English
2006-10-01
The Belgian town of Beersel is blessed with not one but two traditional lambic breweries. Roger Protz visited them.
… It’s a long, steep clamber up from the railway station at Beersel to the small town with its moated castle, built early in the 14th century by the Duke of Brabant to aid the defence of Brussels. When you reach the centre of Beersel you can refresh yourself with beers that form a style – lambic and gueuze – that may be older than even the sturdy, brownstone castle.
To call lambic and gueuze beers “medieval” makes them seem a trifle sudden. The town of Lembeek in Payottenland – from which it is thought the name lambic derives – had a guild of brewers as early as the 15th century. But the style is certainly older. It is a rural one, confined to Payottenland and the valley of the River Senne, with roots that go back to the dawn of brewing 3,000 years BC, when a lifeenhancing drink made from sodden grain was fermented by wild, airborn yeasts.
Remarkably, in an age of identikit global lager brands, lambic and gueuze are enjoying a revival. If you offered the average drinker a beer with the warning that it was sour, cidery and vinous, with no detectable hop character, they might decide to stick with Stella. But they would be missing out.
It is fitting that in a place called Beersel the lambic revival is in full swing.
… the upheaval in the lambic industry in recent years: Health inspectors descended on breweries in 2002 and 2003, demanding they be cleaned up.
Brewers of lambic traditionally encourage wild yeasts to grow on walls while spiders spin webs between casks to catch and kill fruit flies.
At first the inspectors wanted completely sterile conditions, with scrubbed, whitewashed walls. A compromise was reached: walls can be left unpainted but the spiders and their webs had to go.
Shocked by the attack of the health brigade and alarmed by the spread of sweet, sticky commercial lambics such as InBev’s Belle Vue, the traditionalists formed HORAL, which translates as the High Commission for Artisanal Lambic Beers.
In a sense, the true brewers of what they called Oude or Old Lambic, which must contain a proportion of three year-old beer, are attempting to protect their heritage in the same manner as the Belgian Trappist monks have done to distinguish their ales from commercial “abbey beers”.
It was the health inspection that forced Beersel’s other lambic producer, Henri Vandervelden, to give up in disgust in 2002. At the age of 80 he was due to retire, having worked in his family’s Oud Beersel brewery since he was 25. His beers were greatly respected and were widely available in bars throughout Belgium as well as in his own café (now closed) next to the brewery. Henri’s mantle has been taken up by two young lambic enthusiasts, Roland De Bus and Gert Christiaens.
Their enthusiasm was underscored when Gert bounded out of the delivery bay to greet me and then the two of them took me on a rapid, breathless tour of the 45-hectolitre plant.
They said Henri received thousands of messages begging him to restart brewing and they plan to meet that demand.
The stock of lambic had been sold to Frank Boon and Gert and Roland, who took over the plant in 2005, have had to start from scratch.
“We tried to get loans from the banks,” Roland said, “but their answer was that they couldn’t support a business where it takes so long to produce anything. Finally we found a regional bank that was willing to help but also had to invest our own money.”
“Henri passed on his knowledge to us,” Gert added. “But first we had to renovate the buildings.”
It is a classic lambic brewery with a mash tun and copper feeding the cool ship in the attic. The cellars are packed with giant wooden casks where their beers will be stored.
They are currently conducting trial brews and are selling an Oud Beersel Kriek at 6.5% using beer bought from another lambic producer. It has a deep, burnished red colour, a massive aroma of almonds and tart fruit, dry, nutty but not sour in the mouth, with a dry, tart and fruity finish.
They hope to have Oud Gueuze ready to taste by 2007. In the meantime, to help them survive while they perfect their own beers, Gert and Roland are selling a 9.5% beer called Bersalis, using the old Roman name for Beersel.
It is brewed for them by the Huyghe brewery near Ghent. It is the Belgian style known as Tripel, a strong pale ale with, in this case, the addition of spices. It has a big fruit gums and hop resins aroma, with rich fruit, juicy malt, spices and hops in the mouth, and a long finish that is bitter-sweet with creamy malt, tangy fruit and bitter hops.
“It is bringing life back to the brewery,” Gert said.
We’ll all drink to that.
What is lambic?
Lambic and its blended form of gueuze are beers protected by both Belgian and EU laws.
At least 30 per cent of the mash must be made up of unmalted wheat, with the rest of the mash comprised of malted barley. Only aged hops are used. The sweet extract is attacked by wild yeasts in the atmosphere: research at Leuven University has found that as many as 35 different strains of yeast in the air and in the wooden casks ferment and re-ferment the liquid. The main strain of yeast is known by its scientific name of Brettanomyces.
Lambic is normally served on draught while gueuze is a bottled blend of young and old lambics. When cherries are added to lambic the beer is called Kriek from the Flemish for cherry. Raspberry beers are known as Frambozen or Framboise. The use of fruit starts yet another fermentation in cask.
HORAL is attempting to protect the heritage of true lambic beer and to distinguish it from the commercial beers made by such large groups as InBev, St Louis, Timmermans and Lindemans, some of whom have made “fruit lambics” with additions as banana and peppermint.
Some recommended lambic and gueuze producers are: Boon. Cantillon, Drie Fonteinen, De Cam, Girardin, Hanssens and De Keersmaeker, with Oud Beersel to come
Brouwerij Oud Beersel,
230 Laarheidestraat,
1650 Beersel,
Belgium.
Email: info@oudbeersel.com
Website: www.oudbeersel.com
Brewery tours every Saturday (except for public holidays)
9am-4pm
Getting to Beersel: eight kilometres/six miles from Brussels, Eig exit 19. The town is the Halle to Mechelen train line (weekdays only), with regular trains from Brussels
Source: Beers Of The World – 2006-10-01