Ho hum (Chimay "Red")

Member Name: Tim Webb

Product:	Chimay "Red"
Date:	23/07/06 (42 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Genuine Trappist beer sold to make money for good causes

Disadvantages: Not made in the best way or from the best ingredients

The Abbey of Scourmont, eight miles south of the southern Belgian market town of Chimay, is one of only seven Trappist abbeys and cloisters that are approved to use the term Authentic Trappist Product to describe their beers. This is because the beers are made within the confines of the abbey.

Unfortunately those confines are so small that as popularity has come - and with it a welcome boost for the abbey's charitable funds - more and more beer-making has had to be crammed into a tighter and tighter footprint.

Working the brewhouse 24-7 is not possible because this is a genuine monastery wherte quiet contemplation is the order of the day. This is why they moved the bottling plant off site.

So largely to create space, each brew is made with seven large tins of hop extract rather than having any whole or even pellet hops. Also starch derived from wheat is used as a substitute for malted barley, with up to 30% of the sugar coming from this source.

Tall fermenting vessels have replaced the traditional open fermenters, meaning that primary fermentation that used to take 10-14 days is now completed in 3-5 days.

A truly great beer - which all the Chimay brews once were - could probably absorb one or even two of these shortcuts without being knocked off their pedestal. But introduce all three and something noticeable in the quality has to go. And it has.

The fact there is still refermentation in the bottle will still tend to give it the edge on, say, Leffe Brune but my guess is that the ingredients of the latter are probably more authentic nowadays.

Summary: A genuine Trappist beer that lets the side down by using cut-price production methods