A divine brew on Home Services

Jan

A divine brew

posted by admin in Window Cleaning

Leffe Style: Abbey beer made by Interbrew, Belgium; alcohol content: 6% abv. Price: $13.50 a 500ml glass or $7 for a smaller glass. Available: Belgian Beer Cafe Torenhof, 88 Armagh Street. With the arrival of plenty of rain and some bitter frosts, the worst of winter is upon us. Somehow I find myself still living in a barn, and the draughty windows and boggy ground coinciding with the school holidays is enough to drive a man to drink. A big, warming beer is the only solution. When the Belgian Beer Cafe invited me to taste a new seasonal-release beer out of the Leffe brewery, I wasn’t about to say no. Within two hours of receiving the call, I was standing at a busy bar with a mighty chalice of fine Belgian beer. There are six Trappist breweries in Belgium and The Netherlands. They produce the increasingly popular Trappist ales that are available worldwide. While their beers all come under the Trappist style designation, they vary in character. Some are sweet, some are dry. Most have a distinctive caramel-candy flavour that seems to be present in most Belgian beer and they are all high in alcohol, but other than that, the flavours vary considerably. Other breweries started brewing to the Trappist style, but they were forbidden by law to call their beer Trappist, so the term Abbey beers came about. Some of the breweries have links to actual abbies, but a lot of the more recent Abbey beers, especially American, have no connection to any abbey. The Abbey of Leffe was the first to enter an agreement with a brewery back in the 1950s. Leffe beer is made by Interbrew, one of the two biggest breweries in the world. I am not sure if the Abbey still has any financial interest in its brewing. The two regular Leffe beers served on tap at the Belgian Beer Cafes are Blonde and Brune. They are between 6 per cent and 7% abv and are rich, warming examples of the Abbey style. It is a treat to be able to drink this style of beer on tap in Christchurch. The new Leffe Rossa is a seasonal beer, which Interbrew has been making as a summer drink in Spain and Italy for the last five years or so. The Australasian Belgian Beer Cafes have decided to trial the beer, but summer in Europe means winter here, so in this hemishpere it has become a winter seasonal beer. There are eight Belgian Beer Cafes in New Zealand. The kegs had only arrived at the Christchurch Belgian Beer Cafe, the only one in the south Island, a few hours before me so the beer wasn’t quite down to chiller temperature, but I couldn’t wait. I wanted to be the first person in the South Island to taste this new beer. A 500ml chalice was placed in front of me and I was in heaven. The ruby-brown liquid was topped with a big, white, fluffy head. The nose was soft and sweet with a candy-biscuit edge. It was sweet in the mouth initially, and rich and warming through the middle. There was a clean hop bitterness in the finish, accompanied by a hint of candy sugar. The bitterness didn’t linger in the aftertaste. The beer was fresh and soft, with lots of fruit and spice flavours that became apparent as I sipped. It is a mighty fine drink, a mighty fine glass and a mighty fine bar.