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The Wall Street Journal Online
By Ken Wells
Why Are Aged Brews Fetching $100?
Secrets of Monks, Yeast -- and Our Test
Here's a riddle: What winemaker produces Ommegang Abbey Rare Vos? A 750-milliliter bottle had just arrived at our table with cork intact, and a retail price, according to a chalkboard above the bar, of $16.50.
Actually, Ommegang Abbey Rare Vos isn't a European wine. It's a beer. Next question: Can beer -- any beer -- be worth $16.50 a bottle?
It's possible to pay much more. At the same Manhattan bar where we tried Rare Vos, a sister beer was on the menu for $25. (Both are made by Brewery Ommegang in Cooperstown, N.Y., in a centuries-old style pioneered by Belgian Trappist monks.) Others are dearer still: One Vermont brewery sells a strong brew that's aged in old bourbon casks and retails for $20 in stores -- and more in bars.
San Diego's Stone Brewing has a vintage, barrel-aged drink it calls Oaked Arrogant Bastard Ale that costs $65 in stores and $100 or more on bar and restaurant "beer menus." (Take heart: It comes in three-liter bottles.) And the maker of Samuel Adams beers now has an aged brew that costs $100 a bottle, wholesale.
The concept of "aged" beer itself flies in the face of conventional wisdom that beer is meant to be drunk within a few weeks of its production (and almost all beer is). But aged beers -- many of them brewed with lots of hops and high-alcohol levels, both acting as preservatives -- have become a staple of what might be called the high-end beer market.
As a casual drinker who came of age quaffing cheap (though satisfying) six-packs of Falstaff, my first encounter with twenty-buck-a-bottle-beer came a couple of years ago in a La Crosse, Wis., bar. Surely, I thought, this is a typo. But as I traveled extensively around the country researching a book on beer, I found myself in more and more places with big-buck beer on the menu.
To find out what the fuss was all about, I pitched up recently at the Blind Tiger Ale House, a lively hole-in-the-wall in Manhattan's Greenwich Village. There were lots of brews in wine-bottle sizes in the $16-to-$25 range, and plenty of 12-ounce beers selling for $9 to $12. I'd propitiously arrived on Belgian Night, when the bar had stocked up on a large number of imported and domestic Belgian-styled ales that have become the darlings of U.S. beer aficionados. Such ales -- known for their floral, fruity tartness, not to mention centuries of brewing lore -- have been enthusiastically replicated here by brewers such as Ommegang and New Belgium of Fort Collins, Colo.
In fact, the high-end beer market isn't all that different from the wine market. A style, say Australian Shiraz, gets hot, and a few vintners gain reputations for making exceptional Shiraz. Their offerings suddenly get pricey. This explains why the Blind Tiger, a couple of weeks before this tasting, almost overnight sold out -- at $18 a bottle -- of a limited shipment of another bottle by Ommegang, a cave-aged, Belgian-style ale named Hennepin.
To understand how we got to $25 beer in the first place, some background on the '80s microbrew revolution is in order. Back then, a clutch of brewers, weary that virtually all beer made in the U.S. was cold-fermented lager of a style popularized by Budweiser, began bringing back beers fermented at warm temperature -- called ales -- that were like the beers they'd sampled on trips, notably to the ale capitals of England and Belgium. Ale, with its earthy flavors and aromas and sometimes cloudy appearance, was in fact America's founding beer. But by the late 1800s, ale had lost out in the mass-taste test to the clean, crisp flavor of cold lager.
Bending Beer Definitions
But ale, with its range and complexity, is the beer medium favored by the experimentally minded brewer of the kind that populates what is now called the craft-brew revolution. These brewers began cooking up all kinds of quirky, exotic, even esoteric beers that sometimes bend the very definition of what beer is.
Examples: Magic Hat Brewing of South Burlington, Vt., makes Chaotic Chemistry, a beer that's nearly the strength of wine (it's called barleywine) and spends three years before bottling in charred-oak casks that once held bourbon. And that $100 bottle of beer? That would be Utopias, by Boston Beer Co., the makers of Sam Adams. The 2003 vintage, capped at 8,000 bottles, is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's strongest beer at 25% alcohol by volume. (It's a stout, as is Guinness, but with cognac aromas and five times the alcohol.) Some Utopias vintages are going for $300 on eBay.
"Twenty-buck-a-bottle beer is not an absurdity," says Greg Koch, chairman of Stone Brewing, which makes Oaked Arrogant Bastard. But price, says Mr. Koch, isn't usually the starting point.
