Driven To Drink - Belgium, Day Two (Part One)
Moving on from the shadow of the Sint Bernadus brewery we took to the back roads of West Flanders, with its fine crop of hops, poppies and war graves. For lunch we stopped at the small town of Roeselare, home of the magnificent Rodenbach brewery, the best known purveyor of "Flemish Red Ale". Although they sell a couple of different beers they only really brew one. Some of this is then put into huge, upright wooden barrels (foederen in Dutch) for aging for eighteen months to two years, acquiring a woody sourness on the way.
The beer that's just called Rodenbach is mostly "young" beer with just a touch of the old stuff. The stone-cold classic that is Grand Cru is two-thirds old, to a third young, giving a mouth-puckering sourness that comes as a bit of a shock the first time you taste it. Though by the time you finish the bottle you may well love it.
And then there's...
55 - Robdenbach (Palm) Oud Belegen Foederbier
This is the old beer. Straight. No messing.
The brewery tap on the market square in Roeselare is the only regular outlet for this beer, and it's only available on draught. Which just might be why I planned a stop there for lunch. I'm a big fan of the Grand Cru so on getting a glass of this hazy, amber-brown, two-year-old ale set before me I was mentally preparing for something quite hardcore. What came as a bit of a surprise was quite how drinkable it turned out to be. It's certainly got an overall sourness and an occasional vinegary hit (which seems to come and go) but that's combined with a nice mellow oak-aged roundness. In fact the sourness is mostly a refreshing oaky tang which stays for a lingering aftertaste. Again, very pleasant on a hot summer day.
I'd presume that this beer varies from vat to vat due to the aging process, so the fact that it's unblended will mean it doesn't always taste quite the same. In 2007 they also bottled a foeder's worth of old beer as Vintage, which I picked up a bottle of later that day. I'm assuming it'll be similar but I've not drunk it yet.
From Roeselare it was onwards to another small town, Kortrijk, for the evening. A bit of a rest at our hotel, where one wall of our room was decorated with a painted-on comic strip, and then out for an evening on the beer. But I'll leave that until next time.
