Eventually Jef led us to a table near the warm room, where he explained that, for him, brewing school was “absolutely necessary,” a path many American craft brewers choose not to take. Jef said he and Dirk were making excellent homebrew, but they weren’t always able to reproduce the results. Getting an education in brewing made it possible to consistently make the same great beer. When the brewers launched De Glazen Toren, they decided to make their own versions of classic beers they admired.
“We’re too old and too wise to try to invent something new,” Jef said.
When they designed Saison d’Erpe-Mere—one of the brewery’s most famous beers—they based it on Saison Dupont, a Belgian saison brewed near the border of France.
“We went the direction of Dupont, but a little different,” said Jef. “Dupont has a hard bitterness. You can feel it here.” He gently tapped a segment of beard that cloaked his throat. “No compromises,” he continued. “We make honest beer with simple ingredients. We don’t look for experiments.”
The idea gave me pause. American brewers were constantly saying they’d invented something new—a new use of hops, a new mashing technique, a new name, a new label—an attitude of individuality and self-expression that was being cultivated long before the Declaration of Independence came into existence. I realized I’d become immune to declarations of invention, and with one sentence, Jef had reminded me I was in a country with different values. This was why I’d traveled across the Atlantic, I thought, to see beer from the perspective of brewers with a different relationship to history.
Jef grabbed a bottle of papered Cuvée Angélique, a revival of Cuvée de l’Ermitage, a beer from Brasserie de l’Union, a brewery in the town of Jumet that went out of business. “It was the beer my wife loved very much,” he told me. “For her I created this beer.” He filled squat goblets of amberish beer until they formed a nearly two-inch-thick, unapologetic white head, and explained that a bottle of the beer cost 2.90 euros at the brewery’s gift shop and 3.85 euros at a shop down the street. In the United States, a bottle of beer of this caliber would cost somewhere between $12 and $20. I’d quickly learn that, not only was this the land of great beer, it was the land of cheap great beer. The beer smelled faintly of fruitcake and booze, like a corner of a classic holiday party, but delivered a rich wallop of prune and toffee, plus a tingle of sourness. My first Belgian beer on Belgian soil made me feel heady with the possibility of drinking more beer like this during my trip. Even so, the beer had 8.5 percent ABV, so I was glad to have been presented with just one small goblet. Still, jet lag and excitement were making me feel slightly delirious, so thankfully, Sarah offered to drive us back to the city.
As I finished my beer, I glanced at Sarah, who was taking her last sip with her eyes closed; it wouldn’t be the first time I’d see her relish a beer with total pleasure. Before we left, Jef mentioned that once he met a fan from Italy who gave him a T-shirt that said: Simplicity is the ultimate complexity.
“That’s the taste of a good brewer,” said Jef with a hearty laugh.
Sarah and I thanked the men profusely, bowed like Japanese tourists, and walked down the driveway. We looked at each other and grinned.
“That was amazing,” she said.
I nodded. I was thinking about mathematical precision, repetition, profit, and care—the kind of exhilarating rush of thoughts that arises when I’m in foreign places. While I’d learned many lessons abroad before, never had I created the chance to look at a new place through the lens of beer. And I was just getting started.
The next morning, in a cobblestone plaza where a farmer’s market was underway, I sunk my teeth into a divinely sticky and chewy waffle hot off the griddle. Sarah was eating a flaky pain au chocolat, and soon we were discussing breakfast foods.
“I know it’s not cool for a food person not to like eggs,” she said. “But I hate them, in all forms.”
“What?” I mumbled, as I took another bite of waffle and contemplated buying another one. I was accustomed to hearing people say they didn’t eat certain foods—I lived in Portland, land of dietary restrictions and cleanses—so her declaration wasn’t shocking, but I imagined that someone working in the upper echelons of the culinary world would find it difficult to avoid eggs altogether. Even though I was just starting to get to know her, I sensed that, if anyone could pull off an upset, it would be Sarah.
