Time For A Paasbier

Easter weekend (Paasfeest) is here and that means it is time to crack open some Easter beers (or Paasbiers). Aside from Christmas beers (background story here), Belgium does not have as much of an overwhelming seasonal beer fad going on as there is in the US where many/most breweries release beers for each season. Easter beers in Belgium number nowhere close to the amount of Christmas beers produced; I could only find four of them.

There is no style for Easter beers and therefore these beers range across the board. The Slaghmuylder Paasbier (5.2% abv) is a crisp all malt lager that uses local hops and with it's refreshing flavor has a taste of spring. On the other end is the Gouden Carolus Easter Beer (9% abv) which is a dark heavy ale with a hint of liquorice. This sort of recalls the more weighty religious overtones of the holiday. In between you find the Bos Keun from De Dolle, a sweetish ale of high alcohol (10% abv) but with a lighter body than the Carolus and the new St Feuillien Forårsbryg ("spring brew"), a 7.5% abv amber ale. It is brewed for the Danish market but sometimes on sale here (although it is not on their website at all).

Happy Easter and enjoy whatever beer you may be drinking for the holiday!

Mixed Beers

An interesting combination that you see occasionally in Belgium is the blending of lambic and beer to create a sort of hybrid beer. These are bottled drinks that are blended in a very specific way at the brewery. A person at the Dilwyns brewfirm explained that they do not just pour them together but they are done in specific proportions. 70 beer/30 lambic is one I have seen quoted before. The lambic usually comes from Girardin or Drie Fontainen.

Three relatively available ones are Cuvee de Ranke by De Ranke, Tuverbol from Loterbol, and Vicardin from Dilwyns (brewed at De Proef). I would rate these in that order if pressed. The Cuvee de Ranke uses Girardin to make a very lambic-like brew but one that has a bit of grassy hop character to it. Where the Vicardin falls away is that they blend it with a triple that cannot match the strong taste of the lambic and just comes off as a somewhat weak lambic. The Tuverbol falls somewhere in between these two.

If you have not had any of these before, they are certainly worth a shot to try them.

The Grandest Cru for the Winter

Brouwerij Kerkom in Sint Truiden makes a great range of beers and this winter has introduced a new one, the long-named Haspengouwse Grand Cru Winterkoninkske. They had already make a stellar winter beer called Winterkoninkske (the name for the bird we call a wren) but for the Grand Cru they made a much stronger richer version. It is almost pitch black and has a strong roasty, chocolately nose and taste.

The 13% ABV is slightly noticable and ensures that it has the nice warming feeling necessary on cold snowy winter nights. It is fermented with a champagne yeast and is not as heavy in body as it looks. A stunning winter beer.

A Half Meter of Beer

The holidays are well over by now but the stores still need to unload their gift merchandise. This weekend I found a 'demi metre de bier' on sale at the supermarket. Packed in the long wooden case were eight bottles of St Feuillien that worked out to less than $1 per bottle. Not something that can be turned down.

Brugs Beertje

The Brugs Beertje (Little Bruges Bear) has been around for about 25 years and they must be doing something right because they still get high marks from beer community. It is a cozy, well worn place with a great communal feel. The small front room has a bar with about a dozen stools and some tables opposite the bar, most set against a wooden bench along the walls. There is an equally sized back room with more tables and then a third event room with a second bar and some more tables that is opened sometimes when it gets crowded. They have five taps- two regulars (Brugse Zot, Deconnick) and three rotating taps of special beers (recently including La Rulles Estival and Dupont Les Bon Voeux). It is place well known to beer aficionados- the Good Beer Guide to Belgium notes that no one will seriously believe you found the place by accident.

A visit to a place such as this deserves a fine beer so I went with a 2008 Oerbier Reserva from De Dolle. This is their Oerbier aged in oak casks. This further aging lifts the alcohol level over 10% abv. It has an incredibly complex flavor that touches on notes of bourbon, a hint of sourness, along with a light spiciness. These all come together to make an amazing beer.

Hop Power of a Different Kind

Some of the smaller more adventurous Belgian breweries are making beers that are more along the lines of American IPAs. The beer in photo, Pipedream, is an example of this. It uses five types of hops and these give it a very floral and citrusy hop character. This beer is a collaboration (an increasing trend in craft beer) between Struise, Alvinne, and Pipeworks Brewing. Pipeworks is an as yet brewery-less trio of Americans that trained with Struise. Pipedream has a strong but very balanced hoppiness with a bitterness that is not overpowering. Very pleasant to drink. The 7.8% ABV is not really noticeable. It is a solid achievement in a style that can often stray from maintaining an important balance between the different aspects of a beer.

Hop Power

Recently I sampled the recent limited release beer from Brouwerij DeRanke- Hop Flower Power. It is a wet hopped ale that is brewed with Brewer's Gold and Challenger hops for bittering, and Saaz and Hallertauer Mittelfrüh for aroma. The 80kg of wet hops added (hops freshly picked from the vine and added to the brewkettle usually within a day) were also Mittelfrüh. It was brewed for the 15th anniversary of the the Flemish beer tasting group H.O.P.(Heerlijk Objectief Proeven).

Wet hopping was something that was commercially pioneered by Sierra Nevada in the 1990's and in the last few years it has become quite common for breweries in the US to release wet hop beers after the hop harvest in the late summer.

DeRanke generally makes beers that tend to be a bit more hoppy than much of what you find in Belgium these days. XX Bitter is an example. They use whole cone hops for their beers and tend to use european hops and not american high alpha hops. The new Hop Flower Power continues this route. This kind of hopping gives the beers less of the citrusy or floral character that you find in heavily hopped American beers.

The result is quite nice and very refreshing. The beer is a soft translucent orange with a narrow head. There is a fresh grassy nose to it. The first sip brings a sharp bitterness that quickly fades to a grassy herbal spiciness that lingers nicely on the tongue. It gets better as you work through the glass, maintaining the flavor and never burning you out with hops.

Primus met gist

That translates to 'Primus with yeast'. My interest was piqued by an entry about this beer in the recent Flemish beer book 100x proeven van straffe streekbieren. This beer is served only at the Brouwershuis restaurant across the street from the Haacht Brewery (which is where else but in Haacht). Primus is normally an extremely bland forgettable euro-lager found nearly everywhere in Belgium but at the brewery tap they serve it on draft with the yeast still in the barrel in hopes of imparting some character to it.

It was with this in mind that we traveled in aftermath of a snowfall to the Haacht Brouwershuis to try the Primus met gist and see how their lunch measures up.The restaurant is located across the street from the brewery in a very tastefully restored Victorian house that was formerly an executive's home. It a short walk from the train station and easy to find (can't miss the brewery). Lunchtime was very busy too.

Soon after sitting at our table we quickly got our glasses of the rare beer. The tall thin mugs were cloudy, almost the color of a witbier. This unfiltered Primus is markedly better than than the regular version. You can still tell it is a mass market lager but the yeast gives it a bready, almost chewy, character that leaves a nice taste on your tongue. A very refreshing beer that it went well will my tasty but a little unfocused 'Brouwershuis salad'- a mix of greens with chicken, shrimp, and calamari.

Worth visiting to try the beer if you are in the area but not so amazing that it demands to be a beer destination.