Microbrewed Adventures

by Charles Papazian

  Stille Nacht (Silent Night)—A very strong Christmas beer, with an incredibly high original gravity at 1.120 and 9 percent alcohol. It is considered one of his classic beers.

  Dulle Teve—I can’t recall an explanation for the label Chris gave me, but judging from that label and what memory I had left after departing, I think dulle teve means mother-in-law. Alcohol is at 10 percent!

  After the tour we were joined by Leuven microbrewer Steven Pauwels (now the head brewer at Boulevard Brewing Company, Kansas City) and former American Homebrewers Association vice president Grosvenor Merle-Smith. We entered a dark and damp cellar. It is where Chris Herteleer keeps his special “vintage” beers. We loaded up with a few cobweb-laced bottles that had barely legible labels and rusted bottle caps and headed up to the loft café. It was beer-tasting time.

  We began by tasting a 12-year-old bottle prototype and aged Oerbier. It was at this point I discovered that Chris enjoyed an occasional cigar. I gave him a Cuban cigar I had reserved for a special occasion. This was a special occasion. It wasn’t long before Chris disappeared and reemerged with a few more bottles of a beer brewed years earlier and subsequently aged in oak for two years. It was reminiscent of another world-classic Flanders-style sour brown ale, Rodenbach Gran Cru, but not quite as acetic. The beer kept coming!

  Chris Herteleer and his cellared “vintage” beers

  There appeared in a fresh glass an 11.5 percent alcohol beer brewed 15 years earlier, in 1980. Chris confided that this was a beer he shares only with his best friends. It was a miraculously complex strong Belgian-style ale. We continued tasting other prototypes of his current beers. Finally, just when we thought we were finished (a big mistake—thinking one is ever finished tasting beer), a special corked dark beer brewed in 1980 appeared to climax the late afternoon. It was 12 percent alcohol, chocolaty, with a bit of fruity acidity, winey and very smooth indeed.

  It was at that point I noticed two elderly women sitting on a sofa, their feet resting on a giant bellows. They were all smiles and at the end of their glass of a De Doulle Brouwers strong ale. They left quite peacefully, seeming to drift gracefully down the bright red, narrow spiral staircase.

  There were once 3,223 breweries in the era of 1900s Belgium. Now there were fewer than 120. Mad brewers such as Chris may resurrect the strong and crazy brewing traditions of Belgium, if we let them. I was doing my part and will continue to do so. We soon left—why, I don’t quite remember, except it had something to do with dinner in Brugge. Oh, yes. Dinner, and of course more beer.

  Intoxication by Ara and “Bunny Rabbit”

  Brugge is quite a marvelous city, they tell me. We whisked through at such a fast pace and in such a delirious state of mind I don’t recall seeing it. We tasted beers at nook-and-cranny pubs and cafés along the way to wherever we were being led. At one of Jan’s favorite pubs, the de Garre, we enjoyed a beer (don’t ask me to remember it at this point). Listening to classical music, I was just beginning to get comfortable when I was alerted that it was time to go. Was I going crazy, or was it the maniac fermented in all of us?

  Down this street, around that corner and soon we were at Raspoetin, a friendly antique restaurant offering food and more beer. Halfway through our meal it was time to go again—to another café. How could we possibly have another beer? No, I wasn’t really inebriated and was far from feeling drunk, but I had an intense feeling of saturation. My eyes were looking but not seeing. My ears were hearing but not listening. My mouth was drinking but not tasting. My hands were touching but not feeling. I had become a walking zombie in Brugge. As I walked, I could feel my eyes closing and my arms rising in front of me. I emitted low, rumbling belches. I imagined little children and mothers with babes in arms fleeing as I approached.

  I came to some senses just as we approached ’t Brugs Beertje (the Special Beerhouse), serving more than 300 kinds of traditional and not-so-traditional Belgian beers. We had time to order a couple of more beers. This was Brugge; it all seemed to be foam at the top.

  The pleasure of Belgian ale

  Jan, needing to catch the last ferryboat back to the Netherlands, drove us the last hour to Leuven before departing. Thanking him for his superhuman hospitality, Grosvenor and I checked into our hotel. We looked at each other, then at our watches, and together we glanced out the window to the well-lit town square. We weren’t done yet. Not by a long shot. Walking down to the square, we sat down at an outdoor café. What did we do? It isn’t hard to imagine. Without thinking, we automatically ordered another beer. Strangely, I couldn’t even drink half of it.

