Beer review: Tafel Stout (1,35%Alc. Vol) (Martens Brewery)

Tonight, after a couple of days of lightly excessive drinking due to the holidays, I am reviewing a table beer.

Table beers are a style which are completely going out of business, since either people are drinking water, or they are drinking sweet drinks like cola or lemonades.

But for decades, or probably centuries, beer was the regular drink during most of the day. Even for children. The original reason behind this was that in the medieval ages, much of the water (especially in the cities) was so polluted that it was unhealthy. Because the brewing proces involves boiling, this effecively sterilised the water, making it fit for drinking.

Ofcourse, in order to have a beer which you are going to drink constantly, it has to be very low in alcohol.

The specific beer I am drinking is Tafel Stout (Table Stout), by Martens brewery. It has 1,35ABV, which means that you can guzzle half a gallon throughout the day for the equivalent of 2 regular beers.

This specific beer has a sweetish taste, but not extremly, something like a watered down coke. It has a light flavour, as you would expect from beers with a low ABV. Unfortunately, this beer has a very strong iron flavour. Iron is a flavour which happens when the brewing water contains some iron, however, it can also be due to the use of a cast iron brewing kettle, although these are barely used anymore, and especially not in this brewery, which is the second biggest brewery in Belgium.

I drank this beer with a spaghetti, and despite it being quite an unobvious combination it went very well together. The light sweetness of the beer nicely harmonised with the raisins which I put in my spagheti sauce.

Despite being the second largest brewery, it is one of the lesser known, since it is mostly specialised in brewing beers branded for supermarkets. It is also rumoured to be the only brewery in Belgium, and probably one of the few worldwide, which has mastered the art of a continuous brewing proces.

(Brewing generally happens in batches. Working in a continuous process is a lot more efficient in any kind of chemical proces or food production process, but it is immensely complex to get everything just right, and keep it that way throughout the process.
In brewing, it is ofcourse only possible if you have very large volumes of one specific product, because it makes no sense to have to restart the continuous proces for a different beer every other day.