Trappist Beer at LaTrappe

Welcome back!  I’m sorry for the unscheduled hiatus from blogging for the past week.  I’ve been busy in the interim with continuing the search for the right beer job, planning the next event in the monthly tasting series (more details on that in my next post), and taking the GMAT.  Apparently, it is recommended that one spend more than a week studying for this test, and that one not decamp to Yosemite for three of the days out of that one week devoted to studying.  No matter!  It’s over and I got to go backpacking for the first time so far this year.  It was my annual dose of nature that I had been sorely missing.  In fact, it also marks the one year anniversary of The Thirsty Hopster, which really started last August following my previous backpacking trip (through the Grand Tetons), when I visited 11 microbreweries in 4 states in 4 days with my sister and two friends.

So, what brings me back to the fold?  Well, after finding out that I had done pretty well on the GMAT, especially considering the circumstances, I decided to go out and celebrate… with beer, of course.  When I left the GMAT testing center, I wasn’t too far in terms of straight-line distances from LaTrappe, in North Beach.  The only problem was that the entirety of Telegraph Hill stood between me and my brew and there was nothing to do about this other than haul myself over it, or go the very long way around.  My immense hatred of inefficiency led me to choose the up-and-over route, though I later came to regret this decision at about the 500^th stair when I looked up and realized I had several flights left to go.  It’s also worth noting that the Filbert Steps, which climb the east face of Telegraph Hill, are no picnic for someone with a fear of heights whose particular weakness is hyperventilating when she can that there is nothing under her feet (as on grated metal stairs, or glass skywalks, etc.).  Luckily, my endorphins and adrenaline were still running high from the test and carried me over the hill, delivering me to the cozy, monastic basement of LaTrappe.

I mulled over the list and resisted the temptation to order one or another of my old favorites, resolving to try something new.  I made my decision, ordered my bottle, and sat back waiting for it to arrive, feeling pretty smug because the bar was full of business types in suits and I’ve been free of that lifestyle for going on a month and a half now.

I am both ashamed and proud to admit the bottle of Orval I drank that night was my first ever.  I’m ashamed because my first Orval ought to have come sooner in my personal beer drinking history, but proud because at least it wasn’t later.  Orval is one of the seven Trappist abbeys that brew beer, and its beer is known for its earthy/sour Brettanomyces character.  I’ll come back to the taste of Orval in a minute, but it’s worth going over the history of Orval and what exactly the Trappist abbeys are before going any further.

The Trappists are an order of Catholic monks the split off from the Cisterian monks in 1666.  The Trappists formed their own order because they believed in the strict observation of the Rule of St. Benedict, which specified that monks maintain an ascetic lifestyle, while the Cisterians practiced a relaxed observation of this rule.  The name of the order comes from the abbey of La Trappe, whose abbot was a leader of the reform movement.

Trappist doctrine calls on its monks to support their abbeys through their own work, so many Trappist abbeys produce goods to sell to the public, including but not limited to beer.  There are currently seven Trappist breweries, six in Belgium and one in the Netherlands: Achel (Be), Chimay (Be), Koningshoeven (Ne), Orval (Be), Rochefort (Be), Westmalle (Be), and Westvleteren (Be).  When applied to beer, the term ‘Trappist’ technically denotes only that a beer was brewed in a Trappist abbey, not that it is of a particular style.  However, because most of the Trappist breweries have historically brewed a small selection of beers within narrow range of styles, these styles have become associated with the term Trappist.  As a result, the term ‘Trappist’ is sometimes incorrectly used to refer to all beers brewed in these styles, regardless of whether they were made in a Trappist abbey or not.  The correct term for any beer brewed in one of these styles, but not in a Trappist abbey is an “abbey style” beer.  The wine drinkers reading this post will recognize this as being similar to the distinction between “Champagne”, which though often used to refer to all sparkling wine, technically only refers to those made in Champagne, France, and those made elsewhere are properly called “sparkling wine.”  The original Trappist brewers have formed a trade association that has trademarked the term “Trappist” and formulated rules for which beers are may be officially designated as Trappist beers:

1. The beer must be brewed within the walls of a Trappist abbey, by or under control of Trappist monks.
2. The brewery, the choices of brewing, and the commercial orientations must obviously depend on the monastic community.
3. The economic purpose of the brewery must be directed toward assistance and not toward financial profit.

