Category: Belgium

Belgium: Canaster, De Glazen Toren, Erpe-Mere

can1Here is a hint when you are traveling. If, after a tiring 600 km drive (to be followed the next day by another 600 km drive) you notice contract street sweeping equipment in the parking lot, get a new hotel. Street sweepers come and go in the night, you see. After idling their massive engines for fifteen minutes or so. It was like sleeping in a public works depot.

My only consolation was the bottle of Canaster I had brought. Labeled as a winterscotch-style ale I had brought it along as a reward for being me. It’s by the same good folk at KleinBrouwerij De Glazen Toren who made that saison I had last Thanksgiving. The beer is basically a Belgian brown with plenty of round brown maltiness, burlappy nutmegged yeast and some black tea and perhaps black malt astringency. It pours a thick sheeting cream head over chestnut ale. In the malt there is date and maybe dark raisin with a bit of a tobacco effect. It could have done with another something something but it was a very pleasant 9.5% brew that came across nothing as big as that. Plenty of BAer approval.

Not needing anything was the bottle of The Lactese Falcon Flanders Sour Brown Ale I picked up at Church-Key on the way home – you know, as a reward for being me. Yum – but I like the tastes of Parmesan cheese and Flemish sour beer and here they are in one brew. Plenty of roasted beef broth notes, vanilla, pear juice, balsamic, Worcestershire and Parmesan. Herself gets only molasses on schnozzal analysis. Somewhat controversial when it first appeared, here is a beer that intends to be itself – and one that may sort the style huggers from the brave and the free. I have another put away for a long sleep. I want to make sauces with it, soak meat in it – make welsh rarebit with it.

[Insert Beer] Wins [Insert Beer] Style Award

I have no real complaint over the 12,474,832 awards that are handed out for beers every year. I have never paid any attention to these things when making beer selection decisions – though, to be fair, when a label mentions a claim to one of them I think of it as red flag worthy of further investigation. “Antwerp 1931” only makes me wonder what the hell they’ve been doing for the last 76 years?!?!

But that is nowhere near as fun as this one, the beer that won the its own beer-style award:

Hoegaarden, the Original Belgian White Beer, was awarded its fourth consecutive World Beer Cup Gold Medal in the Belgian-Style White (or Wit)/Belgian-Style Wheat category at the 2008 Brewers Association World Beer Cup competition held recently in San Diego, Calif.

Don’t get me wrong – I am quite happy to have a Hoegaarden any time it is stinking hot. And I love most of its descendants the wittes and whites – except maybe for that one from Brouwerij Sint-Jozef…four years have not been enough to drive the furniture polish taste out of my memory. But, as mentioned and half of you will know, this is like awarding Adam the Annual First Guy Award. Hoegaarden is the defining standard and originator of the Belgian-Style White (or Wit)/Belgian-Style Wheat (aka 16A) which, oddly enough, comes from the place called Hoegaarden. It’s actually quite Hoegaarden-esque and, if Unger is to be believed, is one last legacy of the proud independent principality (or whatever) of Hoegaarden which lived as itself quite happily since the middle ages and subsisting on something they called “beer” that we call Hoegaarden.

So well done, Hoegaarden. You are the very essence of yourself.

Belgium: Gouden Carolus Easter Beer, Het Anker, Mechelen

I had been planning on having this beer today as one small nod to the once busy task of brewing beer for holidays. Time was there were beers made for every saint’s day, every profession and every celebration of a stage in life. Now we are restricted to Yule and a few stragglers like this one for Easter. I had even complained about a lack of Easter brews when I was planning The Session last spring so I am at least grateful to have this one to try.

But before going there, I have read how Greg Clow over at Beer, Beats, Bites has uncovered calamity itself and has pointed out that the powers that be have censored the very label on this very bottle. I am quite innocent of all such understanding as my bottle kindly forwarded by the distributor, though slapped with the “Extra Strong Beer” label required by the Federal Food and Drug Act, is quite free from any thing dealing with the wickedness of the bunny.

