#de dolle

Torte, Dolci e Tozzetti & Barley Wine

Da oggi un motivo in più per venire al Barley Wine, arrivano nuovi dolci da abbinare a vostro piacere alle nostre birre artigianali:

Musa: torta soffice di banane e schegge di cioccolato fondente, consigliamo oggi l’abbinamento con la Dulle Teve di De Dolle

Cioccolosa:torta al cioccolato fondente extra della Valrhona e castagne abbinata o alla Piedi Neri di Croce di Malto o alla Sparrow Pit,…

De Dolle is seriously a magical place. You pull up to gate and you are greeted by the Oerbier man, how much better can life get?

The little person on the glasses is the Oerbier man, a simple creature who holds a brewers fork in his right hand, symbolizing the work and science, but looking to the other side, the result of all this, the glass of (Oer)beer.

When you arrive you walk back through a bricked courtyard into a large spacious warehouse, where you will see paintings, Oerbier men, and De Dolle Label art adorning every wall. The space is as colorful as Kris' work, the owner/brewer of De Dolle.

We walk through and find the bar/tasting room. There are quite a few people milling about, and it was a beautiful day to enjoy their patio. Kris was conducting a tour, and we were told he would be with us shortly. You know who Kris is as soon as you see him. He's wearing what looks like an old beer sweater, with big block letter stitching. He walks around casually but you know he's the man.

While we wait we consume the iconic beer we all know and love and their Extra Special Export Stout.

And on to the tour, Kris was actually in the process of brewing Oerbier so every now and then during the tour he would scamper up the stairs to attend to something. The De Dolle brewery was built in a very interesting way. The building was basically built around the fact that it was going to be a brewery and everything in the brew process would be fed downward. On the top floor would be the brew kettle and mash tun, and on down the fermentation room, and so on. 

Does that fork look familiar? 

Check out the Oerbier phone!!

Two fun stories about the tour. First is that while he was showing us around we walked into the fermentation room, instead of seeing huge stainless steel vats that I was used to, these are literally just rectangular well-type containers built into the room!

I'm a bit baffled by this set up and ask curiously if this is the fermentation? And he laughs and tries to explain it to me like I'm a novice, which is what happens a lot when you are a lady traveling in the beer world. Then I remarked about how frothy the krausen was and that is when I saw his eyes light up. One word proved that I was no ordinary lady, I was a beer lady.

The second isn't so much a story but an experience. We got to watch Kris add the sugar to the Oerbier boil. He let us sample the Belgian candy sugar and it was absolutely divine. Sweet but not too sweet, and was hard like rock candy.