Belgium – Page 8 – A Good Beer Blog

Belgium: Brise-BonBons, Brasserie Fantome, Soy

I have to say I am in a conflict with this beer. I have liked all the Fantome I have tried…and I am supposed to approach these reviews with some sense of objectivity…supposedly. I love this beer. There I have said it. And, yes, I would marry it, seeing as you asked. Fresh pear juicy bright. There is a milkiness, a white pepperiness and cream of wheat. There is grain and there is toffee sweet. And there is green hop, arugula. Fabulous masses of thick lacing rich off-white foam over cloudy deep straw. Tea astringency in the end. Here’s the brewer’s website. All 61 BAers share the love.

XOXO. This is the beer you wish you had.

Which Is The Mildest Cantillon?

Attentive readers will know I have not enjoyed Cantillon’s sour beers but that I do love Finger Lake Beverages in Ithaca, NY. Well, I am down here again and will load up tomorrow for the spring’s tastings and noticed yesterday that FLB has a good range of these sour things in stock.

Which – if any – are a little more approachable?

Belgium: Bruocsella 1900 Grand Cru, Cantillon

Gold amber ale under large frothier lazy rim and foam that quickly fades then leaves town. The smell is beyond brett. The unripe Annapolis Valley Gravenstein green apple of my Nova Scotian youth gone mad with aspirations of manure pile. Quite plainly watery at the outset then acid and more acid…then one note of poo. Not refreshing to slightly sub-Cromwellian stridency. Annoying. Then at the end a hint of apple cider. Foul. I wonder if this is an example of mass reputation piercing the veil of reality – mob craftism.

I cannot hate it. Yet I am sure it hates me.

Belgium: Wallowing In Four Saisons

Saisons are one of best kept secrets in the world of beer. In the recent book What to Drink with What You Eat, awaiting my review, Garrett Oliver of Brooklyn Brewery names “Saison du Fond” – is that a typo of “Saison Dupont”? Yes it is – as his first beer in his fantasy desert island dozen. Early last month I reviewed a book entitled Farmhouse Ales which covers both the southern Belgian and their near neighbours the southern French saisons. In past posts, I have reviewed two Duponts and a Hennepin as well as a funkier form of the Fantome but this collection is one of the best. I am pretty sure I picked up all four at the ever excellent Finger Lake Beverage Center of Ithaca, NY and it speaks to their obvious commitment to quality. I will be particularly interested to note whether the seasonal Farmhouse Ale from Smuttynose of New Hampshire is anywhere near the quality of Ommegang of New York’s Hennepin.

Farmhouse Ale: from Smuttynose of New Hampshire. This beer is part of the their big beer series and comes with its own brewer’s notes:

Like almost every other brewer who read Phil Markowski’s book “Farmhouse Ales” last year I decided that it was time for Smuttynose to try its hand at a saison…We decided that it was all about the yeast so we had White Labs send us a pitch of their saison yeast, which I believe is in the Dupont vein. Dr. White suggested that we ferment the beer without cooling and let the temperature rise to wherever it wants to go. Easier said than done, believe me.

Smuttynose is one of the great brewers these days if only for these notes that set the plan and the background out so clearly. The beer does not disappoint.Glowing orange without the usual underlying amber when I see orange in the beer. Quite still with a slight white rim and a skim of foam. It is as full of fruit as any beer I have ever had – orange, apricot and peach – all coaxed out of the malt without addition. The brewer thinks it is a little too full, too sweet and that is a fair comment but this is in no way sickly. It is more that the fruit overpowers the grain, like a record player with the balance set to far to one speaker – further attenuation would help restore the equilibrium. The fullness has a thick glyceral quality and while there is a spice quality harkening of cumin is it more like the roughness of rye than anything you would have in a Christmas pud. Again, the plan for next year’s version might resolve this. So bigger than Hennepin but well within the ballpark yet respectful of the show of finesse that is Ommegang’s product. All BAers support the cause.

Saison d’Epeautre: from the Brasserie de Blaugies, makers of the fig lambic I tried last June. 2004 marked on the cork. The beer pours a light straw with a white foamy head. On the nose, there is light melony tell-tale saison-ness. The taste is very dry and the body is lighter than I am used to for a saison. Grain huskiness with notes of cantelope, sultana raising and white pepper. Some cream in the dryness but not much. The dry is not an astringent hop-based dry. At the swirl, more milkiness and more white pepper spice. All the BAers like this 6% take on the style. The brewery says this:The german wheat is an unrefined yeast which contains a natural flavour enhancer, giving a good taste to the bread but also to the beer.I don’t think that really makes any sense. Oh, for the lack of decent translation!