While I’d assumed I’d be nursing a hangover that first morning in Brussels, the previous night Sarah had smartly suggested that I not drink liters of beer from the neighborhood bodega, which had a thrilling selection of bottled Belgian beers, many of which I’d never seen before. “Don’t worry,” she had said, “they’ll be plenty of beer on this trip.” She was right, of course.
We shared a room in a mid-range hotel in the Saint-Gilles neighborhood of Brussels, which, one shocked local told us, was home to the city’s “prison.” When I snored during the night, she politely snapped her fingers in front of my face until I stopped. “I didn’t feel comfortable with a nudge,” she told me the next morning. “We’re still getting to know each other.”
On day three, instead of driving all over the country in a mad dash to meet brewers, as we had been doing, we decided to park the car and explore the city by foot. In the morning, we would move Klara from the street to the hotel’s underground parking just as street-parking enforcement went into effect. Ever the budget travelers, we calculated we could save twenty euros by not paying for hotel parking overnight, which defied advice from a woman at the hotel’s front desk.
“What does she know?” I’d said.
In an act of solidarity, Sarah and I decided to set an early morning alarm and move the car together. Then we’d go back to sleep.
The next morning, we walked out of the hotel, bleary eyed and quiet.
“Where’s Klara?” Sarah said, stopping abruptly on the sidewalk.
“Are we on the right street?” I asked.
“She’s not here.”
In her place was a dirty truck and workers destroying cobblestone. It turns out the temporary sign the size of a fire hydrant, a chalkboard with a handwritten message, meant “no parking.” Klara had been towed. We tried to ease the pain with pastries: delicate pains au chocolat and a warm, flat pastry the size of a placemat. “Un crêpe!” the baker told me, excitedly. Then we steeled ourselves for the task of finding Klara in a city where we didn’t speak any of its three official languages.
During the five gray and rainy hours it took us to retrieve Klara—a process that took us to multiple government buildings, an ATM for a budget-blowing withdrawal, and a warehouse filled with impounded cars—Sarah and I agreed we were being punished for acting like cheap old men. One thing kept us going. That afternoon, we were going to Cantillon.
Ever since I decided to go to Belgium, I knew I’d visit Cantillon, a brewery that produces some of the world’s most famous lambics. Lambics are an ancient style of beer made with unmalted wheat, aged hops, and wild yeast and bacteria that naturally become part of the fermentation process (as opposed to the beer being inoculated with a culture, which is how most brewers spark fermentation). The resulting beers vary wildly, from vinous and tart to earthy and strange. Beer writer Michael Jackson called them “neither strong nor aggressive but they have a lean, firm wineyness that can shock at first sip—and seduce to the point of obsession anyone who truly loves sensory exploration.”
Much like champagne is only made in the region of Champagne in France, genuine lambics are only produced in the Senne River valley, home to Brussels. But drinkers beware: lambic labeling laws in the EU do mandate that the beers be made using spontaneous fermentation, but labels don’t have to specify where the beer is made. And while many American beer drinkers assume all lambics are made with fruit, only some contain the addition. Kriek is a lambic that was originally made with local Schaarbeek sour cherries, but today’s brewers source cherries from elsewhere, if they use fresh cherries at all. Traditionally, brewers added
real fruit to the beer fermenting in the barrel, but in modern times some breweries have resorted to a cheaper method of adding fruit flavors. For example, Lindemans, a popular Belgian import in the United States, brews spontaneously fermented lambics in a small town southwest of Brussels, in the Senne River valley, and uses fruit juice as a substitute for whole fruit in some of its kriek.
The nonfruit spawn of lambic is gueuze, a blend of aged lambics. There are few beer firsts I remember with as much clarity as my first gueuze. Five years earlier, a salesperson at a bottle shop had suggested I try Oud Beersel Oude Geuze, when I mentioned my curiosity about sour ales. Not only was I confused by the beer’s name and its many vowels, I was convinced I wasn’t going to like the beer. “Be prepared for something different,” he’d warned. Drinking the cloudy, honey-hued beer was a form of culture shock. Its tartness was complicated: lemony, electric, and alive.
