Dubbel or…
Getting knocked down with a nasty cold (and not just me, but the whole family AND the daycare provider) really puts a crimp in one’s beerdrinking style.
I still wanted to get a Session post in today, though, and with no Dubbels within easy reach (more on that later), I’ll reach back instead to my first one.
Like many, I assume, my first Belgian beer — and Dubbel — was Chimay Rouge. For me, the year was 1990. It was moving towards the end of winter of my freshman year of college, and like most college students, I had consumed rather more than my fair share of beer at that point. This was a sharp contrast to high school, where I might as well have been a teetotaller for all the beer I drank: I can count the number of beers I consumed in high school on two hands, and have room for more. I just didn’t run with the crowds that had the wild raucous high-school beer blasts. I knew there was basic beer, though, that one could swill down in order to get loaded, or after hard work, or after sailing. I knew, too, that there were better beers lurking about in the world: my dad purchased all manner of oddball beers for a sailing club party in 1987 or so, and a friend’s father always had Anchor Steam on hand, often purchased at the brewery.
But in college, in Wisconsin, Leinenkugel’s, Miller Genuine Draft, Point, Rheinlander, Special Export and others ruled the day. However, there’s always that one friend who inexplicably knows way more than his years, and winds up introducing you to all manner of things. Malcolm, my friend like that, is the one responsible for my love of strong, french-pressed coffee, Mission of Burma, and setting the stage for the beergeekery that followed.
So anyway, it’s March 1990. We had made a habit of obtaining at least a six-pack of “different” beer each time we went to the store, which mostly amounted to sampling the wide world of pale lagers. This time, though, Malcolm had something different. The bottle was tall, had a fancy label, and wired-on cork! Chimay Rouge.
I don’t remember what we drank it out of — probably highball glasses (he also turned us all on to Pernod and other aniseed liquors) — but I remember distinctly thinking “Wait … this is BEER?” The stuff was rich, musty, raisiny, fruity, STRONG (I skipped educating myself in malt liquors until about a year later), sweet, drying, and complex beyond belief. I loved it. It became a special occasion beer for the next few years, up through about 1996 or so, when I dove headfirst into complete and beergeekery and really started going after all the other Belgians. Chimay saw me through completing essays, ridiculously-weighted exams, breakups, and just plain old exhaustion.
I’ve drifted away from Chimay Rouge these past 10 years or so, finding nitpicky annoyances about the yeast character, the sharpness of some of the spicy phenols, and other flavor characteristics that washed happily over my tongue in 1990. I never got too upset about the whole cheapening/wheat gluten episodes of the early years of this decade, and managed to enjoy significantly aged versions of the Blue, and endless draughts of the White. But given the state of Dubbels in New Hampshire (there are 2: Ommegang, which I dislike, and Maudite, which is a bit one-dimensional to me), I’ll be zipping over to Vermont when this cursed cold departs and picking up a bottle or two of Chimay Rouge, and revisiting the beer that pretty much started me on the path I’m on now.
On the monks of Chimay can be blamed, then, homebrewing, beer judging, endless beer argumentation in a variety of online fora over the years, homebrew clubs (joining, being president of, and founding!), websites, BLOGS!, and on and on and on. Here’s to you, monks of the Abbey of Notre-Dame de Scourmont, and thanks.
