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.

Quenching a Great Thirst

A couple weekends ago Sunday morning took us just west of Brussels to the town of Eizeringen and a visit to the cafe In de Verzekering tegen de Grote Dorst. This area is part of the Payottenland, the center of traditional lambic and geuze production in Belgium. Translating to 'In the Insurance against Large Thirst' this is a classic Flemish small town cafe that is located across from the town church. It only opens on Sundays from 10am-1:30pm. It was bought and restored by two lambic aficionados after its proprietor retired in about ten years ago after decades of steady service. They wanted to preserve the authentic character of this small town cafe.

The cafe has an extensive selection of lambic and geuze that includes vintages going back to the 1980's along with select draft lambics. We relaxed on wooden benches as the fire in the iron stove at the back crackled and people filtered in as after church let out. I opted for a Moriau Oude Geuze with the bottle served in a traditional basket. It had a lovely sour dryness. Truly a wonderful experience as the modern times slowed down just for a moment.

La Tournee Belge

This past weekend the local Zythos beer group, the Leuvense Beertherapeuten, held their annual beer festival. Each good sized city in Belgium (in Flanders at least) has a Zythos affiliated beer appreciation club that occasionally holds events through the year. They often host at least one beer festival and have various tastings and beer trips scheduled (brewery visits for example).

This year their festival was called La Tournee Belge (Tour of Belgium). They presented 66 beers gathered from the 11 provinces of Belgium.While the list may sound small, the key thing here is that the selection was expertly chosen and covered the range of Belgian beers styles with some top-notch examples. The fest was held in an event space set among ponds and trees in a park just outside of Leuven. The combination of  beer selection, festival arrangement, and location made it one of the best beer festivals I have been to.

We started the day with a 10 year old bottle of Rodenbach Grand Cru and it was just tremendous. The years gave it a nicely mellowed sourness with some faint notes of wood. There was a good selection of newer breweries and trying the Belle Cies from Den Tseut was a nice surprise. The brewer puts a single hop flower in the bottle for 'continued hopping'. Another interesting beer was Rick's Abbesse which used an old type of cherry from the Limburg region to flavor the beer with a subtle balanced tartness.

Overall it was a fine way to spend the last official day of winter- discovering the beers of Belgium courtesy of the Leuvense Biertherapeuten.

A once a month kind of place

In the Flemish Brabant town of Diest is the cafe-brewery of Loterbol. It is an elusive establishment that only opens on the first Saturday of each month for eight hours. Loterbol makes a tasty blond and a brune as well as an very intriguing and recommended beer/lambic mix that are available in beershops.

In the cafe they serve on draft a refreshing lower strength blonde that has a nice sharp bitter character but lacks a bit in complexity. The cafe itself is a typical Brabantine town cafe with small wooden tables and some antique beer knick knacks here and there. It fills up with locals sharing some beers and chatting with the owner as well as coming in to exchange empty cases for full ones.

The Main Event - ZBF

The main festival last weekend (at least in terms of number of breweries) was the Zythos Bier Festival. This essentially is the closest Belgium comes to a national beer fest. Zythos is technically a national group that has member clubs locally in most towns of reasonable size (they mostly happen to be in Flemish towns though). This fest excludes the big international brewers in favor of the smaller Belgian breweries (and beer firms- places that have their beers contract brewed by others) .

ZBF runs Saturday and Sunday and features brewers serving their beers from rows of boths. It gets very busy on Saturday so getting there when it opens is essential. Planning some of your beers in advance is also recommended as the number available can be overwhelming.

Some highlights for me were: Saison de Dottignies from De Ranke- a hoppy new saison; Koriala from Lupiline- spiced with coriander but still with a strong hop bitterness; and an experimental new beer from De Dolle that was light and had a hint of Brettanomyces. It was also great to see a lot of the newer brewers there like Hof Ten Dormaal, Zonderik, and Den Triest.

Belgium Beer Weekend Wrap-up #3: Cantillon Brew Day

In between the pre-ZBF and ZBF festivals I made it to Brasserie Cantillon's Opening Brewing Day where they open the doors to the public at their brewery/museum in Anderlecht while they are brewing a batch of lambic. As a huge fan of lambic and gueuze I found this to be a wonderful experience.

Cantillon dates back over 100 years and a lot of the brewing equipment there is still old and traditional. I have been there a number of times before but this time was different. We gathered before 7am to pass the time with coffee and croissants before a guided tour began. It was hugely exciting to see all the belts that power the brewing implements spinning and to smell the cooking malt amidst the steam around the mash tun as we toured the brewery. Seeing the barrel cleaning device in operation was also a real treat. The photos I took and posted here only can partly convey the whole experience.

After a glass of lambic at the end of the tour, it was off to Sint Niklaas for the ZBF fest.

Belgium Beer Weekend Wrap-up #2: Nacht van Grote Dorst

After the pre-ZBF festival, Friday evening brought a brief rainy and cold stop at the Nacht Van Grote Dorst in Eizeringen. This is festival of lambic and gueuze that began in the early 2000s. It focuses solely on the lambic and gueuze producers of Belgium. There were two firsts this year- Cantillon from Brussels was there and even bigger was the appearance by the American brewery Allagash.

The last few years Allagash has been producing and aging spontaneously fermented beer in Maine. They just released the first of it late last year. It is made in the traditional way that lambic is made but just happens to not be made in Belgium. They make a point to not call it lambic or gueuze out of deference to the homeland of those libations. At the festival they had four beers available- the basic Spontaneous, the Coolship Red (aged on local raspberries for 4 months), the Coolship Cerise (aged on Montmorency cherries for 4 months), and Resurgam (a blend of two year old, 1.5 year old, and 6 month old spontaneous beer). I tried the Cerise and enjoyed it quite a bit. It has a subdued sourness and a faint note of the cherries lurking the background. While quite dry, it is still distinctly different from the Belgian fruit lambics in its taste.

One gripe I would have about the festival is the way that beers are served by the whole bottle. While the prices were reasonable, it make it harder to sample a wider selection of beers if you are not in a large group. Another observation here was there seemed be a distinct lack of Belgians there. Groups of Americans and British abounded as we walked around, a number of them populated by members of coach tours that came for the festival. While I understand the draw to sample great beer like this in its homeland, it takes a bit away from the festival if there are barely any native festival goers there. Just my two cents.