Beer sellers: mi orge mi houblon
ABV: 9%
Origin: Tintigny, Luxembourg, Wallonie
Website: www.millevertus.be
This interesting and very small brewery from rural Wallonia was launched in Toernich in 2006 by an ex-banker with the aid of a retirement bonus. It’s since done well enough to expand in July 2011 to a new and better site in the hamlet of Breuvanne in Tintigny commune. There are three strands to its product range: traditional Belgian ales, beers with unusual ingredients including a tasty wheat beer with mirabelle plums, and commissioned commemoration and event beers.
Mère vertus, originally known as Mère supèrieure (Mother Superior), is one of the first class, a strongish twist on an abbey tripel made with barley malt, wheat and four undisclosed hop varieties. It’s a hazy golden bottle conditioned beer with a foamy off-white head and a complex spicy hop aroma with some slightly medicinal phenolic notes. A cheerful palate is fruity, spicy, seedy and lightly marmaladey with obvious alcohol. It’s a little on the hoppy side for the style, with a controlled but coating bitterness on the finish with herbs and black pepper emerging over apricot syrup.
“After every swallow you will say six Our Fathers and three Hail Marys,” demands the forbidding looking nun on the label. I’m not a religious or a guilt-ridden type, but I can see how a beer like this might make you feel self indulgent.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/millevertus-la-mere-superieure/84796/
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