Pissenlit: from Fantome of Soy, Belgium. Spring 2004. Once I realized this was dandelion beer I checked out some reviews and wondered what I was in for. Not to worry – at least for me. The beer poured an amber ale under tan frothy foam and rim.
The core flavour is a little hard to put your finger on but it is both familiar and welcome: rich sweetness but biscuity; fresh apple, orange and fresh squeezed lime juices; a bit of white pepper and twigginess; and that tone which must be the dandelion – maybe I am thinking of sorrel in the spring when I go down onto the lawn to eat something growing. It is a mild greenness. The end is a mild bitter with a little huskiness moving into richish cider. Much more attractive to me than other brew reviewers suggest so perhaps beware. This may just particularly suit my tastes. On the swirl, there is cream but much more softly bitter green. At the end of the dregs it is almost like light drinkable cheese.

A beer that reminds me of a white lirac wine I once had whose only accompaniment I could think of was fresh leaf lettuce. This is more robust but in the same range. A beer or a waldorf salad with apples, walnuts and celery. Maybe Thai food, too. BAers see the challenge yet take it on with only 2% saying no despite its thoughtful unconventionality. A beer that makes me wonder if Fantome is the best brewer in the world.

Fantome Saison: also from Fantome of Soy, Belgium. Funnily, I did not like this quite as much as the Pissenlit but I still liked it a lot. Very active amber ale with a creamy white head. In the mouth pear and grape juice with white pepper, biscuit and a drying astringency across the tongue. Chalky notes under the herbal hoppiness not unlike Orval in a lavenderish sort of way. Well hidden strength at 8%. On the swirl, the astringency calms though the white pepper remains. Many BAers ask good questions but still rank it highly. A discomforting beer perhaps but still very attractive.

What a great hobby I have. I could consider saisons all day most every day. It is a real shame that so few craft brewers in North American have taken on the style with two major Belgian-style brewers in the north-east Unibrou and Allagash even ignoring it.

Assorted Low Country Fruit Beers

What better way to see in Canada Day weekend than sampling Belgian and northern French fruit beers. There is no rhyme or reason to the selection other than they are from within a couple of hundred kilometres of each other. Should this breaks rules it is because no one sent me the pamphlet with the rules.

Cantillon Kriek 100% Lambic: On the nose there is fresh cow poo or another barnyard note, vinegar and unsweetened under-ripe gravenstein apple. Cloudy naturalized cloudy pink with white rim and foam. Stomach souringly strong acid, cheesey tang, dry pin cherry in the mouth. Vineous if your wine has gone off. Hard to say likeable but one is told this is a classic. MADD could use this as their centerpiece of a temperance campaign if they could get it to the teens soon enough. 97% of BAers say very nice things. Nicer things. Here is the brewery’s website and what it says about this beer.

La Choulette Framboise: beer the colour of wild strawberry jam, blush and straw, with white foam and rim. A note of the La Choulette’s tell tale potato peel under true if dry raspberry from the vine…if they grew on vines. Some sub-astringent drying hop and warming as would be expected at 7%. Less sour than the kriek above but still there, on the dry side. BAers who love dry fruit beer are all over this one. Here, too, is the brewery’s website.

Darbyste: From Brasserie de Blaugies. Cloudy caramel ale under white foam. Quite a tangy fig aroma. Still dry but not nearly so dry as the desiccating fluids above. Acidic, juicy, lightly astingent, green fruit and round richness. But dry though without vineousness. Some light butter biscuitiness. 5.8%. Not offensive, not a wowser. BAers say this. Here, again, is the brewery’s home page.

Lindeman Pomme Lambic: compared to the above, this is fluid Altoid. Green apple sweet and that is about it. Rich and quite accurate apple and not at all unpleasant but that is about it. BAers frown with 14% saying no. After the above three, however, it is something of a welcome break from all that austerity. Here is something approximating the brewery’s website.

More as I pour if the guests stick around as I open more of these sour things.…OK, so I am not the guy to tell you why you should try some of these stark traditional ales. But man these are dry and acidic. I need a Rolaid and I am sure glad I picked up some saisons to try so I can get my love back for the brewers of this region.

Knut Goes To Italy

“…L’ultima creazione di Renzo…“

The city of Parma is quite sleepy on this spring afternoon. Actually, so am I, I got up at half past in the morning to get there, but that is not the point. The bus stop in front of the train station is largely deserted, too, but a young man from Ghana helps me to find the right platform. The 02:12 bus is not appearing, and not the 02:20, either. I give up and walk across to the taxi stand, and a taxi driver quotes a rate that is quite acceptable for a 20 minute ride, so I get in.

