Liefmans Goudenband 2006

A favorite beer of mine lately is Flying Dog's 20th Anniversary Ale called Raging Bitch. ChurchKey was having it on tap with a glass giveaway. They have been doing so many special cask tappings I thought it was on cask and I got excited. I dragged Teri along to check it out and it turned out to be a regular keg. I had a Pratt St Ale from one of their casks instead which is an English IPA.

We decided to have dinner downstairs at Birch & Barley. They don't have a huge menu and the items are unique but it is very good. To start dinner I ordered a beer off their vintage menu. It is not a menu they give out unless you ask for it. It is a two sided list of fine craft beers from the last five or ten years. I noticed a unique brown ale on the list from a familiar brewery that was on the less expensive side at $25. Michael Jackson, the great beer writer, is quoted on the bottle paper as saying "Surely the world's finest Brown Ale". That sold me being a brown ale fan.

It turns out that Greg Engert, the locally known beer manager, served the beverage himself. It is a very interesting beer. He served it and we talked about the beer, brewery, and style for a bit. It is technically a flanders oud bruin style and is a mix of different brown ale vintages from Liefmans. I forget the exact process but an aged mature vintage is blended with a newer sweeter vintage. Greg thought this 2006 version was the last one before the brewery went bankrupt and sold. It was pretty good. It has a bit of that mature aged taste along with a bit of sourness that has almost aged out. It was a fun experience being such an interesting beer.

Here is what Michael Jackson had to say about this style...

At their best, ales in the Oudenaarde style have a teasingly smooth, almost feathery, fluffy, body (from water low in calcium, high in sodium bicarbonate); a dry, complex, caramelish maltiness; a winey, nutty sherry, Montilla note [Oloroso sherry] (from long periods of maturation at ambient cellar temperatures); a light but distinct interplay of sweetness and sourness; and a spritzy finish. <...> [A] beer of around four months old is blended with stock two or three times that age. The blend is centrifuged, primed with invert sugar, given a dosage of the original yeast, and bottle conditioned in the brewery's cellars. Its characteristic sour wineyness, iron, saltiness and toastiness ... will develop with a few months, or even years, of cellaring.

Dinner started with a couple duck eggs that were steamed, deep fried, and served with asparagus and prosciutto. For the main course I had their pork cheek with wine onion pearls and parsnips in cheese grits. It was darn yummy. To go with my entry I choose a BrewDog Zeitgeist (schwarzbier). A good night out for the senses.