To complicate matters further, some beers that have historically been brewed by Trappist abbeys are no longer under the direct control of the abbey, and are being made under a license agreement by commercial breweries.  So, these beers which were once truly Trappist beers are now abbey style beers.  Affligem is a good example of this scenario.  The beer is still of the same style, but the organization responsible for producing it is different.  Thus, Trappist beers are a small subset of abbey style beers.  All Trappist beers are abbey style beers (with a few exceptions in cases in which the monks have branched out and brewed styles outside their historical repetoire, e.g. Koningshoeven Bockbier), but not all abbey style beers are Trappist beers.  Got it?  Then, it’s on to Orval…

The Orval abbey itself is much older than Orval beers.  It is located in southern Belgium very close to the border with the northern edge of France.  The site first became home to a monastery in 1070, when a group of Benedictine monks exiled from modern day Italy settled in the valley.  The monastery changed hands several times over the next century as different groups of monks came and went, but in 1132 a group of monks from the Abbey of Clairvaux settled in the monastery and stayed until the French Revolution.  During this time, the abbey did not brew beer, but made its money from salt quarries and forging mills.  Unfortunately, in 1793 the abbey was destroyed by revolutionaries and remained in ruins until the 20^th century.  In 1927, Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard, the Abbot of La Grande Trappe, took over the site and rebuilt the abbey.  And it was in 1931 that the abbey decided to establish a brewery in order to support the maintenance and reconstruction of the abbey.

The beer brewed at Orval is very different from most of the other Trappist beers in several respects.  First, it is very dry, while most Trappist beers are characterized by a high residual sugar content.  Second, it has a distinct earthy Brettanomyces yeast flavor, while most Trappist beers use cultivated brewers yeasts that put off very fruity esters.  Finally, Orval has noticeable hop character that is somewhat more prominent than in most other Trappist beers.  The brewery attributes this unique combination of characteristics to its first Brewmaster, a German named Martin Pappenheimer, and to his assistant, a Belgian named John Van Huele.  Pappenheimer brought the hoppy German brewing tradition to Orval, and Van Huele introduced dry hopping, which may account for the introduction of Brettanomyces yeasts to the brew.

When I sat down at LaTrappe to drink my Orval, I paused to read the bottle.  I was happy to notice that the brewery stamps each bottle with the packaging date and a “best by” date.  Because this is not a high alcohol beer, and hops make a significant contribution to its flavor, it is not as suitable for cellaring as many of the other Trappist beers.  The beer itself was a light orange color, with a foamy white head that wasn’t as big as I expected.  I believe this was the result of the bartender’s pour, and will have to get another Orval to double check this.  Not that the bartender didn’t know what he was doing, he left an ounce or so in the bottom of the bottle to avoid pouring yeast into my glass, and the beer did have something of a head.

Once my eyes were done drinking in the beer, it was my nose’s turn.  The musty farmhouse smell of hay and wet earth was the first thing to hit me.  This is definitely a Brett beer.  I had been expecting a more subtle Brett character (in retrospect, I’m not exactly sure why), but am on quite a Brett kick at the moment, and so I was quite happy with it.  As I took the first sip, the earthy wild yeast character continued, but it was joined by a slight sour twang.  It wasn’t sharp or particularly citric, just a mild note adding its voice to the chorus of flavors.  The beer’s bitterness rises in the second half of the sip, and the hops left a lasting impression of bitterness and dryness at the back of my tongue.  The carbonation was relatively high, which was my only complaint.  It both overwhelmed my taste buds a bit and carried a slight metallic taste.  As I let the beer sit and warm, the carbonation relaxed a bit.  The beer tasted best to me after about 15 minutes.  It tasted predominantly earthy, bitter, and dry, very Brett yeast dominated, but with supporting hops backbone.  And as I was about to finish what was left in my glass, I paused and noticed a mild light fruitiness, maybe apples and oranges, that I hadn’t tasted earlier.  While different elements of the yeast and hops showed themselves across the course of a single taste and across the time it took me to drink the whole glass, my overall impression is one of incredible dryness.  Orval isn’t just dry for a Trappist beer, it’s an incredibly dry beer, period.  Though I’ve been making much in this time of hops crisis about sweet low hopped beers, and am not about to abandon my newfound fondness for Scotch beers, my beer roots must be showing because I loved the crisp, dry flavor of Orval.