Akerbeltz Gorrasta

AKERBELTZ GORRASTA

Origin: France
Type: Brown ale
Color: Amber
Alcohol content: 5,5%
Recommended serving temperature: 12ºC/54ºF
Brewery: Brasserie Akerbeltz
Webpage: http://www.akerbeltz.fr/bieres-akerbeltz.php

I first tried the Akerbeltz Gorrasta this summer and it was an incredibly delicious surprise.

It is actually sort of a funny story.

I was spending a few days in Bidart for my summer vacation, but had gone a little overboard with my spending (anybody having travelled there will already imagine that it was mainly the food -not at all expensive- however it wreaked havoc on my wallet and pants size). This meant that I found myself having to look for a place to eat that would accept American Express, as this was the only form of credit I had available to feed myself and anything else would push me right into overdraft. This is not easy to do as American Express is not that widely accepted in most of Europe.

Nevertheless, I managed to find a place I hadn't been to several times over the week (yes, add that as requirement, together with not having to drive too much and things are even harder): Les Frères Ibarboure, table et hostellerie. For those who have not had the chance to hear about this place, it is at the same time a gourmet restaurant and a hotel, part of the Relais du Silence.

Now normally, especially broke, it would have been a little out of my price range but, ironies of the American Express-bearer, in this case it was my best bet to get fed. And fed I did get. Very well fed. This is not the time or the place to review the restaurant, so I will leave it at saying that it is a great gourmet restaurant where you get a little more "bang for your buck" than you would get at any other high end gourmet place in the area, and a place where I will definitely go back, once I save enough to make it worth my while.

This was not, however, a place where I expected to be dazzled by the beer I ordered to refresh myself on a hot summer day before taking on the wine I had already ordered, but that is precisely what happened.

When I asked the waiter what kind of beers they had on tap and in bottle, he told me they did not have a tap, but only a local bottled beer, amber in color and whose name I could not easily make out despite asking him to repeat it to me. I did not care, I was hot and thirsty.

When the beer came (already served, so I was not able to see the bottle; a very cool bottle), the first thing that surprised me was it's color. It was a deep, dark amber; quite darker than I had expected. But what really struck me was the smell: It has a hazelnutty, chocolaty smell which made me think I had in front of me some sort of Nutella milk-shake. Despite the weirdness in this for a non-dark beer, on the contrary, this smell was very inviting, so I gobbled down a large part of it in a hefty gulp.

There came my next pleasant surprise. It is made with a hint of caramel which gives it a very soft sweet taste which goes perfectly well with the smell and rounds up the beer very nicely. But it also leaves a lightly bitter aftertaste, reinforcing the feeling in you that the Akerbeltz Gorrasta has some distant relation to chocolate.

The feast for the senses  that night left me slightly disoriented  and, as a consequence, I forgot to enquire about the beer. This had me very worried as I was left with the memory of a beer I really enjoyed, but whose name I did not know.

Fortunately, as I am a very resourceful person, I found a way to fix that: I went to the local supermarket and looked for breweries from the Pays Basque having an amber beer. Simple, right? I do not know if it was a smart or a dumb idea, but it definitely worked. It was the only "Bière Brassée au Pays Basque" they had available with both a blond and an amber variety.

Thus I was able to discover the name of this beer, learn more about it, buy a few bottles to take with me, write this post and leave you with this final recommendation: This Akerbeltz Gorrasta is not a beer to be drunk too cold if you wish to appreciate the smells it lets out, which I regret to say it seems to lose a little more than other beers in lower temperatures.

In any case, it is very much worth a try.