When it comes to beers, Orval is in a league all it’s own.  One of the few remaining authentic Trappist breweries, housed inside it’s overseeing monastery, and brews but one beer. (Well, maaaaybe two, but we’ll get back to that.)  I was graciously welcomed into the brewery by brewmaster Jean-Marie for a tour and tasting of his iconic ale.

First, a little background on the beer itself, just in case you’re unfamiliar: Orval brews and sells one beer, their Orval Ale.  It’s a light amber ale, with a hoppy bite, and finished with a touch of brettanomyces at bottling.  The resulting beer is alive within the bottle. When it’s fresh, itis hoppy, with a nice balance of body and bit of residual sugar.  As it ages, the beer evolves.  The brett lurking in the bottom of the bottle continues to eat the remaining sugar till it’s bone dry, and replacing it with a bit of farmhouse horse-blanket kick.  Comparing a fresh and five year old bottle is a study in evolution – both are great, but it wholly different ways.  At any age, it’s delicious with food.

Let me warn you: For this tour, you’ll also have to let go of what you imagine a trappist brewery is like.  There are no monks in robes stirring mash tuns by hand.  No prayers were said, no rosary beads dipped in the wort.  Jean-Marie is a hired lay professional, as are all of the brewery employees.  They upgraded the brewery in a big way not to long ago, and the result is a serious brewery, producing a lot of beer.  Orval is available all over the world, and the only way that can be done is by making a lot of it.  This is a big commercial operation, producing beer in stainless steel fermenters and lagering tanks.

This gorgeous copper tank for example:

 

 

 

It’s just for display and no longer in use.  The beer is now brewed a few feet over, in stainless steel, curiously covered in fake-copper to give the appearance of copper tanks (I was not fooled.)

 

 

It’s every beer geeks favorite sport to complain that a beer “isn’t as good as it used to be.”  Whether or not these upgrades have changes the beer is for someone smarter than I – the current version is the only one I’ve ever known, and I’m rather fond of it.

On with the tour:

 

This is the last stop for the beer before bottling.  It’s where the Brett is added.

 

Even monks have to sterilize.

The bottling line is a beast.  Dirty returned bottles go in one end, get cleaned, washed, relabeled, and filled in the course of a few minutes around the conveyer belt.   I don’t know if it’s the biggest bottling line i’ve ever seen, but it’s certainly the most intense, pushing a phenomenal number of identical bottles through every second.

 

 

These monks also have a state of the art lab.

The finished bottles are then aged to allow them to carbonate.  Brewmaster and my wife pictured for scale.

After the tour, we were thirsty.  Jean-Marie poured us samples of Orval the way he likes it best: fresh on tap.  Orval can only be found on tap in two places in the world: at the official cafe across the street, and at the tasting room we were standing in.

 

If you think of the evolution of Orval in the bottle, the draft version takes places earlier in the timeline than is ever possible once it’s been packaged.  There is no brett, but replacing it is a surprising amount of hops, especially on the nose – there is a great dry hopping aroma that doesn’t survive the trip to the US in bottles.

Then, there is the OTHER beer that Orval brews: Petite Orval, a low alcohol version for the monks. Traditionally it’s just regular Orval, with more water.

 

 

We asked why this Petite Orval appeared so much darker than the regular version.  Jean Marie confided this was actually a test batch, where they had brewed it, from the start, as Petite Orval, and the extra color came from the balance of darker malts.

So how is Petite Orval?  If I’m honest, it’s interesting, and rare, but not particularly good. It’s low alcohol gives it a very thin body, and lackluster flavor, especially in the hops.  These bottles were about a year old, so the brett had eaten up every bit of remaining sugar. Jean Marie also broke out a seven month old bottled version to compare alongside.

 

 

 

The breadth of flavors from this one beer is amazing. It encompasses a whole range of beer brewing techniques, and at each stage, highlight different flavors.  The young, draft version highlights hops.  The young bottled version balances the hops with yeast character, and the older bottles show off brett’s ability to age a beer.

After our brewery tour, I sobered up by wandering the ruins of the old monastery , located right next to the new monastery.

 

Tags: Belgium, orval

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 26th, 2010 at 8:41 pm and is filed under brewery tour. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.