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Now this is what I call a dessert! Nicole baked up some banana bread with crystallized ginger. And what better to accompany such a bread than a Belgian ale! We so happened to have a bottle of Corsendonk Abbey Pale Ale in the fridge, so we opened it for the occasion.

The Corsendonk has that hazy golden color you’d expect from a Belgian pale. Fruit and spice are very apparent in the aroma. The spicy fruity Belgian flavor rang out without being overly sour. It has an intense sweetness up front, but it doesn’t linger. Crisp, clean and refreshing.

I thought the spiced fruit flavor of the beer was an excellent compliment to the earthy spiciness of the crystallized ginger and banana flavor of the bread. It was a wonderful pairing!

(By the way, I love the music on the Corsendonk website. I feel like I should be reading the paper in my private library with an English Setter at my feet and a snifter of Abbey Pale Ale in hand.)

Whenever I’m traveling, one of the necessities of my trip is to try and find a good beer shop. While I was in Knoxville a couple weeks ago visiting my sister, I stopped in at Harvest Towne Wine & Spirits, as they had a small, but quality, beer selection. They had a couple that were very intriguing, including a beer that was brewed with pine and spruce in place of hops. I had never had a hopless beer before.

Alba Scots Pine Ale, brewed by Heather Ale from Scotland, is a “triple” style ale. According to the label, this was a Highland recipe that uses sprigs of spruce and pine. Introduced by the Vikings, this style of ale was popular until the late 19th century.

The beer pours a slightly hazy copper color. Has a nice, creamy white head. The aroma is malty sweet, but if there was any pine or spruce in the aroma, it was very subtle and I can’t really detect it.

Flavor is malty, but not overly intense. Again, I can’t detect any pine in the taste. It actually has a sort of a candied sweetness, kind of like you might expect from a normal Scottish Ale. It has quite a pleasant flavor. At 7.5% ABV, it is very easy drinking and has a pleasant mouthfeel.

If I had not read that this beer had no hops and used pine, I never would have guessed. It just tastes like a regular ol’ Scottish Ale. I was expecting a beer version of gin, but it was anything but. It wasn’t piney at all. I am very impressed!

I have a friend from church who theorizes she is allergic to hops. This will be a great control variable to experiment and find out of that’s it, or if it’s something else. I love the scientific method!