Here is a wide-brimmed chalice glass supported by a solid, column-like stem, filled to the brim with a hazy amber-coloured beer topped by a billowing, snow-white head of foam. This is a beer that is always at home being devoured with gusto, whether gleaming in a sun-lit beer garden overlooking the slow-moving, somnolent River Meuse as it sinuously sways its way northwards through Belgium. Or suave and soothing in an Art-Deco bar in Brussels; glints in the glass reflecting opulent lighting, cutting through moody ambience.

Orval is a devotional beer, not just for the reason it is brewed in an abbey by a secular workforce, but devotional because there is a sense of mystery and eloquence about its impact on the palate that can awe even the most hardened of beer-lovers. Writer and Belgian beer expert Tim Webb once called Orval “God’s homebrew” and Tim is typically a very grounded person.

Mystery is perhaps the wrong word, as in some ways Orval is a simple beer, refreshing and easy to understand. Yet it is also complex and needs time to move from being a beer that novices—who have heard of its reputation—sip carefully, to one that has its own cool, brooding identity and is adored by even the most seen-it-all beer-lovers.

Thinking even further about its identity, maybe what sets Orval apart from other Trappist beers is that it has, somehow, since it was first brewed in 1932 (the brewery was commissioned a year earlier), become an icon, imbued with a coolness and stand-offishness, that is actually rather attractive. Marilyn Monroe or James Dean, perhaps, in their pomp.

This is a beer, that for me, resonates and always rekindles my love of Belgian beer culture with every sip. One I savour and sound out rather than swig with the fervour of a sailor home from months at sea. I love its snappy carbonation, the bubbles sashaying across the tongue like a Busby Berkeley chorus line. The bitter tingle on the finish faintly reminiscent of the aniseed notes of Pernod, the creamy, luscious and elegant mouthfeel, the dazzle of hoppiness on the palate, orangey and spicy, pithy and zesty.

I also love how the passage of time manipulates the flavours and aromatics of this beer. When Orval celebrates a year in its stylish, skittle-shaped bottle I love the way this bright, smiling orange character changes its mood to a mellowness that is rustic and deep, with a controlled earthiness and a hint of quenching sourness. This is a Janus of a beer—just like the Roman god, it shows two faces to the world.

I knew about Orval in the early 1990s. I had probably drunk it before on my trips to Belgium, but it wasn’t until Christmas 1993 that my father—who knew bugger all about beer—gifted me two bottles of Orval with a branded glass. The fact he’d thought about the beer was important. After all, he could have popped a couple of Christmas beers in his ASDA trolley, but instead, he’d gone to an Oddbins and asked them about Belgian beers.

““This is a Janus of a beer—just like the Roman god, it shows two faces to the world.””

By then I was also aware of the Belgian predilection for fancy glassware. In London, this brush with brand awareness was best exemplified by the chunky, stubby glasses of Hoegaarden that were novelties in the bars I visited. The Orval glass, however, dazzled and determined that both bottles were accompanied by a sense of elegance and one-upmanship over the common nonic pint, with its shoulder bulge reminiscent of the pads worn in Dallas.

As the years rolled on, Orval became a personal favourite, a beer ordered and ogled at during every trip I took to Belgium, or, while in London, promptly ordered at Belgo (how amazing it is to look back and remember the thrill of having moules-frites in Camden).

When I began writing about beer, I started to articulate what I felt about Orval, a link with something I couldn’t quite understand. I tried but never arrived at what I really wanted to say. Then the first step of understanding came in 2006. I visited the brewery, in its wooded location, and drank the beer at A l'Ange Gardien. I tried Petite Orval, the watered-down, low-alcohol version that the monks’ evening meal is apparently accompanied by. “Hoppy water,” was what I wrote. Obviously, I wasn’t impressed.

I also peered through gaps in the wall that surrounded the ruined 18th-century Abbaye d’Orval next to its 1930s rebuild and thought that the people standing still or sitting down in the gardens were like something out of a movie (a weird French production from the early 1960s called Last Year at Marienbad if you must know). I was also learning more about the dry-hopping and the Brettanomyces that gave Orval its otherworldly sense of earthiness; rusticity and herbal dryness that is such a brooding counterpoint to its bright and spritzy palate-pleasing citrusiness.

Four years later, I finally got in and met the then brewmaster Jean-Marie Rock (now superseded by Anne-Françoise Pypaert). I thought him a shrew-like chap, who, with eyes twinkling and a slight smile on his face, led me through the brewery, walking with the serenity of a monk, calm and quiet. In the brewhouse, the day’s light shone through coloured glass imbuing the space with a devotional sense, which given the arrangement the brewery has with the abbot and his charges was not some strange fancy. It then occurred to me that Trappist beer, and not just Orval, is a collaboration between the secular world of brewing and the contemplative world of the monks.

And then, finally, I think of history. A German brewer, Hans Pappenheim, oversaw Orval when it was first made; the famous Belgian brewing scientist Jean Declerck helped to improve it in the 1950s (he is better known for his Chimay association). And there is one more name in the frame, a Brother Dominique who helped to wrangle the wild yeasts before World War II. A holy trinity if you like, that we should toast and thank for leaving us with what I believe is the best beer in the world.