Thursday 26 January 2012

The Name's Double. Ampleforth Double.

As I emerge blinking from another round of the game I like to call "Dishing It Out About Beer" (go and join in the fun at the Fletch-curated Real Ale Reviews), I'm reminded of an event that happened 24 hours ago that throws the all the arguments about "craft beer", keg vs cask, the relevance of CAMRA in the 21st century et al into a cocked hat.

When you look at these beers, there's little to inspire confidence. Sure, they are pre-production samples, but there's nothing about them that makes you think "ooh, helloooo". You might raise one eyebrow at the monastic connections to Ampleforth Abbey, raise the other eybrow at the 7%abv. But then perhaps you'll lower the first eyebrow noting that sugar is listed as an ingredient, and then lower the second raised eyebrow when you note that the beer isn't brewed on site, but is actually contract brewed by Dutchman in exile Wim van der Spek at his Little Valley brewery near Hebden Bridge. All of this eyebrow waggling, resembling windscreen wipers on a rainy drive, might have given you the appearance of Roger Moore doing a mid-period James Bond. If, like me, your experiences with Little Valley beers have been a bit mixed - on cask, delicious and sometimes ethereal, in bottle, mmm, not so much - you might even have lowered an eyebrow by now.

Anyway, that frightfully clever, look-at-me-and-my-fancy-words preamble is a roundabout way of saying that last night I opened these beers, and they completely cut through the craft-cask-keg-CAMRA debate about where we go from here, because these are simply very well-made beers, and great examples of what they should be. Perhaps my expectations were lowered from all the eyebrow waggling, and I have to say that the initial banana and acetone notes that wafted out of the glass were a little unnerving, but given a couple of minutes to breathe, this blossomed spectacularly into a really solid, slightly sweet, slightly boozy Belgian-style double/dubbel.

I know, I know, it's really unlikely, but there you have it. I spoke to the guys at the abbey today and they have a colossal first bottling run booked in. I won't say exactly how much, but my initial "yeah, I could sell a bit of this, but I wonder how much?" finger-in-the-air estimate of how much to buy was about a half of one percent of the total production run. They're clearly slightly mad - the only English abbey beer, brewed under licence by a Dutchman 50 miles away - but like all mad things, there's an element of greatness to it.

More pertinently for me, it underlined that actually the key thing that makes a beer great is, very simply, that it must be well-made. No doubt some smart-arse will pop up and say "but that's the definition of craft". Well, bullshit. There are well-made beers, and then there are the rest. If you can brew a beer and get it into a glass free from any production flaws, and tasting broadly how it should taste (let's not use this as an argument about styles), then you'll have made me, and a legion of drinkers, very happy. It seems like a modest set of desires, doesn't it? Brew a beer free of flaws, ensure it carbonates properly, and tastes (for want of a better word) nice.

Anyway, I drank the first bottle of badly-labelled, contract-brewed Ampleforth Abbey Double, and when I got to the end, I thought "was it really that good?" and drank another one to make sure. And you know what? It really was that good.

17 comments:

  1. That's the thing after all. You can call it "craft", "keg" or "Antonio". I want to call it "good" and I can't do that until I've drunk it...

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  2. If that's the "the only English abbey beer", define "abbey".

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  3. PF - quite

    Stringers - is it that you don't view Ampleforth as an abbey, or that there is another abbey-related beer that I'm overlooking?

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  4. Max -- I think there's something we disagree on here: there are lots of beers I don't like that I nonetheless recognise are made with care and attention. Me not liking them doesn't make them bad! I can consider a beer a 'craft beer' despite not wanting to drink it myself.(Of course there are beers which are of intrinsically poor quality, and, unsurprisingly, I tend not to like them...)

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  5. I have tried this and it is reallllly good!

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  6. Bailey,

    Beer I like = good beer (to me), Beer I don't like = not necessarily bad (though likely so). That said, what I mean with my comment is that if I don't like a beer for whatever reason I won't matter whether there are people who call it "this" or others who call it "that", I won't want to drink it again. Craft, Real, etc. are nothing but labels.

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  7. Do you mean a beer brewed "at", or "by or for" the community of, an "abbey" (whether or not that establishment has a brewing tradition). Or a beer brewed to a "style" we'd recognise as "Abbey". Or a beer with either the word "abbey" in it's name or monastic imagery on the label?

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  8. You see what's happening? Now there's someone who wants to discuss the "abbeyness" of this beer and not its "goodness"...

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  9. Stringer - ah, I see now, sorry. I think Ampleforth are claiming that it's the only beer made in association with an abbey, rather than the only example of the style being brewed in the UK, or with monastic associations.

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  10. PF - haha, but is it abbey-craft or abbey-macro?!

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  11. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  12. So that would be Ampleforth making a point of "abbeyness" rather than "goodness", eh?

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  13. They're no stranger to alcoholic tipples at Ampleforth Abbey, making their own cider on site and from that cider brandy as well.

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  14. P.S. @PF - There's loads of good "English abbey beers" - for certain values of "abbey". I thought I was pointing up the swallowing of "abbey" while straining at "craft". I should speak louder and slower :-)

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    1. It wasn't my intention to poke you. Yours is a legitimate question, but I found it rather funny in the context of the post.

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  15. If it is not real, it is chemical fizz.

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  16. Would love to get my hands on this; my interest certainly is piqued. Agree with your comments re: LV, but it's that slightly cocked way Wim brews 'traditional' beers that really appeals to me. It's different. I really enjoyed the Python IPA recently.

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Sorry about the word verification - the blog was getting spammed to bits.