Thank you sir! May I have another?

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of experiencing my first portfolio tasting from a beer and wine distributor. Let me tell you, this was most definitely an experience. If anyone has ever been to a winery to do a wine tasting you know how they set things up. They will have several (sometimes a few, sometimes a lot) of their wines available for tasting. They pour you a little wine in a glass and you go about tasting this wine using the normal techniques (a topic for discussion all on its own). Now imagine if twenty wineries were all set up in the same room and were giving tastings to fifty people at the same time. This pretty much describes the scene at yesterday's tasting and I believe the clinical term for it is "orchestrated chaos".

In spite of the atmosphere, there were some fantastic and not so fantastic wines there for tasting, however after the first 25 or so wines my palate was trashed. Try as I might to clear things out with the food they had available (As an aside, while very tasty, deep fried shrimp with a sweet dipping sauce is not the best wine tasting food out there) I just couldn't keep up with myriad of flavors being presented to me in these wines. Thankfully, what I wanted to talk to you about today is not the wines there, but one of the beers I tasted when I first got there.

In the midst of all this wine, there was one brewery represented. It was Unibroue from Quebec, Canada. It is a very unique operaton in that while relatively young (it began producing beers in the early 1990's and didn't export to the U.S. and Europe until 1995) it specializes in Belgian style ales. And while their lineup is rather comprehensive it is the very first ale that they produced that stood out to me, Blanche de Chambly.

Blanche de Chambly is a Belgian White Ale that is bottle conditioned. (A quick beer primer^1,2) It is made from a blend of barley malt and both malted and unmalted wheat. It is also a terrific example of what a Belgian White Ale should taste like. I thought that in both the aroma and the initial taste there was a hint of white cake, you know that nice light flavor with a touch of sweetness. The bottle conditioning gives smaller gas bubbles to the carbonation, thereby giving the ale a nice silky mouth feel. This is a terrific summer time ale, that is great to drink alone or paired with lighter fare such as grilled fish or shell fish. I would rate this Ale 4.5 on a scale of 5.

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¹ Bottle conditioning refers to how the carbonation is added to beer. In a typical beer, the liquid is placed in a keg or bottle and then CO₂ is injected into the container to carbonate the liquid. In a bottle or keg conditioned beer, the beer is unfiltered, leaving the yeast active in the beer but without any sugar to feast on. Just before sealing the bottle or keg, a preceise amount of sugar is added and then the vessel is sealed. The yeast eats the sugar and produces CO₂ as a by product. This CO₂ is trapped inside the vessel, thereby adding the carbonation.
² In brewing terminology to prime a bottle of beer is to load it with sugar for fermentation in the bottle hence a beer primer is not only an introduction to beer but someone who would load the beer bottle with sugar. A terrible pun I know, but it's all I have. Besides, it gave me an opportunity to footnote something.