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News

Gold Medal

Oriel Quadrupel Belize Rum BA awarded at Meinenger’s International Craft Beer Award

There are times in life when you work so hard and eventually the work that you are making gets noticed. As it was normal, because we got used to receive prizes when we were homebrewing years ago,  so when we got pro, we decided to check in a professional competition to see how good our beer is.

Oriel Quadruepel Belize Rum BA is a quadruple style beer, of 10% ABV, aged in Rum barrels for seven months. As you all know, an exceptional beer needs time and for this one we gave her time of fermentation, barrel aging and bottle conditioning for many months.

We found out at the beginning of 2019 about this competition, is one of the best craft beer competitions from Germany and thousands of beers are judged yearly by a lot of judges. We didn’t know we got chances to win, but still, we were like “yes, let’s do this!”. We entered the contest, sent 10 bottles to Germany and waited for the answer. The final results were to be announced  by the middle of April, but not the exact awards.

meininger

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Can you See the Light?

An audacious collaboration between Oriel Beer and Wicked Barrel

If you see the light, you suddenly understand something you didn’t understand before. This quote is from Cambridge dictionary. How it can relate to our beer? Well, is very simple, because you all have a perception on an imperial stout beer and when you will try this beer, you will see that is different and you will begin to understand.
The stouts are top fermented beers, dark in color and made with roasted malts. Back in 1677, the word stout appeared for the first time in the Egerton Manuscript (a book written by Francis Henry Egerton, an Earl of Bridgewater), but it referred as a stronger beer rather than dark.

See The Light

Photo by Hidden Hallow Photography

The story of the Imperial Stout started somewhere in the 18th century, when a brewery from London started to export  to the court of Catherine II of Russia. The beer was dark and with a higher alcohol content  and the Empress just loved it.

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CHRONICS OF 2019

Or how our year started


As we blink, the time flies and so was the end of 2018. We had our 1st Anniversary which was a blast, we ended our year with 8 launched beers in our portfolio and we declared ourselves happy for the year that had passed.

After concluding 2018, January 2019 came, and what a month it was. We brewed so much cool new stuff that we are eager to share with you. So the list is as follows:

  • A new batch of Blond Wild with Brettanomyces (that funky, bubbly beer)
  • A new batch of Saison (new recipe, super awesome taste)
  • Tripel aged in Chardonnay barrel from Liliac Winery
  • Dubbel aged in Merlot barrels from Liliac Winery
  • Quadrupel aged in Whisky barrels, Laphroaig and Auchentoshan

And we still have some cool news around, but we will keep them secret for the moment.

At the beginning of January we launched the 2nd batch of Quadrupel aged in Belize Rum barrels. The perfect balance between a barrel and a beer, everyone said. We are very happy how our Quadrupel series evolves and that everyone is so curious all the time to try it.

But let’s get back to some serious substance. At the end of January took place Rate Beer Best. Rate Beer is a super well known website and app where everyone makes reviews for craft beers or where you can find cool places with craft beer around you in all over the world. There are a lot of categories for this awards, from the best beers in the world, breweries, reviewers etc.


RB2018

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1 YEAR ANNIVERSARY

Let’s get together

1an

And it seems like, FINALLY, we are grown ups now!

Oh my, this year passed so fast, it feels like the other day was December 2017 and we were just launching Oriel Blond and Oriel Dubbel. But look, twelve months later, we have eight labels and we can pride ourselves that we evolved as brewers in this beautiful scene of craft beer.

We brewed continuously our Blond and Dubbel as our permanent line beers and we continued with some limited editions in order to experiment more in the direction we liked. Let’s get a bit clearer, we brew Belgian style ales, but in our own direction, in a modern way, so don’t expect that classic Belgian taste.

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WINTER IS COMING

A Belgian Dark Strong Ale for the winter

We were always fans of winter beers, we loved the labels with snow, Santa Claus, mistletoe or fairy creatures, so since we opened our brewery we were restless and we wanted to make a winter beer. And since the winter beers are usually dark and strong in alcohol, we started to think about the recipe in the summer time.

The brewing was in the first days of July and while everyone was sunbathing and enjoying the summer, we were thinking about our winter beer.


Winter

It started with a recipe of a Belgian Dark Strong Age: six types of malt, two types of hop, Belgian dark candi syrup and extra, we added during boiling some spices (grains of paradise and coriander) and lots of cocoa husks. And of course we fermented with a fresh yeast blend (Belgian strains). After the fermentation ended, we wanted to do more and we transferred in the secondary tank on cherry wood chips, a couple of kilos of organic cocoa beans from Ivory Coast, more cocoa husks and grains of paradise.

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COLLABORATION BREWS

Experimental batches of new beers


QuadIPA

There is a time in the life of each brewer when it comes natural brew beers in collaboration with other brewers. The craft beer scene is very friendly and is a continuous exchange of experience and knowledge.

The story of our collaborations starts simple and we chose the month of September to brew both beers.

The first collaboration brew was with Sunstone Ale from Chisinau, Moldova. We’ve known Kirill for some years now from the time we were homebrewing and it was obvious to make a beer together. We got along from the first time we met and we have always tried each other beer and loved them. So it was normal to start thinking in making a beer together.

