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03-02-2015, 07:30
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http://boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Old_Peculiorval.jpgTheakston’s Old Peculier (CO-OP, three for £5) is pleasant enough, but rather light-bodied and over-clean. It’s the perfect candidate, then, for blending with Orval, the rambunctious, stylishly*unkempt poster child*for brettanomyces. This time (here’s last time (http://boakandbailey.com/2015/01/proporval/)), though we were less precise in our measurements, we went for an approximate blend of one part Orval to two parts Old Peculier. The resulting beer was very dark brown but stopped short of being black.
We knew with the first sip that this was another hit —*Orval, still, but newly dark, rich and chocolatey. Now, we’re not saying it was*better*than Orval, just that it was nice to see Orval playing against type, doing something different.
There were*flavours here that aren’t, as far as we can tell, in either base beer. Chinese five spice came to mind, including a dangerous suggestion of cinnamon (we don’t like it in beer, in general) which stayed just the right side of tantalising.
The Orval also brought out Old Peculier’s latent but muted prune and currant flavours, almost as if it were a kind of seasoning.
All in all, there was something distinctly*medieval*about this blend, perhaps recalling some of the fruit-laden recipes from the Forme of Cury (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forme_of_Cury), and we don’t hesitate to recommend it as a beer-n-TV pairing for*the BBC’s*Wolf Hall on Wednesday night.
Peculiorval (http://boakandbailey.com/2015/02/peculiorval/) from Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog - Over-thinking beer, pubs and the meaning of craft since 2007 (http://boakandbailey.com)


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