  Grosvenor left the next day, back to Ireland where he had been working. He admitted a certain degree of saturation.

  But beer is my business, and I was working late. The next morning Steven Pauwels had planned another full day’s itinerary for me. Our first visit was to the Westmalle Trappist Brewery in Malle. It is one of five authentic Trappist breweries in Belgium. Brewing 125,000 hectoliters of beer per year, the monks have decided that they do not wish to expand production any further. Situated in a pastoral setting, surrounded by fields of green and very contented cows (I began to note the common theme here with cows and brewers, or so it seems). Jan Adriaensens, the head brewer, explained the brewing system and confided that they will use the same yeast through 25 generations before starting a new culture. Their beers are primary fermented at 19 to 20 degrees C (66–68 F), then cooled to 8 degrees C (46.5 F), then aged for three to eight weeks depending on whether they are Dubbel or Tripel. They were using German Spalt, Tettnanger and Hallertauer hops as well as Czech Saaz, Styrian Goldings and hop extract for bittering. Fresh doses of healthy yeast are added at bottling and refermented and conditioned in the bottle at 20 degrees C (68 F) for about three weeks, creating natural carbonation.

  The popularity of Westmalle Trappist beers is encouraging to the brewers, but it is also the reason the beer does not get exported out of the region in great quantities. A fresh Westmalle Tripel or Dubbel is a treat to enjoy close to the source, where the passion is not diluted by age or distance.

  At the end of our tour we enjoyed an Extra, a light, 5.5 percent alcohol beer brewed three or four times a year for the exclusive consumption of the 30 monks in the monastery.

  Kettle and Crucifix, Westmalle Trappist Brewery

  We ate lunch across the street at the Trappiste Café. From there, where did we go? Oh, of course, to visit another brewery. North, not too far from Westmalle and almost to the Netherlands to visit the Sterkens Brewery in Hoogstraten. Built in 1880, it is only about a 15,000-hectoliter (about 13,000 barrels) per year operation, a truly original microbrewery. Stan Sterken offered me beer after the tour. I accepted and immensely enjoyed their Poorter. Not to be confused with American-or British-style porter, this beer is velvety smooth, offering dark ale qualities not commonly brewed by other breweries large or small. Sterken’s Poorter has a “round” nutty malt character without any of the caramel or crystal malt flavor you’d normally anticipate in an amber or brown ale. Furthermore, despite its coppery color there is virtually no roast malt astringency. There is a slight touch of banana character in the flavor, but not pronounced or anywhere near the level of many of the dark abbey-style ales of Belgium. Alcohol character was not evident in flavor, aroma or mouthfeel.

  * * *

  SWITCH AND TOGGLES PREPOSTEROUS POORTER

  This is a prized recipe that achieves the smooth, “round” nutty malt character and complexity of Belgian malts, with a slight touch of banana character in the flavor. The recipe can be found in About the Recipes.

  * * *

  The word sublime comes to mind. Honestly, I drank this beer scratching my head and truly wondered how it possibly could have been made. My 25 years of brewing experience didn’t help solve the mystery. What impressed me the most was the notion that as a brewer I still could find the excitement of learning about and brewing something new.

  After a brief consultation with the importer, I was given direction: “It�
��s the malt.” I learned on my adventures in Belgium how special Belgian malts can be. I also learned to discern the character of Goldings hops and the important role they play in many Belgian specialties.

  World-Class Belgian Breweries

  Belle Vue, Palm, Moortgat and Lindeman

  IN OLDEN TIMES spontaneously fermenting lambic breweries proliferated throughout the area of Brussels. Now only a few remain, and even fewer offer the traditional unsweetened styles so revered by beer enthusiasts, who appreciate and savor the tart, acidic, fruity characters of this true “champagne” of beers.

  The Belle Vue Brewery is the largest of the Belgian lambic breweries and is now owned by the Belgian brewery giant Interbev. This was already the case when I visited in 1995. Their lambics are often criticized for being sweetened beyond traditional recognition, and some will not even consider them true lambics.

  It is true that the final product is so sweet that it bears very little resemblance to a true lambic. Its base is a true brewed lambic blended with juice and sweeteners to suit what they perceive as consumer preference. But a tour of the brewery reveals secrets that very few care to explore because of its mega-brewery and sugared reputation.