Stone, for example, in February 2002 launched an annual line of Belgian influenced Vertical Epic Ales that the brewer expects will age well through the year 2012. First bottles went for about $5, but since its release, collectors and craft-beer bars that specialize in aged beers have driven the 2002 Vertical up to as much as $200 a bottle.
Such beers, by nature, are the antithesis of mass-produced, buck-a-bottle lager. Brewers make them in small lots and greatly soup up the ingredients, using prodigious amounts of barley malt, the kilned grain that provides beer's backbone, and lots of hops, the flower cone that serves up the bitterness and aroma of beer. To make these beers strong -- 12% alcohol volumes are common, contrasted to 5.25% for most lagers -- brewers may ferment them multiple times using rare and exotic strains of yeast.
And then you have to add cachet to the cost.
Beer and cachet? Yes. Belgian ales, for example, boast a pedigree that goes back a millennium -- Orval, the oldest of Belgium's six existing Trappist breweries, was founded in the 11th century. "They have the well-deserved reputation and tradition of brewing very high-quality, flavorful ales," says Charles Cook, a Virginia resident, beer writer and a student of Belgian ales of the Trappist variety. "Many of these beers are revered not just because of the depth of flavor but also for their rarity."
So what exactly does this high-end stuff taste like, and would we find it worth the cost?
A Small Posse
I'd rounded up a small posse of willing drinkers who consider themselves to be enthusiastic amateurs but not yet full-fledged Beer Geeks -- photographer Aric Mayer of Brooklyn, musician Bruce McDaniel of New York's Westchester County and his girlfriend Linda Yu, a Manhattan computer programmer. I was looking for a true Geek to guide the session (the term, by the way, isn't a pejorative but an honorific bestowed upon beer drinkers of unusual enthusiasm and knowledge). At the Tiger, Geeks are thicker than fleas on a deer dog, and I was soon introduced to Dave Gonzalez, a Long Island cargo-airlines operations engineer. He was in his fourth year of serious beer study and knew his Belgian ales.
For our test, we ordered the nine most expensive beers on the menu. Seven were from Belgium, and two were American interpretations of the Belgian style. We ranked each beer from 1 ("don't drink this") to 10 ("world class").
So?
Overall, these exceptionally expensive beers were judged exceptionally tasty and worth the price, especially if you consider them -- as Mr. Gonzalez suggests -- "special-occasion sipping beers that can be shared by the table."
We did have our disagreements, demonstrating that some high-end beer may be an acquired taste. Mr. Gonzalez gave a $20 beer called Cantillon Organic Gueuze a perfect 10. Mr. Mayer gave the same beer a 1. One other surprise: It was an American interpretation of a Belgian ale, the Ommegang Cave Aged, that averaged the highest score among the panel. Mr. Mayer said it had all the exoticism of a Belgian-style beer -- and a taste that could appeal to the American palate. "This is the beer Julia Child would have brewed, were she a monk in a cave," he said.
Ken Wells is a senior Journal writer and author of "Travels with Barley: A Journey through Beer Culture in America."
Big Brews
Here are the results from our sampling of expensive beer. Our tasting tended toward Belgian and Belgian-style ales -- most of them high in alcohol and some of them aged. Prices reflect what we paid at Blind Tiger, a Manhattan beer bar; many of these bottles can be found at specialty retailers for about half of what you'd pay in a bar. Below, our notes, in order of our panelists' preferences.
Ommegang Cave Aged
Brewery Ommegang Cooperstown, N.Y., $25 8.5% Belgian abbey-style ale -- with seven months of aging in a cave Our panel's consensus favorite -- smooth, robust and not too sweet. An interesting interpretation of the strong ales made for centuries by monks in abbeys in Belgium and France. Beer fan Dave Gonzalez said he detected "hints of dark chocolate and anise liqueur."
Goliath
Brasserie des Geants Belgium, $18 9% Clear and golden ale with a big head This beer's modeled on a rare Belgian style called "Gouyasse" ("giant" in local dialect), and is stronger than the more common blonde ale style. In spite of its high alcohol content, panelist Linda Yu said it wasn't overpowering -- with "a touch of honey and lemon."
Saison Dupont
Brasserie Dupont Belgium, $16 8.5% Belgian farmhouse-style ale Farmhouse ales, seasonal brews also known as saisons, have their roots in the small, rural breweries dotting Belgium and France. Mr. Gonzalez, our Belgian expert, called this beer, with its fruity aromas and slightly sour aftertaste, a "benchmark" for saisons.