Many beer historians consider lambics to be one of the oldest existing beer styles. The oldest recipe for the beer is from 1556, but historians know the style existed before then. The beer was cited as having health properties, because it generally lacks residual sugars and has low amounts of alcohol. In 1941 the mayor of Brussels wrote, “I am recovering from a serious illness and to get me back on my feet again my doctor advises me to drink a glass of gueuze every day, or even better, a glass of kriek.”
After we secured Klara in the hotel’s parking garage, Sarah and I took the Metro to the Anderlecht area, a neighborhood that, despite the fact that it didn’t house a prison, felt a little gritty. Next to a Laundromat and across from an empty lot surrounded by chain link, Cantillon didn’t profess to be a landmark. But the brewery is an original. When Cantillon was founded in 1900, it was one of a hundred breweries in Brussels. These days, it’s one of three.
On the other side of the two large wooden entry doors, we stood in a dark, cool cave of a space with low ceilings and a long hallway that tunneled into a beer-making womb. I smelled a dank mustiness, as though I’d just walked into a barn with baying livestock. Earlier, I’d tried to arrange to meet head brewer and master blender Jean Van Roy, who’s considered to be one of the most famous brewers in the world. In an e-mail, a brewery employee said that, while Sarah and I were welcome to visit, Jean, a fourth-generation brewer at Cantillon, may not have time to speak to us. Sure enough, when he was summoned, Jean, who has high cheekbones, a fair complexion, and trim build, like a Norwegian skate skier on the verge of winning an Olympic gold medal, shook my hand tersely and clenched his jaw.
“There’s a problem I must fix, I’m sorry,” he said with a thick accent, before disappearing down the long hallway.
Sarah and I were left standing across a counter from Alberto Cardoso, a man whose long graying ponytail made him look like he was headed to an American beer festival. In the tasting room behind us, two young bearded guys wearing hooded sweatshirts were taking turns gently pouring beer from a bottle nestled in a traditional lambic basket. A wicker cousin of the picnic basket, lambic baskets cradle bottles of lambic on their side at a slight incline—the angle you’d hold a baby for bottle feeding—which allows the yeast in the bottle to settle in one corner, so you can pour the most beer possible without including any sediment. (A pour without yeast sediment is considered a “clean pour,” which is commonly preferred over a cloudy “yeast pour.” Some people, including me, enjoy the taste of the yeast pour, which includes a bonus dose of vitamin B. Others think yeast pours taste disgusting and act as a laxative.) Like the trope that sex appeal increases when someone lights your cigarette, men who pour beer from lambic baskets look refined, no matter how big their beards.
As a volunteer at the brewery’s “museum”—which so far appeared to be a T-shirt sales area—Alberto launched into an exposition about the brewery. Cantillon brews only during the winter, he explained, the same schedule brewers used before humans discovered the science of fermentation. The brewing schedule is determined by the life cycle of flying insects native to the Senne River area. (The Senne flows through Brussels, a city that was built on the river’s swamps, which made constructing the underground subway system a feat of engineering.) At first frost, when the insects stop appearing, Cantillon begins brewing. Near the beginning of April, when the temperatures warm up and the insects begin to buzz, the brewing season ends, and the staff shifts to nonbrewing tasks, such as adding fruit to beers in barrels or blending batches of lambics to make gueuze.
“We are always working with nature,” he bellowed, “and nature is never predictable.” Even though he must deliver the same speech hundreds of times a day, Alberto was enunciating his words like a Shakespearean actor performing a central soliloquy. “We are the perfect witness to declare that global warming is not a lie,” he said loudly, over a symphony of clinks at the nearby bottling area. “We’ve lost six weeks of brewing time since the 1960s.”
Alberto handed us a blue and white booklet and told us to follow the numbered Cantillon logos—an iconic outline of a man drinking a beer and falling over backward.
“So we just take ourselves through the brewery?” I whispered to Sarah.
“It appears so,” she said.
Alberto had mentioned that public tours of the museum, which turned out to be the entire brewery, helped save the brewery from financial ruin in the 1970s, when Jean Van Roy’s father came up with the idea of opening the doors to the public. In litigation-prone United States, I couldn’t imagine any brewery giving visitors this kind of freedom, especially in a place filled with slippery hallways, hot brewing equipment, and creaky old stairwells. We walked down the same hallway Jean had gone down, a walkway lined with the butts of green bottles filled with fermenting beer. Small chalkboards showed the name of the beer inside and the date it was brewed. Within moments, we’d mis-guided ourselves to a stairwell to the bathroom.
