“Lets suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream you wanted to dream,
And you would naturally as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfill all your wishes.
You would have every kind of pleasure, you see
And after several nights you would say, “well that was pretty great.”
But now lets have a surprise, lets have a dream which isn’t under control.
Well something is going to happen to me that i don’t know what it’s gonna be.
Then you would get more and more adventurous,
And you would make further and further out gambles as to what you would dream,
And finally you would dream where you are now.

If you awaken from this illusion,
And you understand that black implies white,
Self implies other,
Life implies death.
You can feel yourself, not as a stranger in the world,
Not as something here on probation, not as something that has arrived here by fluke,
But you can begin to feel your own existence as absolutely fundamental.

What you are basically, deep, deep down, far, far in, is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself.”

Many years ago, I came across a song with these lyrics, later I found out, they were the lyrics of Alan Watts. At that moment I was always thinking about black and white, as two opposite things, but it’s not like that at all, yes, black implies white…

After almost three years of Oriel Beer, you already know by now that is our tradition to release a seasonal beer each winter.

In some parts of our country, snow is also present, here in Bucharest it’s just cold, but it doesn’t matter, it’s always a good time to have a treat for yourself.

So, by the time when you all celebrated Christmas last year, on 27^th of December, we brewed our WINTER 2020 edition.

Brewed with patience, in the style of a Belgian Dark Strong Ale from seven types of malt, two types of flakes, two types of hop, Belgian dark candi sugar to a special blend of liquid Belgian strain yeast and of course with some special ingredients added: cocoa, coffee, Ceylon cinnamon, coriander seeds, orange extract and vanilla essence.

This post will be about a beer, the beer, the almighty beer that you may know from our range, Oriel Quadrupel Barrel Aged.

For this batch we chose to get back to rum barrels, because we won a gold medal with the Belize version and to be honest, because we like rum, is nice to savor it all year round because is tasty and aromatic.

We decided to go again for rum barrels, but we needed to choose the barrels for aging. Our barrel supplier told about some Ecuador barrels that they should receive at a certain time and some stuff about Ecuador rums. First of all, the distilleries are situated at higher altitudes, the alcohol thing is very complicated in Ecuador and the barrels are always sealed with papers from the local customs and they are difficult and rare to obtain. The rums produced are unctuous, oily, round, dark and sweet.

Heartbeat…

Experienced amateurs and experts from around the world taste and judge the beers together. They believe this is exactly what distinguishes the Frankfurt International Beer Trophy and makes it so specific, as this reveals what consumers really think. Since its creation, the Frankfurt International Trophy has been able to rely on a variety of strong and renowned partners. They promote the international reputation of the competition that takes place in the historical hall of the famous Gesellschaftshaus Palmengarten, which dates back to 1870 and is located in the heart of Frankfurt-on-the-Main. The competition has strong ties to the restaurant world and is represented each year by an honorary president of renown (famous German Michelin star chef).  Due to the corona crisis the Frankfurt International Trophy had to reschedule and cancel the international tasting with more than 400 tasters and nearly 3,000 samples, dated for April 3 and 4, 2020, in the historic ballroom of the Gesellschaftshaus in Frankfurt, Germany. In spite of everything, the organizers managed to realize the tasting in an alternative format and after a delay finally succeeded to publish the results.

As excited as we are, we still can’t get used to another medal for one of our beers. Even though we always receive a great feedback, we are still unsure of our work and we still don’t believe sometimes that we are good enough or our beers are good enough. Sometimes we have gushers, the fermentation is more aggressive than we plan or we have issues with the barrels. No one really knows how much struggle is behind each brew. Sometimes is so easy to judge and of course, our customers are our primal focus, but please be gentle with us, we are still learning.

We have heard about the contest in Barcelona from our friend from Hopsasam, he won a medal there with his amazing barrel aged beer and he told us that is a difficult contest, but we should give it a try.

These are times that put us to test. Testing what? Testing our patience and ourselves because in these moments of uncertainty we need to return to that simple life in which we cherish the good things.
A lot of you are struggling with quarantine but very few see the great part in it. When was the last time you had time? Time to enjoy all the things you wanted to do indoor, like reading, cooking, watching a film, staying with your loved one or enjoying a craft beer.
Now is the moment you can do that.

From the beginning our creed was patience and time. Connecting that to our Quadrupel, we always took it as an exercise with ourselves and the beers that we are brewing. Of course, we can release them earlier, but we taste and wait until we consider that our goal is attained and the beer that was barrel aged is what we imagined to be. Most of the times, the beer manage to surprise us because the taste evolves so much and becomes more and more complex.

Even if the times are uncertain we have faith in our customers and fans of craft beer. We decided to release our latest Quadrupel aged in a vinars barrel.
Two years ago we tried for the first time Zetea Vinars. And we were impressed by the taste of it.
“Zetea XO is a remarkable wine distillate, obtained by its own method. The assortment consists of the highest quality natural ingredients, carefully selected to compose an expressive and harmonious aromatic palette.