The vast majority of beer brewed and consumed in Belgium falls squarely into the "pilsner" category of pale lagers. When one thinks of pale lager from Belgian, Stella Artois inevitably pops up first, but also Jupiler, maybe sometimes people will mention Maes, and I have fond memories of drinking Primus in Ieper many moons ago.
Belgian beer is admittedly not something I drink a lot of. I do enjoy the various Trappist ales, as well as the occasional lambic, gueuze, Flanders red, or oud bruin. Not a fan of saisons to be honest, but a good witbier has it's place. I do though have a general rule when it comes to beer styles that have their origins in Belgium...they need to actually be brewed there. I make an allowance for Allagash White, and Celis White too for that matter, but when your average IPA merchant suddenly starts pumping out sours and funky shit then I will happily avoid.
All of this is a long way round to owning that I don't recall having drunk many beers from Ommegang before, if at all. This is no sleight on Ommegang at all, I have just never quite been able to persuade myself to buy something of theirs. Then they brought out Idyll Days Pilsner.
The first 4 pack of 16oz cans I bought was purely on a whim. Browsing the list of beers available from Beer Run for curbside pickup, I saw the magic word "pilsner" and decided that I should try it out. I guess I liked it as I polished off all 4 cans while video chatting with a mate, so naturally no notes were taken, until yesterday. The boys were in bed for their afternoon nap, it was warm but overcast outside, and having taken obligatory photos, I parked myself on the deck for a mini session...
According to the marketing blurb on the Ommegang's website, this is brewed with Czech floor malted barley, Saaz hops, and is then lagered for 30 days, and gets packaged without being filtered. Hmmm...Czech ingredients, Belgian lager yeast, decent lagering period, all sounds good.
The first thing that struck me as I poured out the can into one of my Czech lager glasses was the colour. I was not expecting a 5% abv beer to be quite this wan shade of pale. After last week's experience of wildly fizzy yet headless pale lager, it was nice to get a proper voluminous dollop of white foam that stayed around on top of the beer for the duration and left a nice bit of lace down the glass.
Making their way up through the head were aromas of crackers, specifically water biscuits, as well as delightfully subtle lemon grass thing, with touches of hay and floral hops as well. The subtlety in the aroma department carries on over in to the realm of taste as well. There is a slight sweetness, not unlike savory scones freshly out of the oven, and the lemongrass character of Saaz is noticeable, though restrained and delicate.
Restraint really is the key word here, everything is in balance, with neither hop, malt, or yeast taking over, as I initially noted down, nothing dominates and nothing is lost. One thing that I did not realise before reading the Ommegang website just now was the use of flaked corn in the grist, I barely even noticed it when I was drinking. The finish has the clean snap I expect of a well made lager, and left me wanting another mouthful, my 4 pack disappeared pretty quickly as a result.
It really is a lovely beer, one that will make many a visit to the fridge, and who knows, maybe I'll try some other Ommegang products too...?
Flaked corn in the grist? Sounds like a reasonable facsimile of a pre-prohibition Classic American Pilsner.
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