Orval Trappist Ale
I live in South East England and occasionally take a shopping trip over the Channel to Northern France and the Flemish area of Belgium to stock up on beer and wine. To date I had tried beers from four of the six Trappist breweries with only Orval and Achel to go. Whilst in our local Tesco supermarket recently I noticed that they had a few bottles of Orval on the shelf (priced at 1.85 for 33cl). Although a good deal more expensive than buying in Belgium (1.03 at current exchange rate) I thought I would try a bottle to see if it would be worth buying some on my next foray. It wasn't! Firstly, the appearance was OK, a gingery amber, slightly cloudy colour. However, the brew seems overly carbonated and produced a huge head, even with careful pouring, and felt very gassy in the stomach. To be fair the gassyness did seem to reduce once it had been in the glass for a while. To me the aroma was very faint and indistinct, so much so that I can't put a name to it. The mouth feel seemed thin and watery, the taste slightly bitter but without much complexity and maybe just a slight un-sweet grapefruit aftertaste. Lastly for a Trappist beer the alcohol content at 6.2% was pretty low so it didn't even have the plus of making me aware that I'd had a drink. At least I can get the 0.10 deposit on the bottle refunded if I take it back to Belgium with the other empties. In summary, to me it was very disappointing and not in the same league as the other Trappist beers I have tried.