REVIEW 84: CHIMAY PREMIéRE ALE ("RED")

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN:  Belgium

BREWERY:  Biéres de Chimay S.A.

STYLE:  Dubbel

ABV:  7.0%

PURCHASE:  25.4-oz. bottle (gift)

SERVING:  Said bottle, poured into Chimay branded chalice. A pour of the usual speed (20 seconds) produced a head of the usual size (roughly one inch). A slower pour (30 seconds) still managed 3/4". Fairly good retention, as it never totally disappears. A wisp of it remains for the duration of each glass.

APPEARANCE:  Highly appealing, visually. Translucent sienna-caramel color with a beige-white head. Has a radiance to it few other beers can match. Not much lacing or bubbling.

BOUQUET:  Malty, with prominent aromas of appleskin, caramel, and dark fruit, namely fig and raisin.

PALATE:  Easygoing body for a 7% beer. Carbonation is prominent but not overbearing. Tastewise, dark fruit again is conspicuous, particularly early on. An undercurrent of spice can't be ignored; it's not peppery and is hard to make out--allspice is my guess. Mild hop bitterness--a beer cliché if ever there was one--emerges mid-palate. The finish is surprisingly a bit yeasty, leading to a tea-like aftertaste, but not before hitting you with some pure alcohol of the fusel variety--something I personally do not look for in a trappist beer, regardless of the ABV. On the whole it's agreeable but seems a bit empty; it's not as rich nor as full-bodied as other famous Belgian dubbels. 

MUSINGS AND METAPHORS:  I drank this tonight while watching a vintage hockey game between the Philadelphia Flyers and Edmonton Oilers. No, not Game 6 or 7 of the '87 Cup Finals. Instead, it was a regular season game played on December 30, 1981, the night Wayne Gretzky scored five goals--including an empty-netter with three seconds remaining--to reach the 50-goal mark in just his 39th game of the year, setting a record that will likely never be broken in my lifetime. 

Edmonton's goaltender that night was a rookie named Grant Fuhr, who would backstop them to four Stanley Cups in a five-year span beginning two seasons later. He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2003, his very first year of eligibility. He was unquestionably one of the winningest netminders of his era, with over 400 regular season victories to his credit, as well as multiple All-Star appearances and a Vezina Trophy as the NHL's best goaltender. He also tended goal for Team Canada during their monumental victory over the Soviets in the 1987 Canada Cup. 

In recent years, however, hockey scholars have called into question Fuhr's supposed greatness, citing certain statistics of his that are underwhelming when compared to his goaltending peers, even those from the same high-scoring era. Some have gone so far as to suggest he wasn't really a Hall of Fame goalie after all, citing his sub-.900 save percentage and relatively high goals-against average, in particular. They contend that Edmonton didn't really win that much because of Fuhr; rather, Fuhr won because of the team in front of him. 

Therein lies my analogy for this review. For as long as I can remember, Chimay has been more or less the gold standard for Belgian trappist beers. And there's no denying its importance to the world of abbey brewing. It has long been seen as one of the greats of its category. But now I, like the new wave of hockey scholars that question the old notions of what makes a money goalie in the NHL, do the same for the realm of the Belgian monk-brewer. I personally have always found Chimay to be very good but overrated, and not worthy of all the hype it receives. It's clearly outdone by several of its contemporaries--St. Bernardus, for instance. It can still impress you, but it's not on the short list of greatest beers in the world, as some proclaim.

I wouldn't kick Grant Fuhr out of the Hall of Fame, but he strikes me as the Chimay of goalies. I guess that makes St. Bernardus . . . St. Patrick. 




GRADE:  B+