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Des de Moor
Best beer and travel writing award 2015, 2011 -- British Guild of Beer Writers Awards
Accredited Beer Sommelier
Writer of "Probably the best book about beer in London" - Londonist
"A necessity if you're a beer geek travelling to London town" - Beer Advocate
"A joy to read" - Roger Protz
"Very authoritative" - Tim Webb.
"One of the top beer writers in the UK" - Mark Dredge.
"A beer guru" - Popbitch.
Des de Moor

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Rabourdin Bière de Brie Ambrée

ABV: 7.5%
Origin: Courpalay, Seine-et-Marne, France
Website: www.biere-de-brie.com

Bière de Brie Ambrée

You Must Try Before You Die

Beer sellers: Cave à bulles.
An alternative version of this piece appears in the book
You Must Try Before You Die.

Rarely can beer claim a goût de terroir of the sort boasted of in the upper echelons of the wine industry, where grapes are grown, juiced and fermented and the results bottled all on the same estate. Although some brewers make a virtue of using local ingredients, very few offer finished products with such a direct connection to their local soil as Hugues and Geneviève Rabourdin.

Their Gaillon farm is at Courpalay in the Seine-et-Marne department of the Île-de-France region, about an hour east of Paris, in the heart of the old province of Brie. The area is famous, of course, for its soft rinded cheese, but it’s also known as Paris’s grain silo: farm was once common, but proved less tenacious here in the 20th century than in more northerly parts of France. Cereals had been the Rabourdins’ business for over twenty years before they saw the opportunity to restore a local craft and create a product with a unique provenance by, in their words, “adding the rhythms of naturally to the rhythms of sowing and reaping”. The beers can be sampled in the farm’s stables.

The Ambrée, one of Hugues’ first recipes when the brewery launched in 2001, is made from the farm’s own malted barley, with only hops and no spicing. takes place in one of the barns, with an 8-10 day warm fermentation at 24°C using yeast, several weeks of lagering in tanks at 0°C then at least four weeks of secondary fermentation in no-nonsense 750ml Bordeaux-style bottles.

The result is a reddish-amber beer with some white head and a smoky aroma with notes of burnt rubber, cheese, barley sugar and herb liqueur. An intense smoky, roasty, biscuity palate has sweetish malt with an tang and more of that slight burnt rubber flavour. The sweetish grainy finish is mild on hops but with a chewy dry roast bite.

Overall this is a big, honest and rustic delight that rewards careful sipping. It’s enjoyed considerable acclaim in a country that values regional food and drink highly, twice winning gold medals at the Concours Général Agricole in Paris. And the perfect accompaniment? Surely a decent, mature Brie de Melun.

For more reviews like this see the book You Must Try Before You Die, published May 2010 by Cassell Illustrated.

Buy the book from amazon.co.uk

Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/gaillon-biere-de-brie-ambree/39523/

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