This post forms part of The Sessions, a.k.a. Beer Blogging Friday – an opportunity once a month for beer bloggers from around the world to get together on a single topic and write about it from their own unique perspective. The first Session was hosted by Stan Hieronymous of Appellation Beer in March 2007, and it has been hosted by a different blogger every month since. The topic of this month’s Session is ‘Traditional Beer Mixes’ and is being hosted by Boak and Bailey’s Beer Blog.
When first researching the task at hand we were a bit concerned.
You see, the traditional beer mixes referenced by Richard Boston in his 1976 book, Beer and Skittles, are very British.
Being Irish and Belgian, however, we had only ever heard of these British beer mixes in passing and had certainly never tried one.
I contacted the Session #88 hosts quickly to say as much. Their response: Be creative. Get experimental. Have fun.
The result was a Belgian Blacksmith.
BEER MIXES: WHAT IS A BLACKSMITH?
A Blacksmith is a mix of stout and barleywine. Stout began as a strong or ‘stout’ porter, a well hopped dark beer generally using brown or roasted malts. Barleywine is a strong ale which originated in England, but which also has an American variant.
We chose Guinness Special Export as the stout, a beer brewed in Ireland specifically for the Belgian market. For the barleywine, we found Vision Dionysiaque.
BEER 1: THE STOUT – GUINNESS SPECIAL EXPORT
The story of Guinness Special Export begins with John Martin, the famous drinks magnate from England who began distributing the beer in Belgium in 1912. To this day, you can only get Guinness Special Export through the Martin family company which is now run by his grandson, Anthony Martin. Guinness Special Export (not to be confused with Guinness Foreign Extra) is brewed in St. James Gate specifically for the Belgian market. What’s so Belgian about it? Well, for a start, it’s Guinness at 8% ABV.
In appearance, it’s like an original Guinness. Officially ruby red but dark in the glass with an off-white head. In the nose, there are all those big roasted malt, coffee and chocolatey sweet notes you’d expect as well as some booziness not normally associated with Guinness. It tastes how it smells – big bodied and full flavoured. It’s basically Guinness on steroids.
BEER 2: THE BARLEYWINE – VISION DIONYSIQUE
Barleywines, which are not common in Belgium, are often seen as a thing of great mystery but are generally in the 21° to 30° Plato range (wort density) with a bitterness of 50 to 100 IBUs and an alcohol content of between 8 and 13% by volume. Our choice – Vision Dionysique – falls squarely within those parameters: 24° plato, 100 IBU and 11% a.b.v. Boom. We actually found a barleywine in Belgium.
The brewer of this beer, Greg Murer, formally of the Fleurac brewery, is a gypsy brewer. Gypsy brewing involves operating out of the facilities of another brewery. Greg Murer gypsy brews to minimise costs and to avoid relying on bank financing (his beers are often crowdfunded on Kickstarter). But he also likes the nomadic style of working. He has moved about a fair bit. He started out as a stylist, undertook a business course and then went on to study computer engineering before gaining 10 years of brewing experience.
Murer calls his gypsy brewery, ‘BeEr’ – a combination of the chemical symbols of the rare elements, Beryllium [Be] and Erbium [Er]. He produced this Vision Dionysiaque in the Bastogne brewery.
Vision Dionysiaque is a reference to the outlook on life embodied by the mythological son of Zeus in Greek mythology, Dionysus. His face appears stoically on the bottle, almost in judgment of the person drinking it. The story goes that Dionysus had a brother called Apollo. The boys were polar opposites, so much so that many Western philosophers invoke the dichotomy of their characters in literary works.
While Apollo was the god of the sun, of dreams and reason – all positive, individualistic and good – Dionysus was the god of wine, ecstasy and intoxication. He was essentially, the party boy. Apollo, on one hand, was a proponent of creativity through reason and logical thinking while Dionysian, on the other, opted for chaos, emotions and instinct. He’s got barleywine written all over him.
This beer had very little head and poured much darker than expected, a kind of winey, reddish, dark brown. Its aroma had notes of caramel but its taste was all about the bitterness, evidenced by a 100 IBU count.
THE POUR
We chose two types of glass for the pour. The embossed Guinness pint glass and the classic Belgian tulip. We wondered whether glass selection would have an impact on our enjoyment of the mix. Not having a pouring spoon, we used a household table-spoon in our attempt to layer the stout over the barleywine and also, to avoid splashing.
THE BELGIAN BLACKSMITH
Notably, our choice to pour in two different glasses resulted in two very different Belgian Blacksmiths. While the colour in each glass was similar – taking on the deeper darkness of the Guinness on both counts – the head retention was not. The Guinness pint glass delivered a much bigger off-white head which was relatively solid for ten minutes after pouring. In the Belgian tulip it was non-existent, and the head that did arrive died pretty much immediately.
We noticed that the carbonation of the barleywine was visible in the bottom half of the Guinness pint glass whereas the bubbles in the Belgian tulip Blacksmith were much more mixed through. The aroma in both glasses was different too. The pint glass was all Guinness in the nose – roasted malts and sweetness – whereas the Belgian tulip was a much more bittersweet. It seems that the pint glass had done a better job of layering. This was confirmed on tasting where the pint glass delivered heavier stout flavours initially and the Belgian glass tasted more bitter.
THE RESULT
Generally speaking, the combination of flavours in this particular mix may have been more confusing for us than balanced and while it was a fun and interesting tasting, we probably wouldn’t venture the same combination a second time.
Has our experiment contributed to the discussion on traditional beer mixes? My understanding is that two different quite one-dimensional beers can certainly gain a third dimension when mixed together. In the case above however, I think the beers that we chose were far from one-dimensional in their own right. They have more than enough going on individually so as to be kept apart from other brews.
Put them in different rooms. Or perhaps keep them in separate countries.