Apparently, it is not so much this version of the bunny label, however, but previous versions that may have given the government some concern as is illustrated under the photos below. You will have to click to see the truth. I cannot bear it:*

 

 

 

 

Frankly, the more curious thing to me is the legal basis for the authority for making such a decision to enforce the banning of the bunny. In my chapter in Beer & Philosophy, I wrote about quite a number of these ridiculous sort of rules and they were all based on some sort or actual regulation. Ontario’s Liquor Licence Act at clause 62.1(10.2) provides that the Lieutenant Governor in Council (aka some particular bureaucract) may make a regulation in relation to labels:

…governing the information that may or must appear on labels and containers of liquor sold or kept for sale at a government store…

The government store is defined as a store established under the Liquor Control Act which would be the LCBO. You see, generally the LLA governs the activiities of the AGCO while the LCC speaks to what the LCBO can do – make sense? Well, in any event, regulations can be made for labelling at the store – but, as Greg points out, these beers are not for sale “at a government store.” So, in addition to there not actually being a bunny reference, there must be some other power to control labels. Under the LCA, it states at section 3(1)(j) that “the purposes of the Board are, and it has power…to determine the nature, form and capacity of all packages to be used for containing liquor to be kept or sold…” That might be it. But then somewhere there has to be a written statement of standards…and one would expect that to be found in the LCBO’s Trade Resources. And there it is: at page three of the Simplified Canadian Label Requirements (warning: pdf!) it states that beer label may not have imagery which is “misleading or imply irresponsible use of the product”. Hmmm – not very detailed authority for banning a bunny but the introduction to the LCBO’s SCLR mentions other sources of rules, including the CFIA which has jusrisdiction under the the FDA. Under that Federal law, beer is food and there is law about the labeling of food at section 5(1) of the FDA:

No person shall label, package, treat, process, sell or advertise any food in a manner that is false, misleading or deceptive or is likely to create an erroneous impression regarding its character, value, quantity, composition, merit or safety.

Could it be that beer is not meritorious enough to be associated with a rabbit? No, I think that we need to find the regulation that actually details this bunny stuff. The Food and Drug Regulations happily define in law what beer is but while section B.02.130(b)(vii)
allows for “irish moss seaweed of the species Chondrus crispus” it does not allow at all for Oryctolagus cuniculus – the European rabbit. Could it be under Canadian law the rabbit is not so much banned as just not included?

Anyway, I am having mine tonight in celebration of the resurrection of Jesus 2025 years ago and, in a bit, I will note down what I thought of the beer inside the bunny-fouled packaging.

Later: the beer pours the colour of seasoned pine lumber with a wild rocky head that quickly subsides. At 10%, one has to be somewhat responsible so I have nipped away at this one consious that the bottle has the equivalent strngth of five and a half ounces of rum. But it does not stick out as much as it might despite this being a quite mild mannered pale ale. It is somewhat tripel-esque but things can merge somewhat stylistically at this strength. Safe to call it a Belgian Pale Strong Ale as it is each of those things.

There is plenty of aromatic graininess, a little bit of mild apple and honey in the malt, a bit of a musty side and a nice cream note to the heart of it. There is a bit of a bite that makes me think there could be some wheat in the grist, too, but I know nothing about these things. The brewery says that the particular twist offered by this beer is the addition of three herbs but they do not stand out to my taste, though there is definitely a twiggy aspect. They also say “served with pride it isdrunken with respect.” Perfect – just as I like to be. Plenty of BAer love. Too bad it’s blighted by that frigging bunny.

*…it’s more than I can bear to think of you seeing these…

Sour Beer Studies: Kriek 100% Lambic, Cantillon, Brussels

I shared with one to the shock and dismay of my guests two years ago but I’ve grown up so much since then I thought I would revisit it to see what I thought. Back then I use the word poo which seemed to tick off a crank. Apparently some who write “barnyard” have never been in a barnyard. Let’s see how this goes today when it’s just me and the glass and a sticker on top saying I spent nine bucks for the 375 ml of the 2006 bottling.

Pop. There it is. Gravenstein apple and beef cattle holding structure. You will have to excuse me as I grew up in the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia and actually recognize the scents. Yet they are not repulsive. Not at all. Rather they are evocative this time. It looks lovely – pouring a clear deep blush – the colour of rosé wine, with a fleeting white foam that disappears after a few seconds. In the mouth there is less harshness than I recall even with the strident acidity. I must be weakening.