  Inside there are over 11,000 large wooden oak barrels fermenting and aging the real thing! I learned that Belle Vue’s lambics are aged for years in these barrels. The small bungholes in the barrel remain open for years, during which fermentation foams out and over the barrel.

  For the making of Kriek (Belgian cherry) lambic, ripe, whole cherries are harvested in July and added to six-month-fermented lambic. Fermentation resumes with the addition of natural sugar from the cherries and continues for an additional two to two and a half years. It is easy to tell which barrels have fermenting Kriek inside. There are a handful of birchwood twigs stuffed in and partially emerging from each oak barrel. Why? So that the pits don’t emerge and clog the hole during the second fermentation, thus avoiding the danger of building pressure and exploding barrels. Eighty kilograms (about 175 pounds) of cherries are added to each 520-liter (about 550 gallons) oak barrel. That is a lot of cherries, and most of the production staff is busy stuffing cherries into bungholes during the two short weeks when the fruit is received at the brewery.

  During the maturation process a moldlike skin from wild yeast forms a layer on the surface of the beer, inhibiting oxidation and evaporation. The entire process is natural, from the spontaneous fermentation begun by airborne yeast and bacteria. Spiders abound in the brewery. These are the sacred creatures of every lambic brewery; their webs capture bacteria-laden flies.

  After a tour of the main cellars housing the oak barrels, we were led to a smaller cellar tucked away in a quiet corner of the brewery. There, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Hundreds of champagne-type bottles were resting on their side, aging and refermenting lambic. What a comforting sight! I was treated to a bottle. This select aged lambic was exquisite and a real treat, but is rarely available. Most fascinating was an explanation of how to translate the sediment inside the bottle. Brewer Jacque De Keersmaecker explained how to “read” the sediment as he lifted a bottle lying on its side, carefully so as not to disturb the sediment. As the light silhouetted the sediment we could see that it had spread itself into a pattern, clinging to the side of the bottle. Jacque explained that there are two types of sediment along the side of the bottle. The dark, dense and somewhat oval-patterned sediment is bacterial; the featherlike sediment that extends up and down from the bacterial center is Brettanomyces yeast. The yeast sediment is actually formed in very thin, featherlike strands. You can tell how acidic the beer will be by how large the bacterial sediment is, and how influenced by Brettanomyces yeast the lambic will be by the extending patterns of featherlike fronds of sediment.

  You can go to the brewery for a tour any time. In 1995 you could also bring your own container and fill it up directly from their unblended barrels—a little-known treat.

  Three Breweries in a Day

  THE 500,000-HECTOLITER PALM BREWERY is a small brewery by some standards, but to taste their beers is to taste the soul of Belgian beer passion. On a tour, the owner took a few of us to the side and showed us the dried whole hops used in one of their special dry-hopped beers. We were told that there is a crew of people who individually tear apart each hop cone by hand before adding it to the aging tanks. I had my doubts until he confided to us how wonderful American homebrewers are: “I have to thank the homebrew club in Los Angeles. I believe they are called the Maltose Falcons. They advised me to use Styrian hops when dry hopping. I learned quite a bit from my visit there.”

  On the second brewery tour of the day, the brewery Moortgat (brewer of Duvel and other beers) was explained. Interestingly, this tour was indicative of many of the other brewery tours I and several other brewers experienced while in Belgium. There were few, if any, secrets kept from us. The breweries even handed out flow charts explaining every detail of ingredients, processes and equipment for each of their brews. American brewers, small or otherwise, rarely go into as much detail as the Belgians. I supposed they really didn’t feel they had anything to hide. It would be virtually impossible to duplicate their beer with another system and even if you could, you would still be missing the 100-plus years of beer tradition and experience.

  Roger Musche tapping gueuze lambic at Lindeman Brewery

  In the evening I was part of a private tour of the Lindeman Brewery, brewers of spontaneously fermented lambic beers that are widely exported to America. My first impression: What a funked-out, totally bizarre brewery! Words cannot describe the funkiness of this farmhouse brewery just outside of Brussels. Roger Musche, whom I had met in Zimbabwe while enjoying my sorghum beer indulgence, was the head brewer. He greeted us with the compassion of a brewery father and excitedly led us through the inner depths of the brewery. The fermenting rooms smelled like an old urinal and had the ambience of an ancient water closet. As we sampled various batches of lambic from tanks and barrels, Roger tossed leftover beer onto the walls and floor to add to and feed the existing micro flora of bacteria and wild yeasts, so important to the brewery’s success.

