitiness, but no less intense and no less enticing.
Flavor:
Rounded bitterness with an unmistakable horse leather edge to it. The malt character on this beer is soft and muted with hops and yeast characters being the dominant flavors by a wide margin. Orval's flavor is sharply different from the dubbel and tripel ales brewed at other Trappist monasteries.
Orval is not sweet like most Trappist ales -- it's definitely bitter, it's got a slightly acidic sharpness, it has a generally dry mouthfeel, and it has that gloriously horsey and leathery character that's a by-product of their own house yeast -- a yeast that any other brewery in the world would have thrown out decades ago, yet Orval doesn't answer to stockholders, nor even to popular demand. They answer to the tastes of their own order, and to a higher authority.
The flavor is intense and big, but the beer itself is not big at all. In fact, it feels quite smooth and drinkable, but with a very full, rounded mouthfeel. Orval is brewed to a starting gravity of 13.5 degrees Plato, and it finishes with more residual sugars than usual, giving it a surprisingly low alcohol level -- most beer drinkers don't realize it, but you can pound down as many Orvals as your buddies down Buds, and you're going to be the guy who blows lowest when the cops pick you all up at the end of the night for drunk & disorderly...so you see, there are advantages to being a beer geek.
Overall Impression:
Sublime....I'm ready to die and go to hell, Orval already took me to heaven...
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