Achel Trappist Extra
Achel Trappist Brewery, Belgium, $21 9.5% Trappist ale -- that is, beer produced by Belgian monks Belgian monks have made beer for a millennium, in varying styles but consistently high alcohol levels. (Friars at this Trappist monastery say you can't get drunk on this beer.) One panelist singled out its "fresh bread aroma" and Scotch-like aftertaste.
Fantome Pissenlit
Fantome, Belgium, $18 8.0% Belgian farmhouse-style ale -- with added dandelions "Holy cow! Grassy? Scallions? Chives?" asked panelist Linda Yu -- who may have been tasting dandelions, an unusual beer ingredient. Mr. Gonzalez called it unique and wonderful: "A tart spritz, grapefruit and barnyard funk all thrown together."
Ommegang Rare Vos
Brewery Ommegang, $16.50 8.0% Belgian-style amber beer Our panelists detected tastes of chocolate and beef in this U.S. version of a Belgian style -- and figured it would go well with food. Brewery tip: Reduce the beer over heat with sugar to make a good biscotti dipping sauce.
De Ranke Guldenberg
De Ranke, Belgium, $17.50 8.5% A super-bitter Belgian blonde ale Mr. Gonzalez loved this one, noting its "leather and pepper aromas" and refreshing taste for a high-alcohol ale. Others found it a bit rough and intimidating, in part because of its bitterness from the ample hops used in brewing.
La Moneuse
Blaugles Belgium, $18 8.0% Belgian farmhouse-style ale Named for a famous Belgian outlaw (and ancestor of the brewing family), this beer tastes a little hardier, spicier and hoppier than most saison beers. Panelists weren't as wild about this -- maybe it was the mild, musty smell.
Cantillon Organic Gueuze
Cantillon, Belgium, $20 5.0% Belgian lambic -- a beer fermented in open vats In an age-old practice, lambics often incorporate fruit and are left to ferment in open tanks where indigenous bacteria join yeast. The result is a tart-musty aroma and taste. Mr. Gonzalez called it "best of show." Others couldn't get past its "feral, barnyard aroma."
By Ken Wells
Why Are Aged Brews Fetching $100?
Secrets of Monks, Yeast -- and Our Test
Here's a riddle: What winemaker produces Ommegang Abbey Rare Vos? A 750-milliliter bottle had just arrived at our table with cork intact, and a retail price, according to a chalkboard above the bar, of $16.50.
Actually, Ommegang Abbey Rare Vos isn't a European wine. It's a beer. Next question: Can beer -- any beer -- be worth $16.50 a bottle?
It's possible to pay much more. At the same Manhattan bar where we tried Rare Vos, a sister beer was on the menu for $25. (Both are made by Brewery Ommegang in Cooperstown, N.Y., in a centuries-old style pioneered by Belgian Trappist monks.) Others are dearer still: One Vermont brewery sells a strong brew that's aged in old bourbon casks and retails for $20 in stores -- and more in bars.
San Diego's Stone Brewing has a vintage, barrel-aged drink it calls Oaked Arrogant Bastard Ale that costs $65 in stores and $100 or more on bar and restaurant "beer menus." (Take heart: It comes in three-liter bottles.) And the maker of Samuel Adams beers now has an aged brew that costs $100 a bottle, wholesale.
The concept of "aged" beer itself flies in the face of conventional wisdom that beer is meant to be drunk within a few weeks of its production (and almost all beer is). But aged beers -- many of them brewed with lots of hops and high-alcohol levels, both acting as preservatives -- have become a staple of what might be called the high-end beer market.
As a casual drinker who came of age quaffing cheap (though satisfying) six-packs of Falstaff, my first encounter with twenty-buck-a-bottle-beer came a couple of years ago in a La Crosse, Wis., bar. Surely, I thought, this is a typo. But as I traveled extensively around the country researching a book on beer, I found myself in more and more places with big-buck beer on the menu.
To find out what the fuss was all about, I pitched up recently at the Blind Tiger Ale House, a lively hole-in-the-wall in Manhattan's Greenwich Village. There were lots of brews in wine-bottle sizes in the $16-to-$25 range, and plenty of 12-ounce beers selling for $9 to $12. I'd propitiously arrived on Belgian Night, when the bar had stocked up on a large number of imported and domestic Belgian-styled ales that have become the darlings of U.S. beer aficionados. Such ales -- known for their floral, fruity tartness, not to mention centuries of brewing lore -- have been enthusiastically replicated here by brewers such as Ommegang and New Belgium of Fort Collins, Colo.