In the first sip, there is that green apple acid, a general fruit berry thing that I can associate with cherry if I think about the idea of a mouthful of under ripe pin cherries grown on the unrelenting North Atlantic brushland. There is also a little cheesy, yogurty rich funky tang that needles at you a bit but is overshadowed by the snap of the sour. More than anything it reminds me of the austere dryness of the wine I made with my own vines and my own hands back in 2003. As I get into it, though, I get the sweet fresh cherry layer. It opens up ever so grudgingly. My teeth feel slightly stripped of enamel but with a fruit note in the mix of dissolving calcium.

What can I say? If it were not for the specific acidity that mimics one under ripe variety of Maritime Canadian apple that happened to grow where I grew, I would not know what to make of this stuff. A theory of fruit preservation put in stark action? BAers still approve but I am still disappointed with my understanding of why I need that much acid in my body.

Sour Beer Studies: Gueuze, Girardin, Sint-Ulkis-Kapelle, BE

gira1The 2006 edition of Great Beers of Belgium showed up today and I thought that I had better pop a cork in its honour. A Girardin Gueuze seemed just the thing. The “1882” on the label is the date when the current family took over the brewery and they brew comprehensively, perhaps still with no other staff. Jackson noted:

They grow their own wheat, brew Lambic in winter and produce a Pils in summer. The Girardins use 40 per cent wheat in their Lanic, and still have a mill that grinds the grain between stones, as well as a more modern one with metal cylinders. “We continue to use the stones for some of the grist,” Lousi told me, “in case it contributes to the character of the beer.”

I like that “in case” a fine expression of traditional conservatism. Jackson called it one of the most complex beers he had ever tasted. The black label (or in Flemish Zwart etiket) appears to indicate unfiltered [Ed.: ie fond] while a white label (or Wit etiket) would not [Ed.: ie filtré]…though neither Ed nor I quite know why “etiket” in Flemish means “label” in English. I bet Ron knows.

On the pour, the funk jumps out of the madly growing off white head that soon fall back at a leisure pace. Barnyard. Very evocative of poo and stall of a former neighbour’s beef cattle barn. Plus rice wine vinegar as well as Gravenstein apple. But it is all wrapped around a small core of sweet. Once in the mouth, the barnyard knows and takes its place letting other flavours come forward. Overall, this is a far less austere Lambic experience compared to the stridency of Cantillon, even their gueuze. Relatively (by which I mean relatively) soft as well as acidic – an odd combination to describe but think mandarine orange juice without any orange flavour and a good slug of rice wine vinegar. Plenty of grain, a little lemon and a lot white grapefruit citrus, a little wheat cream even. Grassiness in the middle which morphs a little into something that is like a hint of licorice. Dry and acid and moreish in the finish. Fabulous. Love it. I am going to buy this beer whenever I see it. I promise me so.

Plenty of BAer love. $7.99 for 37.5 cl from Bello Vino in Ann Arbor Michigan.

Beer At Yule: La Moneuse SWA, Brasserie De Blaugies, Belgium

We’ve had a look at a few beers from Brasserie de Blaugies: Darbyste , a fresh figgy saison (that I was calling a lambic for some reason); Saison d’Epeautre spelt saison; and La Moneuse, their rustic straight up saison. This is the final of the brewer’s four brews to try. It’s an upgrade of La Moneause, their 8% special winter ale or SWA from the 2004 bottling that I have held in the now very attractive stash from last winter to this one.

After the cage was removed, the cork barely needed a touch to pop out of the mouth. The beer pours a slightly clouded amber butterscotch with a fine thick rich off-white head. Fabulous in the mouth, a great pale ale starting out with a light pear-lemon sour tang followed by honey apple juiciness morphing into pale malt bread crust grain subsiding into a hint of white pepper and pear at the end of the end. There is a hint of nutmeg in the yeast but the whole thing is pretty restrained and keep in balance.

Plenty of BAer love. A really wonderful saison that you should hoard and keep to yourself.

Sour Beer Studies: Vichtenaar, Verhaeghe, Belgium

Sibling to the more popular Duchesse De Bourgogne, I got this one at Beers of the World in Rochester at the beginning of August. Frankly, I can’t believe that it’s lasted this long as one thing I am learning from these sour beer studies is that I could be a wee bit obsessed with these Flemish ones.

At 5.1%, not a heavy-weight by any length but not many of these are. The brewery’s explanation of the beer is in Flemish but have a go, tell us what you think it says – this bit especially:

De smaak van de “Vichtenaar” kan men omschrijven als licht zurig en complex en dit door de lange gisting in eikenhouten vaten.

