A mid-August drive to Cooperstown took me to the Brewery Ommegang's annual 'Belgium Comes to Cooperstown' event. Once more of a cultural bash, the BCTC was this year reorganized by the brewery's new ownership to include a Belgian and Belgian-style beer festival, and it must have been a good idea because despite the less-than-great weather, the tasting tent and grounds were packed with dedicated beer aficionados.
Being the responsible beer writer, I was beginning my tasting tour with a set of lightly flavourful Belgian wheats when east coast Belgophile Steve Gale grabbed me by the shoulder and thrust a glass of something deep amber under my nose. "It's Bene..., Bene..., Bene-something from Cambridge Brewing," he declared, "And you have to taste it before it runs out."
One sniff and I knew that my white beer tastings were now behind me, so off I went to find the Cambridge booth. Once there, brewer Will Meyers greeted me with some history of the beer called Benevolence, and a complicated tale it was: Brewed with candi sugar; fermented by three yeasts, one English and two Belgian; conditioned in Jack Daniels barrels with honey, sour cherries, date sugar and a lambic strain; and finally aged in the barrel for a year-and-a-half before being blended with a 12% barley wine.
While such a complex process might be expected to yield a disjointed ale, I was both surprised and delighted by the balance and cohesion of this 10% ale. Sour cherries and vanilla notes dominate the nose, while the body manages to keep in line a host of flavours, from diverse spice to more fruit to a gentle hoppiness. What sourness remains from the effects of the lambic strain shows mainly in the finish, effectively drying out the fruity sweetness of the beer. All in all, I had to conclude that Benevolence was a potential car wreck of a beer that had managed to swerve just before the point of impact and coast into good structure, balance and, most of all, taste.
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