To-day, we are doing ‘completely different’ – that’s completely different from just doing something that is different.

Our first beer to-day is a beer that has been awarded 99 points on a peer review on Beer Advocate (100 points by the Beer Advocate Brothers themselves), and 100 points on ‘Ratebeer’ for both style and flavour. The beer is Rodenbach Caractere Rouge.

Our second beer is a beer that has been around for a bit of time, but that is deliciously different also. Old Tom with Ginger is an English ale from 6th generation brewers Robinsons – a brewery with oodles of heritage, bundles of dedication to quality, and quite a number of superb beers.

There are three broad groups of beer available. Mainstream beer (which is ‘mainstream’, and keeps the advertising industry living a comfortable life), Heritage beer (or ‘old world craft’) and Craft beer (or ‘new world craft’).

Mainstream beer is all about ‘average’ and appeal to the ‘average consumer’. Craft beers are all about different. The Craft Beer Revolution came about because people with a great love of beer were distressed that they could not get anything different in the world of beer. With Heritage beers, it is quite unusual to see change. Heritage beers stand for consistency and are the beers that we go back to when we have tried so much different in the world of craft beer that we just need to cuddle up in a blanket and feel secure again.

Both beers reviewed here are a twist on heritage beers. Our second beer – Old Tom with Chocolate is a variant of Old Tom – a beer that has made Robinson’s Brewery in England famous, and that has been awarded ‘Best Ale in the World’ at the world beer award. Why take a beer that has received so much recognition and change it? Well, the good news is that they still brew Old Tom to the same recipe, and it is still an incredible beer. However, both Old Tom with Chocolate and Old Tom with Ginger are incredibly delicious variants on this original recipe – both of which demonstrate that old world beers can stand for both consistency and change at the same time.

Our first beer is really something special. Rodenbach Caractere Rouge was first brewed in 2011 as a variant of Rodenbach. A few decades ago, Michael Jackson – the famous Beer Hunter – was campaigning to ensure that beers like Rodenbach (he called it ‘the Burgundy of Belgium’) would survive in the face of an onslaught of competition from big breweries. Thankfully, his campaigning was successful, and Rodenbach continues to be brewed as part of Palm Breweries – a Belgian brewer dedicated to ensuring that traditional Belgian styles are maintained, and flourish and are true to their heritage.

Rodenbach Caractere Rouge

Beer Style - Fruit Flanders Red-Brown Ale
Alcohol by Volume - 7.0% a.b.v.
Brewed by - Rodenbach Breweries
Brewed in - Belgium

The Flanders red-brown style is a traditional style of beer that was in danger of dying out, and Rodenbach is the standard bearer for ensuring that this style survives. Rodenbach Caractere Rouge takes this campaign a step further – in Star Trek terms, it brings the beer where no beer has gone before ... and it does it with style, panache, elegance and superb ... incredible flavour.

When one sees a red-brown ale, one expects malty, toffee, caramel character. This is natural – the malts that deliver this type of colour to beer are also the malts that deliver this type of flavour. Rodenbach explodes this assumption in the flavour that it delivers. Flanders Red-Brown ales are matured in oak casks. As a result of this maturation, the fermentation and condition is influenced by Brettanomyces – something that would give nightmares to most winemakers, but is the essence of the difference in the Flanders Red-Brown Ale style. The consequence of this fermentation and aging in oak casks is the development of sour flavours – in the form of sour fruit flavours, predominantly, that provide a backbone to the style.

The sour character in a Flanders Red-Brown Ale replaces bitterness as a cornerstone counterpoint flavour characteristic of the beer. Flanders Red-Brown Ale is marked by almost a complete absence of bitterness – this flavour being substituted in its entirety by sourness. The flavour can come through as cherry, raspberry, cola cube, strawberry – any one of a number of fruit or root flavours.

So how does the beer taste?

A fruity nose of raspberry and cherry combines with wood, caramel and straberry, and undertone notes of violets, leather and tobacco round out the aroma. Flavourwise, this fruit beer has a sour backbone, with fruit flavour coming both from the eccentric Flanders-red fermentation and the macerated red fruits – like biting into fresh strawberry (the ripe, firm kind, bursting with fruit and juice and unbridled refreshment). sour cherry and raspberry join in, together with apricot and cola cube from the fermentation. All of this flavour is set against residual sugar sweetness, with the balance triangle being completed by a dry cranberry fruit finish. Wow!!!!! …. Or, put another way, “WOWWW!!!!!!!!!”

Old Tom with Chocolate

Beer Style - Old English Dark Ale with Chocolate
Alcohol by Volume - 6.0%
Brewed by - Robinson’s Brewery
Brewed in - England

The original Old Tom is simply a delightful beer. At 8.5%, it breaks the mould a little in the U.K. – a country that is more known for its safer beers designed to be quaffed at lunch time. In so doing, Old Tom blends the restraint and ‘appropriateness’ that is so often a characteristic of the English approach to crafts into a beer that is deliciously and incredibly flavourful, but in a manner that is so incredibly well balanced as to totally deceive the drinker as to the power that is behind this velvet glove punch of flavour.

This is a beer that simply has to be tasted to be appreciated. The rich dark colour of the beer presents a sense of sophistication – but almost aloofness (again, something that might not be totally alien to the preconceptions some have of English character). However, the flavours in the beer are so warming, so inviting, so soft and cuddly and delicious and warm and nice and heartwarming and beautiful and .... I’m getting carried away here ... that it is impossible not to realise that this beer is truly something special.

So, what do you get when you combine the world’s best ale, first brewed in 1899, with the finest chocolate, made by renowned chocolatier Simon Dunn? Old Tom with Chocolate is a superbly refined ale, deliciously indulgent, warming and velvety smooth. Rich chocolate sweetness joins in harmony with subtle roast bitterness, and a luscious mouthfeel explodes with marshmallow flavour, rounding out in a finish that leaves suggestions of cocoa powder and peppery spiciness.

All of the Old Tom beers – whether the original ‘Heritage’ beer, or the more recent additions to the range – are special in their own way. Tasting them, it is nice to believe that in 100 or 200 years, that all three will have some guy talking about them as heritage beers that have been available for centuries!

Dean McGuinnes is a regular contributor to Moncrieff's Movies & Booze and can be found at www.premierinternational.ie. Tune in live from 3.15 every Friday, or catch the show's podcasts here.