My destination is the Panil Brewery, located in the countryside to the south of Parma, where the flat landscape of the Po plain gives way to small hills. It is a pleasant drive. The poppies are already in bloom at the roadside, and the leaves are a dozen shades of green. The fields smells of manure from the cows and sheep that produce the Parmesan and Parma ham. It turns out that this is a holiday, so that is the reason for the bus not turning up. On Liberation day most things shut down (and a fair portion of the population had turned out to heckle the mayor, according to reports). And I will not go into who they were liberated from. The Italians?

The brewery is in the countryside within view of the picturesque castle of Torrechiara. It sits in an idyllic setting with a few tables outside the shop, a dozen hens of various colours walking feely around the premises. The place is quite deserted when I arrive, although the doors are open. In addition to the brewing, they also make wine from grapes from the area, which I take note of trying out another time.

After some time spent walking around calling out for assistance, I get help from Aba, a lady fluent in English. She tells me that the brewery is run by her sister and her husband, but that they are not around at the moment. She presents the range of beers they have – very much inspired by Belgian styles. There is a pilsener, a blonde ale and a brown ale, and there is a stout in the making which is not bottled yet. The most interesting beers in the range, however, are two ales aged in oak barrels and then again fermented in the bottle – triple fermented. One of them is a sour version of their Barriquée ale, which I have tasted before, the other is the September ale, which is brewed with grape juice blended in – a sort of beer/wine hybrid. She tells me that these beers are mainly for export and sale directly from the brewery, the locals tend to find them too extreme!

I buy as many bottles I manage to carry with me, and I really look forward to trying them out. While I wait for my transport back to town I notice a small restaurant around the corner. The next time I will probably make a day trip out of it and make some time to see the castle, too!

[Ed.: Check here for the Beer Advocate’s take on these brews. Check here for more of Knut’s travels. Click here for Knut’s own blog.]

Belgium: Goudenband, Brouwerij Liefmans, Oudenaarde

Light tan foam over fairly lively chestnut ale, this Flemish oud bruin has a tangy vinegary sweet aroma. This beer is far less sharp than my previous Flemish experiences of this sort from Rodenbach Grand Cru yet bigger than the other Flem I have known Petrus Oud Bruin. There is a creaminess with all the acidity that is really surprising. “Vineous” may work with other examples of this style but this one is clearly ale, even if quite tart. If you go with it, it is also quaffable…maybe if you transpose from fruit juice as it is somewhere between granny smith apple and pineapple juice just in terms of tartness. But, with all that, there is also cherry and oak and vanilla and maybe the best Pepsi you have ever had as well as even dried fruit like prune and fig and molasses. Yes, as complex and balanced as a fine wine if you need to compare.

This is perhaps the best chance you will have to taste what a medieval ale was like. $4.95 for a 330 ml at the LCBO. Try one and a half in a hefeweizen glass if you can. BAers generally on board.

Book Review: Beer in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

Finding this, for the beer nerd who also likes book with footnotes, is something of a moment, a wee glimpse of nirvana. The author, Richard W. Unger, is a professor of the history of the medieval period from the University of British Columbia who has also written texts about shipping and brewing from the perspective of pre-1800 Holland. Serious writing about a topic that deserves a serious approach.

What can I say about this? First, it cost me 75 bucks at the World’s Biggest Bookstore in Toronto. Like any academic text with a short run and a limited market, it is not a cheap book. And, if you do not think you are going to find something interesting in the discussion of the effects of 15th century taxation policy on North Sea coastal trade, well, maybe this is not going to be the book for you. But if the idea of a seventeen and a half page bibliography of source material on medieval brewing – not to mention thirty-nine pages of endnotes – is your type of reading, well this is the book for your next holiday weekend.

Really, Beer in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance is not so much about beer as the effect of the hop on trade in beer which caused the first industrial revolution in beer through the southern North Sea trade routes from roughly 1350 to 1550 – the second being triggered by the porter boom of roughly 1760 to 1840. The main concept is quite simple actually. Hops preserved beer. Once beer is preservable and can last more than a few days, long enough to be moved, then it will be moved and sold for a premium price as a luxury item. After it comes to be understood, it will then be copied as a local product which over time drives out the previous locally made unhopped ale. Later, it loses out to the next following luxury items as well as a general economic downturn both of which conspire to lowers its central role in the economy.

Unger traces the development of trade in beer largely with a focus on the Low Countries through analysis of tax records, municipal by-laws, guild creation, shipping records and other evidences of the huge role beer played in medieval society. He does so aware of the vastly different context in which beer is places in contemporary culture. This the first paragraph of the book’s preface illustrates that distinction neatly:

The mention of the history of beer always brings a laugh or at the very least a snicker. The histoty of beer for most people is not a serious topic of study. It seems to them frivolous and hardly worth more than a few diverting minutes of anyone’s time. Beer, after all, is a drink for leisure, for young people, generally men, and associated with sports and student life. That perception of beer is a case of historical myopia, of an inability of many people at the beginning of the twenty-first century to convince of a world different from their own. The prevailing presentism makes it difficult for many to comprehend a world where beer was a necessity, a part of everyday life, a drink for everyone of any age or status, a beverage for all times of the day from breakfast to dinner and into the evening.

