Today I want to talk about one of the most special and unique beer in the world.
The beer comes from Orval Brewery, which is a Trappist brewery within the walls of the Abbaye Notre-Dame d'Orval in the Gaume region of Belgium.
The early history of production beer and wine in this monastery goes back to the 17th century, till 1795, the fire accident, monastery was producing beverage and afterwards it was closed due to the lack of resources. The present day brewery was build in 1931, designed by Henry Vaes.
What's unique about the beer is that if you talk about it in long-run process, you are getting three beers in one bottle, which definitely is surprising.
The style of beer is Belgian Pale-Ale and it also is dry-hopped between the first and second fermentation process, so at the same time with all this malty flavour, it carries huge hoppy profile as well. It comes with approximately 6.2% ABV, depending on age it might be anywhere from 5.9% to 6.9% ABV.
In my opinion I devide the beer into 3 periods, first one is till 9 months, second one from 9 months to 2.5 years and third one after 2.5 years.
When I drank fresh Orval, I had a feeling, that I was drinking very smooth, refreshing, crisp Pale Ale and also due to dry-hopping process the beer is extra dry with huge hoppy aromas, which is quite pleasing.
But as you guys already know, approximately after 9 month, hops start to die in the liquid and the beer gets more malty, which is very usual thing, but the fact that Orval is adding wild yeast in the bottle for the secondary fermentation is at least very rate or maybe the only one in the world.
So afterwards, when I drank Orval which was 1 year old, I got slightly funky flavours with all the malty profile, it was little bit sour in the aftertaste and aroma was mostly sourish green apples, I can easily say that I loved the beer, because I never tasted that kind of mixture in Pale Ale before. I was told that the yeast they use in the secondary fermentation in very well known wild yeast from Belgium, called Brett, which you mostly get in Lambic style beers.
The story does not end here, I was lucky enough to get my hands on 5 years old Orval, which was found in Spain, Madrid. This is when the wild yeast really comes in the game, I was literally shocked when I tasted the beer, it was very hazy, very thick and all I was getting was the flavours from wild yeast, very funky, very sour, very strong. It was like Lambic and all this result was from the secondary fermentation of course with yeast, in the backbone and taste it was carrying very interested malty flavour as well, but this sourness and Lambic vibe was just perfect for the beer.
So I easily this beer in my top 5 beer list, very rare, very unique and extremely interesting beer to age.
