Springtime for Lidl

Welcome back to the Abbey! I get almost giddy when I see a new Abbaye de Vauclair beer in Lidl, even when it is slightly out of season. This is the Spring edition, de Printemps. It's been around for a couple of years but this the first time I've noticed it.

I expected pale and maybe a bit hazy, like a saison or maybe a Lentebock, so I was surprised when it poured out a clear amber shade. There's a decent though not excessive head, and an aroma of herbs and spices, featuring black pepper, rosemary and oregano: possibly verging on sickly, but promising a level of dry crispness also. Crispness is where the flavour opens -- very much a dry rasp of roasted grains -- and also where it finishes, with an almost pilsner-like herbal bite. The middle is more of a thumper, showing off the full 6.8% ABV as well as the inclusion of caramel and various syrups to bulk it out. There's gooey brown-banana effect, cut with ginger bread and aniseed.

This is a bit all over the place. Piling in the unfermentable sugars while also trying to make it dry and bitter doesn't really work. It's complex, for sure, but in a busy, unwieldy sort of way. "Interesting" is about the best I can say. I see it's landed in with a new batch of the IPA. Buy two bottles of that instead.

À La Recherche

Over the years, I've quite enjoyed the Abbaye de Vauclair beers. They're in solidly reliable Franco-Belgian styles, come in handsome 75cl corked bottles and are sold cheaply in Lidl, although less so these days thanks to minimum unit pricing. The latest one to pass my way represents a switching of styles. No mere Blanche or Ambrée, this is the perhaps inevitable Abbaye de Vauclair IPA.

The distressed block lettering on the label, à la BrewDog 2007, is worth the price of admission alone. One immediately expects dad-dancing in beer form. It pours a clear and classic amber colour, and there's nothing wrong with that. The aroma is definitely an IPA, not some tiredly hacked continental style: spicy lemon and grapefruit notes with a sweet malt background, calling to mind Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and the glory days of Goose Island IPA. Just like the latter, bitter and sweet line up side-by-side in the flavour, candy and cookies rubbing against citrus and pine. And it works! Although a hefty 7% ABV there's a tannic dryness which keeps things drinkable, and an overall lightness of touch: the bitterness is strong but not extreme, while the malt body is sweet and satisfying without turning cloying. More than anything, it tastes bright and fresh and zingy, where I was expecting something processed and lifeless. Whoever put this together knew exactly what they were doing.

I had a flick through its reviews and this hasn't been very favourably received, which I think is unfair. It is retro, displaying the high level of both bitterness and sweetness that came from the US and wowed palates around the world in the early years of this century before going out of fashion. At the risk of sounding as dated as the label's typography, I think it's a classic formula and one that should still be part of beer's mainstream. It feels very strange to live in a beer world where west coast IPA is something brewed in France and sold in a German discount supermarket under a faux-Belgian brand.