Not to worry that you will not appreciate how this detailed focus on a relatively short period as Unger leads you into the medieval with a description of fermented drinks of preceeding periods and also carries on after the main discussion showing how innovations in the gin and wine trades as well as the tropical beverages of tea, coffee and cocoa replaced beer in may social settings and therefore in the economy.

I may add a bit to this later but suffice it to say if you enjoy a good read about the history of beer and have read more popular histories like Beer: The Story of the Pint or Man Walks into a Pub, I would say it is time to take on this more purely academic text.

Belgium: Three Saisons for Hogmanay

What to sip for for the New Year, for Hogmanay, as we wait for the baby in the sash to kick the old bearded guy with the staff out of the room as we wait for the odometer of life to click over one more digit?

What better than saison, one of the great ale styles. One, Hennepin, from Ommegang of Cooperstown is one of my favorite sips out of central New York state and actually available at better gas stations in the Albany region for under five buck a 750 ml. [Ed.: …just imagine…] The other two are both made by Brasserie Dupont of Tourpes, Belgium. The simpler 250 ml of Saison Dupont was picked up at the LCBO for the merest farthing while the organic Forêt was at the Finger Lake Beverage Center (right about here) probably for the best part of ten bucks. Forêt says that it is made of 100% organically grown hops and barley, that it was made without pesticides or chemicals (a broad claim if ever there was) and that it was made from filtered artesian well water. That is a lot of talk. One hopes it is for the best. All three are bottle conditioned.

Michael Jackson notes in his early work The World Guide to Beer that saison is a style from south central Belgium which makes it a geographical neighbour to northern France’s slightly funkier bières de garde like La Choulette. To my mind, saison is a celebration of the finest pale malt grown south of the English channel, full of fruit and soft water, perhaps earthy where bières de garde is pungent. Let’s see if my pre-conceived notions are in fact accurate.

Saison Dupont: 8 pm. New Years In Scotland has come. Very nice. Rich and round with masses of dry palt malt. Lively antique gold ale under replenishing white foam. Fruitier on the nose than in the mouth. There is a pronounced graininess to the malt with only the slightest nod to pear fruit perhaps. The yeast is slightly soured milky. There is hop which is dry, twiggy or maybe even straw-like because it is not like twigginess of Fuggles, devoid of English green or German steel.

Hennepin: 9:30 pm. Much fruitier than Saison Dupont, not as bone dry. Golden straw under light white foam. Pear and apricot juicey with some light sultana notes later. Soft water but with a stoney aspect like Riesling. Some nutmeg spiciness to the yeast but primarily creamy. There is a bit of burlap as well but it is a hearty tone that works with the juice rather than something divergent and discordant. One of my favorite brews.

Forêt: 10:30 pm. Golden straw under white foam. Again, drier than Hennepin but a notch fruitier than Saison Dupont. The aroma is burlap and malt, richly earthy organic like early turning spring turf. Quite remarkable. Not so much morish yet pear juicey nonetheless with lots of bread crust, the mustiness (but not dairy sour) of cheese rind with a notch of the potato peel you get in a bières de garde like La Choulette Noël. Hops mainly straw but also some twig and green. A very complex beer.

All in all a worthy session of sharing with folk who say things like “ugh, that tastes weird” and “potato peel?!?!” Saison and bière de garde are not so much an acquired taste as the point of inquiring into the love of ale. There are few other food or drink experiences where the elemental or primal is so undervalued – perhaps sherry but I have bought a half bottle of sherry for many times what a double of saison would cost.

Quicknote: Celis Grand Cru, Michigan, USA

This beer is from the Michigan Brewing Company but formerly was brewed in Austin Texas by Pierre Celis who had immigrated there after played a key role in the restoration of the entire Belgian white beer style. The brewery has a Flash time-line on all that history and here are three beer blog reviews of white beer and here are four more.

This ale is an example of a high-end white at 8% rather than the roughly 5% you would get with, say, your basic Hoegaarden. It pours fairly still, golden with a snow white head that disipates to foam and rim. The initial effect is definitely Duval mixed with Hoegaarden. There is the thickness and lipstickiness of the Belgian candi sugar and the heat of a Belgian golden strong beer like Duval as well as the corrianger-orange of a white. There is also pale ale grain, as opposed to just round maltiness, as well as balance from the cloy-cutting by the bitter if recessed hops. It would be interesting to compare this ale with others of this small style. I would buy again. BAers give it a 98% thumbs-up rating.