In fact, the high-end beer market isn't all that different from the wine market. A style, say Australian Shiraz, gets hot, and a few vintners gain reputations for making exceptional Shiraz. Their offerings suddenly get pricey. This explains why the Blind Tiger, a couple of weeks before this tasting, almost overnight sold out -- at $18 a bottle -- of a limited shipment of another bottle by Ommegang, a cave-aged, Belgian-style ale named Hennepin.
To understand how we got to $25 beer in the first place, some background on the '80s microbrew revolution is in order. Back then, a clutch of brewers, weary that virtually all beer made in the U.S. was cold-fermented lager of a style popularized by Budweiser, began bringing back beers fermented at warm temperature -- called ales -- that were like the beers they'd sampled on trips, notably to the ale capitals of England and Belgium. Ale, with its earthy flavors and aromas and sometimes cloudy appearance, was in fact America's founding beer. But by the late 1800s, ale had lost out in the mass-taste test to the clean, crisp flavor of cold lager.
Bending Beer Definitions
But ale, with its range and complexity, is the beer medium favored by the experimentally minded brewer of the kind that populates what is now called the craft-brew revolution. These brewers began cooking up all kinds of quirky, exotic, even esoteric beers that sometimes bend the very definition of what beer is.
Examples: Magic Hat Brewing of South Burlington, Vt., makes Chaotic Chemistry, a beer that's nearly the strength of wine (it's called barleywine) and spends three years before bottling in charred-oak casks that once held bourbon. And that $100 bottle of beer? That would be Utopias, by Boston Beer Co., the makers of Sam Adams. The 2003 vintage, capped at 8,000 bottles, is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's strongest beer at 25% alcohol by volume. (It's a stout, as is Guinness, but with cognac aromas and five times the alcohol.) Some Utopias vintages are going for $300 on eBay.
"Twenty-buck-a-bottle beer is not an absurdity," says Greg Koch, chairman of Stone Brewing, which makes Oaked Arrogant Bastard. But price, says Mr. Koch, isn't usually the starting point.
Stone, for example, in February 2002 launched an annual line of Belgian influenced Vertical Epic Ales that the brewer expects will age well through the year 2012. First bottles went for about $5, but since its release, collectors and craft-beer bars that specialize in aged beers have driven the 2002 Vertical up to as much as $200 a bottle.
Such beers, by nature, are the antithesis of mass-produced, buck-a-bottle lager. Brewers make them in small lots and greatly soup up the ingredients, using prodigious amounts of barley malt, the kilned grain that provides beer's backbone, and lots of hops, the flower cone that serves up the bitterness and aroma of beer. To make these beers strong -- 12% alcohol volumes are common, contrasted to 5.25% for most lagers -- brewers may ferment them multiple times using rare and exotic strains of yeast.
And then you have to add cachet to the cost.
Beer and cachet? Yes. Belgian ales, for example, boast a pedigree that goes back a millennium -- Orval, the oldest of Belgium's six existing Trappist breweries, was founded in the 11th century. "They have the well-deserved reputation and tradition of brewing very high-quality, flavorful ales," says Charles Cook, a Virginia resident, beer writer and a student of Belgian ales of the Trappist variety. "Many of these beers are revered not just because of the depth of flavor but also for their rarity."
So what exactly does this high-end stuff taste like, and would we find it worth the cost?
A Small Posse
I'd rounded up a small posse of willing drinkers who consider themselves to be enthusiastic amateurs but not yet full-fledged Beer Geeks -- photographer Aric Mayer of Brooklyn, musician Bruce McDaniel of New York's Westchester County and his girlfriend Linda Yu, a Manhattan computer programmer. I was looking for a true Geek to guide the session (the term, by the way, isn't a pejorative but an honorific bestowed upon beer drinkers of unusual enthusiasm and knowledge). At the Tiger, Geeks are thicker than fleas on a deer dog, and I was soon introduced to Dave Gonzalez, a Long Island cargo-airlines operations engineer. He was in his fourth year of serious beer study and knew his Belgian ales.
For our test, we ordered the nine most expensive beers on the menu. Seven were from Belgium, and two were American interpretations of the Belgian style. We ranked each beer from 1 ("don't drink this") to 10 ("world class").