  Tours uncompromisingly lead to the tasting room. We sat comfortably at wooden tables, the walls decorated with labels and posters outlining the history of the brewery. We tried their kriek (cherry), peche (peach), framboise (raspberry) and sweetened faro lambics. But it was unanimous among the invited that the best beers were the refermented gueuze lambic, no longer sold, and their cassis lambic, which was a failure in the marketplace. The most interesting “beer” was called “Tea Beer,” actually a blend of sour fermented lambic and green tea.

  When you have the opportunity to reciprocate beer for beer, it is a common courtesy to do so. Rarely have I had the opportunity to share my beers with brewers in other parts of the world. But having anticipated this tour for nearly a year, I had brought along my own homebrewed “lambic-style” cherry and raspberry lambics. Unfortunately, they did not hold up to the two weeks of traveling I had just undergone. Through agitation and less-than-ideal conditions they had lost their edge, crispness and complexity. I was not offended by their less-than-accepting reception. But my 10-year-old Gnarly Roots Lambic-style barley wine was greeted with enthusiasm. I noted with interest that usually this 10 percent alcohol barley wine tasted very strong, but on this occasion, and after tasting 8 and 9 percent Belgian-style ales with regularity for the past two weeks, it did not. I suppose that proves the theory of relativity, doesn’t it?

  * * *

  BELGIAN-STYLE CHERRY-BLACK CURRANT (KRIEK-CASSIS) LAMBIC

  This is one of the most phenomenal lambic-style beers I’ve tasted—and I made it! I used a combination of sour cherries and chokecherries, but you have the option to use currants if you wish. This beer is a two-year process, but well worth the effort. You’ll need a quiet corner to age the slowly fermenting and evolving beer. Avoid extreme temperatures. Use the best-quality fully ripened fruit you can buy or pick yourself. Cherries and currants sh
ould have a balance between sweet and sour. Fresh or fresh-frozen are best. Here is the recipe for my finest lambic. It can be found in About the Recipes.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 10

  Cerveza Real in Latin America

  A LAND OF THIRST, Latin America has some of the lightest-tasting beers on the planet. The beer landscape from Mexico to Tierra del Fuego can be quite monotonous unless you tune in to creative fermentations.

  Greatly influenced by German brewers who had immigrated to Latin America, there was at one time a diversity of ales and lagers available regionally in cities and the countryside. However, nationalization of brands and beer monopolies have greatly diminished the choices available to the beer drinker. Even if you wanted to pay more money for a full-flavored beer, it is difficult to find one. Fortunately, there are signs that all this may be changing. Brewpubs and microbreweries are emerging in Mexico, Cuba, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Colombia, Peru and several other nations. There are homebrewing co-ops and clubs celebrating their discovery of beer flavor and diversity. Even some of the large brewing companies are beginning to offer amber ales, bocks and wheat beers.

  Slowly and patiently, the dormant Latin American passion for beer flavor is reemerging. The hot climate does not mean the beer needs to be tasteless. Pioneers are beginning to succeed by providing choice. People are discovering and drinking their beer with a great deal of appreciation. A microbrewed adventurer will find them.

  Czech-Mex in Tijuana

  JOSÉ WATCHES HIS CUSTOMERS enjoying beer at his taverna in Tijuana, Mexico. Most are guys, local residents, some with their wives or girlfriends. José notes that one guy is enjoying a chilled half-liter of a pilsener-style lager while his female companion seems disinterested, bored and sipping on a glass of water. José walks over to the table and presents a glass of pilsener to the woman, explaining that he is only giving her the beer so she can feel part of the scene. She doesn’t need to pay for it nor even drink it. She thanks him, admitting that she really doesn’t like beer. “But this beer is different,” he insists, then goes on to briefly explain the merits of all-malt beer with flavor and character. He leaves. Five minutes later he observes from afar that there is one inch of beer missing from the complimentary glass. Ten minutes more go by and the glass is half full. Twenty-five minutes later he returns to the table with another glass of beer, offering the same deal—“you only need to keep the beer company and no need to pay.”