When to drink a Rochefort beer
Merchant du Vin recently announced that come July it is adding Rochefort 6 to its portfolio, which already includes Rochefort 8 and Rochefort 10.
But, you say, you can already buy Rochefort 6 at your favorite beer store. In fact, the beer previously was brought from Belgium by two different importers. When Rochefort signed a deal making Merchant du Vin the lone U.S. importer the monastery specified that Shelton Brothers, a Massachusetts importer that dealt with the abbey through regular channels, could sell off its remaining stock.
Since Rochefort puts a “best buy” date of five years out on its beers, and some consumers cellar them even longer, you don’t have rush to drink up the beers imported by Shelton. This announcement means that as stock for Rochefort 6 disappears it will be replaced.
Rochefort 6 is 7.8% abv and can leave a sweeter impression than the stronger Rochefort 8 and Rochefort 10 because it is not quite as attenuated as the other two and is lightly hopped (18 IBU). The abbey first brewed Rochefort 6 in 1953, and the recipe has changed little since.
Other accounts by vistiors to the brewery (above) have reported that the 6, 8, and 10 (with red, green, and blue caps respectively) are brewed from the same base, with the only difference the addition of dark sugar (and a little more hops for balance). That’s not quite true. “They are members of the same team, with some variations,” said Gumer Santos, Rochefort’s brewing engineer. Rochefort uses the same Dingemans Pilsener and caramel malts throughout, with the gravity of the 8 and 10 boosted by grain as well as both light and dark sugar.
“The process is the same, the recipe is not exactly the same,” Santos said. “The more (gravity) you want, the more raw materials you need.”
The 6 is brewed only two or three times a year, in part to make sure its yeast is healthy. When the brewery starts a new yeast, it is used in the production of 6 for a week (four brews), then in the 8 for a week, and finally in the 10. The monks never reuse yeast from the 10.
Brother Antoine, the monk responsible for the brewery from 1976 to 1997, probably put forth the idea that the 6 should be ready to drink after six weeks in the bottle, the 8 after eight, and the 10 after ten.
To figure out the date of bottling just subtract five from the third number (the year) and remember the bottles are dated day-month-year. Thus a beer dated 08-12-2010 was bottled on Dec. 8, 2005.