So?
Overall, these exceptionally expensive beers were judged exceptionally tasty and worth the price, especially if you consider them -- as Mr. Gonzalez suggests -- "special-occasion sipping beers that can be shared by the table."
We did have our disagreements, demonstrating that some high-end beer may be an acquired taste. Mr. Gonzalez gave a $20 beer called Cantillon Organic Gueuze a perfect 10. Mr. Mayer gave the same beer a 1. One other surprise: It was an American interpretation of a Belgian ale, the Ommegang Cave Aged, that averaged the highest score among the panel. Mr. Mayer said it had all the exoticism of a Belgian-style beer -- and a taste that could appeal to the American palate. "This is the beer Julia Child would have brewed, were she a monk in a cave," he said.
Ken Wells is a senior Journal writer and author of "Travels with Barley: A Journey through Beer Culture in America."
Big Brews
Here are the results from our sampling of expensive beer. Our tasting tended toward Belgian and Belgian-style ales -- most of them high in alcohol and some of them aged. Prices reflect what we paid at Blind Tiger, a Manhattan beer bar; many of these bottles can be found at specialty retailers for about half of what you'd pay in a bar. Below, our notes, in order of our panelists' preferences.
Ommegang Cave Aged
Brewery Ommegang Cooperstown, N.Y., $25 8.5% Belgian abbey-style ale -- with seven months of aging in a cave Our panel's consensus favorite -- smooth, robust and not too sweet. An interesting interpretation of the strong ales made for centuries by monks in abbeys in Belgium and France. Beer fan Dave Gonzalez said he detected "hints of dark chocolate and anise liqueur."
Goliath
Brasserie des Geants Belgium, $18 9% Clear and golden ale with a big head This beer's modeled on a rare Belgian style called "Gouyasse" ("giant" in local dialect), and is stronger than the more common blonde ale style. In spite of its high alcohol content, panelist Linda Yu said it wasn't overpowering -- with "a touch of honey and lemon."
Saison Dupont
Brasserie Dupont Belgium, $16 8.5% Belgian farmhouse-style ale Farmhouse ales, seasonal brews also known as saisons, have their roots in the small, rural breweries dotting Belgium and France. Mr. Gonzalez, our Belgian expert, called this beer, with its fruity aromas and slightly sour aftertaste, a "benchmark" for saisons.
Achel Trappist Extra
Achel Trappist Brewery, Belgium, $21 9.5% Trappist ale -- that is, beer produced by Belgian monks Belgian monks have made beer for a millennium, in varying styles but consistently high alcohol levels. (Friars at this Trappist monastery say you can't get drunk on this beer.) One panelist singled out its "fresh bread aroma" and Scotch-like aftertaste.
Fantome Pissenlit
Fantome, Belgium, $18 8.0% Belgian farmhouse-style ale -- with added dandelions "Holy cow! Grassy? Scallions? Chives?" asked panelist Linda Yu -- who may have been tasting dandelions, an unusual beer ingredient. Mr. Gonzalez called it unique and wonderful: "A tart spritz, grapefruit and barnyard funk all thrown together."
Ommegang Rare Vos
Brewery Ommegang, $16.50 8.0% Belgian-style amber beer Our panelists detected tastes of chocolate and beef in this U.S. version of a Belgian style -- and figured it would go well with food. Brewery tip: Reduce the beer over heat with sugar to make a good biscotti dipping sauce.
De Ranke Guldenberg
De Ranke, Belgium, $17.50 8.5% A super-bitter Belgian blonde ale Mr. Gonzalez loved this one, noting its "leather and pepper aromas" and refreshing taste for a high-alcohol ale. Others found it a bit rough and intimidating, in part because of its bitterness from the ample hops used in brewing.
La Moneuse
Blaugles Belgium, $18 8.0% Belgian farmhouse-style ale Named for a famous Belgian outlaw (and ancestor of the brewing family), this beer tastes a little hardier, spicier and hoppier than most saison beers. Panelists weren't as wild about this -- maybe it was the mild, musty smell.
Cantillon Organic Gueuze
Cantillon, Belgium, $20 5.0% Belgian lambic -- a beer fermented in open vats In an age-old practice, lambics often incorporate fruit and are left to ferment in open tanks where indigenous bacteria join yeast. The result is a tart-musty aroma and taste. Mr. Gonzalez called it "best of show." Others couldn't get past its "feral, barnyard aroma."