Behind me, I heard an American drawl. “Can I help you guys?” A sweaty and flushed bearded man introduced himself as Brandon Evans. He was finishing the first day of an uncommon “internship” at the brewery: in exchange for a week of labor, which would allow him to learn firsthand about lambic making, Brandon vowed to help Jean improve his English. While Brandon’s wife worked as a nuclear engineer for the European Commission in Germany, he traveled around Europe helping run beer festivals and brewing under his own label in France: Get Radical.
When I told him I was studying for the Cicerone exam, he told me why he wasn’t studying for the exam.
“I don’t need to take a test to prove what I know about beer,” he said. “I learn in breweries.”
The idea that the Cicerone exam quantifies knowledge that doesn’t need to be quantified is a common critique in the beer community. Since I started studying for the exam, many people told me they thought the test was too expensive ($395 for the first go-round) or that certification didn’t hold any real value for the titleholder; the program was just a way for Ray Daniels to make money. While I understood those complaints, Brandon’s comment made me bristle. I hadn’t asked why he was or wasn’t taking the exam, which made his rejection of the program feel like an undercut of something I obviously found valuable. But I let his comment slide; the Cicerone program was the last thing I wanted to be dissecting right then.
Brandon led us past a wood-plank-sided mash tun with a lid that looked like a mad man’s flying machine. Inside, I saw the hunched back of someone bent over scrubbing.
Some lambic blenders buy wort from nearby brewers then inoculate that wort in their own facility. A few others, including Cantillon, brew on-site. Jean was checking equipment, and he moved among the tanks, copper tubing, and rising steam with a smooth, professional swiftness. I wasn’t sure what kind of problem he was solving, but I hoped the solution would throw cold water on the tired, wilting feeling of a brew day ending too soon.
Sarah and I followed Brandon up some narrow wooden stairs to a room with two hop boilers, one of which had a gleaming copper top. Lambic brewers have a unique relationship with hops. Not only
do they boil the hops extensively (which gets rid of the volatile oils that contain hop aromas and flavors, while intensifying the bitterness), but they also start with “aged hops,” hop cones that are at least three years old. Rather than agents of flavor, hops function as the key preservative in lambics. Earlier, I’d asked Alberto what type of hop is used at Cantillon.
“We don’t care,” he said. “Any hops, as long as they’re European.”
To make a lambic, brewers create a thick mash with a high ratio of malt to water, a tradition with roots in a Belgian tax relative to the size of a mash tun. The tax forced brewers to make smaller, more concentrated batches of beer, a tradition that continues to influence brewing practices today. The turbid mash has a white froth from the unmalted wheat, which is removed and heated separately, then added back into the rest of the wort. Lambics boil for longer than most beer styles, and most braised meat dishes: three to six hours.
I heard a belt whirring, and the room felt damp, as if its surfaces were layered with the steam and the sweat of multiple generations of hard workers. A long wooden trough from the granary room hung empty, waiting for its next load of malt. As we shuffled around the room, trying to stay out of the way of Jean’s brewing team, I felt the urge to look inside one of the boiling tanks. When I tapped the handle with my hand, the metal was too hot to hold. Without my asking, Brandon whipped off his sweat-soaked Cantillon T-shirt, revealing more skin than I’d ever seen inside a brewery, and, as though the shirt was an oven mitt, opened the lid. When I looked down into the hole, I saw only steam rising out of an eerie darkness.
Brandon said he’d meet up with us later, because he had to help clean now, so Sarah and I continued our tour, following the drunkman logo to the base of another narrow stairway. At the top, under the slanted wooden beams of the attic, sat some battered and rusted barrels covered with tiny dots of white mold and decorated with delicate cobwebs. “A lambic brewer will never destroy a cobweb, and killing spiders is very much frowned upon,” the brochure explained.
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