An unedited email from a fellow brewer and supplier of pot (brewpot) by the name of Peter:

Fellas, sorry I couldn’t make it last night. Dad was in town for a funeral, and we ended up spending the evening with him. Hope the double batch went well!

Now, as to the real business at hand – Jonathan, I wanted to address your posting on Ommegang. Although Ommegang is a good beer, I have something else in store for you, my friend. Contrary to the label’s impression, Ommegang is not a Belgian-made beer, but a Belgian-style beer that’s brewed in Cooperstown, NY. This is a very important distinction – in truth, Ommegang (as you shall see on a taste test in the near future) is a far cry from the ales of the true Belgian Trappist breweries, of which there are 6 in the world, and which, in my opinion, make the finest beers known to man.

Here’s a quick rundown of the Trappist style.

Now, I can realize your delight in Ommegang, having never tried a Rochefort 8, for example, or a Chimay Red. But once you try the real deal, I’m pretty sure you’ll have a hard time with Ommegang brews, with the important exception of the Three Philosophers ale, which is the best they make. The advantage to Ommegang is the price – they usually cost only 50-75% of a Belgian import. However, a much better compromise than Ommegang, if you want to get the Belgian taste, is to go with a beer made by Unibroue in Canada – they don’t have the off flavors of the Ommegang, I think because their water is more similar…and because they speak French.

Belgian ales have a lot of variety, but there are similarities, too. For example, most breweries have a Dubbel, a Triple, and sometimes a Quadrupel – other styles include Saison (a very light, crisp beer), a Dark Ale (some bitterness, but fruitier than its English/Scottish counterpart), etc. It’s good to stack up one brewery’s Dubbel against another brewery’s Dubbel – the complexity is astounding. You can taste 10-15 different flavors in a good Belgian beer; it’s almost the complexity of wine.

This entry was posted Tuesday, January 30th, 2007 at 11:05 am and is filed under Beer Reviews, Rebuttal. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.