Choosing the recipe wasn’t so difficult because we are into Belgian stuff and he is into hoppy beers, so the winner style was a Quadrupel IPA, brewed with lots of hops and fermented with Belgian liquid yeasts.

The brew day was as much fun as it could be, honestly since we opened the brewery we haven’t considered that the stuff we are doing are working stuff because we enjoy it, maybe except for the bottling because it takes a lot of time. Returning to the main subject, it was a super fun day where we talked about beers and beer things related. Stas from Elvis brewery from Chisinau joined us in discussions and we tasted beers meanwhile brewing.

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LIMITED EDITION BEERS

From core range to limited edition

Here, at Oriel Beer, we like to play with recipes and because of that we decided to change a little our base recipes of Oriel Blond and Oriel Dubbel.

Blond WIld

Let’s start with the blond one because everyone likes blondes. We brewed it like the basic one with a primary fermentation of two weeks using a Belgian yeast strain. All good and nice until now. After the primary fermentation, we moved the beer into a second tank where we added Brettanomyces Bruxellensis, a spontaneous yeast, that is naturally found in the air. The strain of this wild yeast was isolated from brewery cultures of Brussels and it’s commonly found in lambic-style beers.
For the second fermentation we kept the beer for a month and then we bottled it and let it rest for three months.
With this type of yeast is all about time because it eats slowly and it will continue to eat and break down sugars long after packaging. Beers fermented in secondary with Brettanomyces will change over time, often becoming dryer and continuing to produce esters and phenols.
One famous trappist beer, Orval that is seconadary fermented with Brettanomyces is sold at the brewery aged in bottle for three years. And the taste is just wonderful.

Don’t be afraid of this kind of taste because it is normal to be slightly sour, funky and with an earthy character. Some have described it as having a “barnyard” or “wet horse blanket” flavor. Don’t laugh, is normal.
That’s how it was with the Blond so be wild, drink wild.

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THE STORY OF A BARREL AGED BEER

From barrel aging in homebrewing to barrel aging at the brewery

Barrels

Barrel Aging is a well established tradition in brewing and we started to apply it since we homebrewed so it was normal to start doing this also at the brewery.
The beer ages with the aim to convey the unique character of the wood and the flavour of what has previously been in the barrel.
When we homebrewed at home we used a small bourbon barrel of 20 liters from a small distillery from the United States, so for the first batch we decided to go with similar aromas and we chose the Jack Daniel’s Tennessee whiskey barrels because of their unique flavour. We were impressed by the balanced sweet and oaky character of this whiskey as well as by the vanilla and caramel notes.

Brewing a Belgian inspired Quadrupel

Back in 2017, in October, in full licensing process to produce and sell beer, we brewed this beer as our third beer from our portfolio, after Oriel Blond and Oriel Dubbel. We choose five types of malt from Germany and Belgium malt houses, two types of Slovenian hops from a small Slovenian farm, of course Belgian dark candi syrup, which is often use in this type of beer and last but not least, a special blend of liquid Belgian strain yeasts. After one month of primary fermentation in the tank, we moved the beer into two Jack Daniel’s barrels of 190 liters and forgot about it for the next six months.

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THE BREWING

About the process

Brewing beer is not as difficult as everyone thinks. Yes, you may need some knowledge in chemistry, but it may be enough just to read and read some books about the process of brewing and just practice. And not to forget about creativity. When the brewer is creative, the beer will be good. You can find so much information nowadays about beers and how they are made, the only thing that you need is just time for it and some interest.

But with all this information, I realized that not everyone who drinks beer knows how beer is made. Yes, we all know about Reinheitsgebot or the German Beer Purity Law which says loud and clear that beer is made of water, hops and barley. They forgot about the yeast, but no worries, they did not consider it an ingredient in 1516.

Ingredients for beer

The ingredients


Apart form water, hops, barley malt, wheat and yeast, many other ingredients can be used. Ingredients like herbs or spices, syrups, fruits, lactose, just to name a few. There are a lot of types of malted barley and hops and each of them is used in a specific type of beer. Depending on the type of beer, can be used from one barley malt to maybe eight or ten types and same goes for the hops, each one giving different flavors. The yeasts may be top-fermenting for the ALE BEERS, bottom-fermenting for LAGERS and Spontaneous for SOUR BEERS. There are literally hundreds of varieties and strains of yeast, naturally each of them acting different.

The barley is not used as it is harvested from the field, it goes through a malting process in which the grains are made to germinate by soaking in water, and are then halted from germinating further by drying with hot air.

We have the ingredients, so let’s get back to the process.

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THE BEGINNING


Oriel

Homebrewing

Once upon a time

More precisely in the summer of 2010, we brewed our first beer kit. At the beginning I did not take it seriously, I thought it was just something Laurentiu wants to try once to see how it is. When we met, he told me he is passionate about beer, collecting crown caps from beers all over the world.
At that time I didn’t know much about beer. To be honest, like most of the people, I thought that beer is that clear, yellowish, whatever beverage. And for sure not for my taste. But I was so wrong and I am thinking now that so many people don’t have any clue about beer, being fooled by the big companies with their marketing campaigns.

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