If you need a hint, I recall that “smaak” is taste, which you might have figured out yourself. “Omschrijven”? – not so sure.

Translucent mahogany ale under fine tan froth and foam, the aroma is sherry and nuts, vanilla and a little vinegar. Very soft water, as the website states, makes this very moreish – surprisingly so with one of this style. Initially I thought that this was less complex than other Flemish sours I had had but it’s just a bit less strident, the sour a bit recessed, the yeast milky, the malt all full of cherry and pear and maybe, just maybe, a tiny note of maple. Plenty of BAer respect.

Sour Beer Studies: Why Did Sour Arise In The First Place?

Writing about what is on other people’s beer blogs is a quick way to fill a day’s obligation to fill up one’s own sheet. But seeing as I have been trying to lead Ron Pattinson and his excellent library of brewing records into figuring out stuff that has piqued my idle sort of curiosity, I think it is well worth noting.

My questioning in these sour beer studies is triggered by one question – who the hell would drink sour beer over fresh? That question is packed with implications like “what is fresh?” and “what is sour?” and even “what is beer?” but it also is packed with the blindness of modernity, a fault that should be admitted from the outset as it is my question after all. It is reasonable to note that only recently that “fresh” was available to most people in the western world most of the time. For the most part food and drink were things that had intermediary storage periods by necessity of the annual cycles of nature. People were used to grain stores, bacon smoked above the fire, cheese with extra-tangy bits which would now see us deem the whole piece fit only for the garbage. So, too, people would have liked beer held for a time with a tang in addition to or instead of the fresh-made stuff.

But tang costs money. To hold beer long enough to gain a degree of souring, you need resources: enough space to store casks, enough money to buy the casks and even enough money not to sell the beer right away deferring the income to later. This is the thing that has niggled at the back of my mind in all this thinking about sourness and it brought me to thinking about cycles of beer storage. Beers like marzen or biere de garde are stored though a season once a year for an annual purpose whether it is to celebrate an event or fuel the harvest. And, like most of the present versions of the Trappist beers, these styles are recently framed, say, only since 1800.

So what gets a beer past its first anniversary? Ron points out one reason: “[i]f you have a good harvest one year, make beer with the surplus grain to be used in poor years. That seems to be the origin of Kriek: a way to preserve a glut of cherries.” And Martyn Cornell added a very useful comment to a recent thread at Ron’s about a very important record, Obadiah Poundage’s letter of 1760. Martyn kindly noted:

Alan, as Ron said, private brewers were storing their beers for a long time pretty soon after hops took off in England. William Harrison, a parson from Essex, writing in 1577, said the March beer served at noblemen’s tables “in their fixed and standing houses is commonly of a year old” and sometimes “of two years’ tunning or more.”

Luxury. Pure luxury. Only those who had the means to store could store. While it is as strange to us as a Victorian forcing house, those who could buy casks did as buying in bulk and cellaring was the only way really, as can be read in Julian Jeffs excellent book Sherry, that pre-mass marketed wines were acquired for the fitting out of the cellar of great house or (centuries fly by) an newly wealthy merchant – with the proper care and handling of the stored drink being part of the deal and expense and status. Martyn’s quote shows this applies to beer. With the industrial revolution, the earliest example of which industry is more than arguable brewing, references to the production and storage of beer by brokers for mass consumption seems to pop up in the records like Obadiah’s letter. Technology and more dispersed wealth make more general consumption of sour and tang possible, replacing the more modestly produced ales and brown beers that neighbourhood brewsters had been making for local consumption since Adam.

Keep in mind this is all sketchy, far too general and likely mostly wrong in that these are merely my own studies. But for now that is what I have come up with. And I would like to learn more about the available industrial archeology of, say, pre-1800 brewing. How much of production was stored for this quality if this quality cost more? And what part of the storage was stored for more that one annual cycle? Demand for sour had to be present such that the increased costs were overcome.

Any ideas where such stuff can be found? I should revisit Haydon, Unger, Hornsey and, of course, Cornell on the point. And pester Ron more. That’s likely the easiest thing to do

Sour Beer Studies: Grand Cru, Brouwerij Rodenbach, Belgium

There’s plenty of good stuff down in the stash but I had to think hard about what was the right beer for the Sox and Yanks tonight. I settled on Rodenbach Grand Cru as it is a Flemish Red. I previously reviewed it but that was so 2004 when I thought it was over the top in tartness.

