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.

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.

In order to draw some conclusions at the end of this year, we won two gold medals in two extremely important competitions in Germany (Meinenger’s International Craft Beer Award) and England (European Beer Challenge) with Quadrupel Rom Barrel Aged and Mezcal Barrel Aged. The Quadrupel is our flagship beer, it is the beer that represents us. When you think about Oriel and you need to try one of our Quadrupels.

Going forward, we had two collaborations, in Belgium with ‘t Hofbrouwerijke and in the Netherlands, with Brouwerij School. It was an intense experience because we saw how to make beer on a larger scale. Both beers were Saison, a simple, more hoppy and one flavored with violets. We attended a beer festival in the Netherlands, Carnivale Brettanomyces, one of the most exclusive in the Netherlands, was an experience completely out of the ordinary. We started to export beer to Belgium and Netherlands and the feedback that we received was amazing, we were afraid to enter an international market with Belgian beers, which are usually so classic, but we made our path among the big ones and it is nice to receive feedback from strangers that love our beer.

The summer of 2019 was the first summer we attended the beer festivals in Romania, in Iasi, Cluj and Bucharest. We have been happy to see many of you and to meet others, those who support us from the beginning.

On Sunday, we are celebrating 2 years of Oriel, we will have a small gathering at Fabrica de Bere Buna – Romanian Craft Beer Bar, on Calea Victoriei 91 – 93, and we thought to make the event on Sunday to end the week with good vibes only.