When Duvel brewed Ommegang, round 1

The story Adam has at beernews.org that Belgian brewery Duvel will produce Brewery Ommegang beers — otherwise made in Cooperstown, New York — may seem familiar. Duvel briefly brewed Ommegang beers five years ago when demand outstripped capacity.

Back then I took samples of Ommegang Abbey Ale brewed both in Belgium and New York to a local brewpub and asked customers there on a Sunday afternoon — most of whom, it turned out, had never tried anything from Belgium or even inspired by Belgian beers — if they could tell the difference. I repeated the experiment twice more, including with friends as interested in wine as beer, then hard-core beer savvy types who viewed the test as a challenge.

I’ve added the story that resulted to the library.

***SPOILER ALERT-SPOILER ALERT*** For those who don’t want to bother with the click the results are summarized below.

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Quick summary of the results: Just over half (that’s chance) correctly picked out the odd beer in a “triangle tasting,” and 57 percent preferred the Cooperstown version.