Ah…the innocence of youth. That was before the on-set of my relationship with Cantillon. Sure this one is acidic but there is plenty of bright vanilla, cherry – though there is still a sharp vinegary catch at the back of the throat. It pours a reddish mahogany with a thin roam and rim of off white. A little less rich than other Flems of recent sipppery but there is an interesting apple and beef thing in there if you rearrange the tastes. Refreshing and revitalizing. I will save the dry gueuze for the fish and chips now.

This one could soak a mean ribeye. Strong but not unanimous BA love.

Sour Beer Studies: Gueuze From Cantillon And Hanssens

2gueuzeGueuze. A blend of young and old lambics. I’ve had some – a couple of sweetened ones from St. Louise and Mort Subite and Lindeman’s drier Gueuze Cuvée René. All very pleasant but these two are perhaps on the more…errr…hostile side of dry. But I am here to learn so bear with me.

Before we get there, what does gueuze mean? I’ve been asking around a bit lately. Lew was stumped…and just a tiny bit sweary Mary: “Damn, no, never knew about that. I REALLY need to read some Dutch history. I keep reading around the edges of it. Thanks for the prod in that direction.” Prof. Unger of UBC of the great books on medieval beer gave me his guess when I noted the naming of a group of 16th century Dutch rebels, the watergeuzen:

…Geuze = “beggar” is a French word that only appeared in the mid 15th century and was taken over into Dutch [Flemish] in the 16th and connected, as you say, with nobles who rebelled against the crown in 1566. There was a middle French word geus which meant throat and so came to mean hungry and my guess is that the beer type comes from that meaning. Also though I will not swear to it I think geuze is a beer type of the South, that is the southern Netherlands and which does not turn up in the Dutch Republic where, if the name were connected to the watergeuzen you would expect it to be used. I could be wrong but that is my best guess at the moment.

Ron Pattinson posts about another non-source of the meaning of gueuze with today’s post entitled “Gose” about the our beer of Leipzig stating that while the names are not related that there was “once a whole family of sour wheat beers, brewed right across the North of Germany and the Low Countries, from Brussels to Berlin and beyond.” So while it might or might not be “begger’s ale” or could be more or less directly linked to the other forms of sour beer, there is this set of sourness that speaks to a former time in some way, though one always has to be careful with claims to “authentic” and “heritage” in the world of drinks as in anything.

2gueuzeaThese beers are very similar. Cantillon’s Classic Gueuze is a 2006 bottling of blended 1, 2 and 3 year old lambics (and apparently a relabelling of their Cantillon Gueuze 100% Lambic-Bio, an Organic Gueuze) while Hanssens Oude Gueuze (the “oude” being explained on the brewer’s site that features no way to link to the actual page within the site) states on its label that it is matured for over three years in the bottle. There is more of a head with the Hanssens as I think you can see from the photo to the left with a coating white froth and rim jumping up from the slightest swirl over the amber straw ale while the addition of an ounce of the Cantillon to the wine glass quickly dissipates to a fine thin white rim over more lemon tinged straw ale.

Each give off a tart brightness when subjected to brief nosal inquiry, the Hanssens having a bit richer aroma. In the mouth, there is a clear distinction with the Hanssens being not just vinegary but also somewhat creamy with an unsweetened grapefruit white thing – slight vanilla and tiny note of lime in the middle of a sea of unsweetened white grapefruit juice. The Cantillon is a little thinner with maybe pear, citrus pith and grass under the sour white grapefruit tartosity. BAers like the Cantillon a lot and the Hanssens a tiny bit more. Both lack the barnyard funk that I found so especially pungent and a wee bit foul with Cantillon’s Bruocsella 1990 Grand Cru the reaction to which was one trigger for these sour beer studies of mine.

I paid Cantillon 7.50 USD for the 375 ml Cantillon while the Hanssens was 4.99 USD. As a result, if you are going for just one of these to try a first dry gueuze, pick up the Hanssens even though the Cantillon is probably a tiny bit less tart. Someday I will sprinkle one of these on my french fries. And bit steamed or even coconut shrimp. The big question is still “do I like these beers?” When I was a teen, I played soccer for the high school team. After daily practice, I drank a litre of white grapefruit to cut the sweat and on a hot humid day these two tart ales reminded me of that. But I still want to try them on fries. Is that so wrong?

More sour beer studies here.