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lambic-digest Wednesday, 7 January 1998 Volume 01 : Number 034
Brasseries de Belgigue Support
Wyeast Lambic Blend
New location Peter's Geuze Pages
Lambic tour trip report
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: silva <silva at realbeer.com>
Date: Tue, 9 Dec 1997 08:33:06 -0800
Subject: Brasseries de Belgigue Support
This posting was over on the ProBrewer message board:
The Confederation de Brasseries de Belgigue's protectionist announcement is=
good for American craft brewing but not because it may mean some minor=
problems for non-Belgian brewers who play fast and loose with their labelin=
g.
American craft brewing will survive (IMHO) or wither on the question of=
fidelity to good brewing. The present trend to "product differentiation"=
and ever-finer slicing of the consumer demographic is the road to ruin.=
Part of this is the hasty appropriation (e.g., purloining) stylistic terms=
or national identities which have EARNED their worth by some American=
brewers who just want to slip that hard-earned reputation over their=
12-ounce containers of, usually, garbage.
If the Belgians and the Germans and the British are willing to haul some of=
these American toads in to court and slap them around a bit, then the=
consumer as well as the American brewing community will, ultimately, be the=
winners.
Guys who are imitating Belgian styles with dedication, fervor, and quality=
are not the "toads," by the by. You toads know who you are.
Hubert L. Smith
Consulting Brewer, Beer Writer
P.O. Box 150
Selma, OR 97538
(Voice) 541 597-2142
(e-mail) brewboy at cdsnet.net
=46rom: Hubert Smith (brewboy at cdsnet.net)
~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~
You can weigh-in with your thoughts by posting a message at:
http://www.probrewer.com/cgi-bin/probrewer/message.cgi?board=3Dpublic&mode=
=3Dmessage&id=3D190
cheers! silva
Publishers of: Real Beer Inc.
The Real Beer Page 2339 Third Street, Suite 23
http://www.realbeer.com S.F., CA 94107
The ProBrewer Page 415.522.1516 - voice
http://www.probrewer.com 415.522.1535 - fax
BEERWeek realbeer at realbeer.com
http://www.beerweek.com Internet Publishers &
RBPMail Consultants
rbpmail-request at realbeer.com
------------------------------
From: Steelbrew <Steelbrew at aol.com>
Date: Mon, 22 Dec 1997 14:37:16 EST
Subject: Wyeast Lambic Blend
Hello Everyone,
A couple of months ago I asked the collective what cultures
were present in Wyeast 3278. Well, I just got a definative
(hopefully) answer from Wyeast Labs, so I am posting it
for everyone's information. I welcome any comments.
The 3278 contains S. cerevisiae, S. delbruckii, B. bruxellensis,
B lambicus, L. delbruckii, P. cerevisiae. It generally requires 6
months or more for the fermentation profile to be near complete.
Residual fermentation will continue indefinitely.
Dan Fox
Olympia, Wa
------------------------------
From: Peter <73671.1554 at compuserve.com>
Date: Sun, 28 Dec 1997 07:16:10 -0500
Subject: New location Peter's Geuze Pages
Hi,
I have noticed that not all links to my Geuze pages have been updated, the
old location on the "bioc-www.uia.ac.be" server is no longer valid.
The new location is:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/pvosta/pcrbier1.htm
Also notice that the extension has changed from ".html" tot ".htm".
A new Webpage has been added with information about references about some
available literature, including several PhD theses which have been made at
the University of Leuven in Belgium.
The references to the legislation have been improved with more detailed
information about the Belgian Legislation and about the new European
Legislation.
Enjoy a good Geuze in 1998,
Peter
------------------------------
From: Steve Piatz <piatz at cray.com>
Date: Mon, 5 Jan 1998 09:18:23 -0600 (CST)
Subject: Lambic tour trip report
Since the digest hasn't been very active here is a trip report I
originally wrote for our club newsletter. Back in November my wife
Janis and I took a vacation to Belgium and Holland. We went as part of
MIR's Artisan Breweries of Holland and Belgium tour. As part of the
tour we spent a very full day touring lambic producers. This is just
the report on that day.
Gueuze and Lambic Day
Saturday, November 8
Cantillon
We started our full day of lambics at Cantillon's public brewing
session which ran from 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM - we arrived sometime after
9:00 and left before lunch time. During the open brew day you can tour
the brewery during an actual brewing session. The only place you
couldn't get to was the coolship that the wort is left in overnight -
they had to close it off after some morons at a past open session were
standing in the empty coolship to take photos which then meant the
brewer had to scrub it before the boil finished.
Cantillon is still a family owned business that has been operating
since 1900 and from the looks of the place not much has changed since
then. Cantillon is correctly billed as a working beer museum. Cantillon
only brews 13 batches a season, this number has been constant for a
number of years. Many years ago (I think our Cantillon guide said
something like 1958) they brewed over 50 batches in a season. The
brewer, Jean-Pierre Van Roy is a strong believer in traditional lambic
brewing methods and doesn't think much of some of the industrial brands
of lambic produced by some of the other breweries. I think you can
guess which ones he means.
Most of the casks were obtained years ago when some wine warehouses
were being moved from the center of Brussels to the edge of town. The
old casks were obtained for something like 1000 Belgian francs when a
new cask would have cost around 22,000. The casks are obviously old
but you can see the occasional new piece of wood in them. Chalk marks
on the end encode the year and batch number. The casks are filled and
emptied where they sit, full they are too heavy to be moved.
Cantillon does have a little bit of stainless steel tankage for use in
the bottling process. The filtration system is old but still
functional. The barrel/cask cleaning system is an amazing mechanical
device. Cantillon does an infusion style mash rather than a turbid
mash.
Before leaving Cantillon we tried all the beers, including St. Lamvinus
which is a blend of lambic and St. Emilion grapes, it isn't available
in bottles. The beers were served straight from the cask, just as fresh
as you can get it. I did pick up a couple of bottles of Vigneronne
(grape lambic) for an equivalent US price of just under $3.00 since
that style isn't available in Minnesota. Not yet available is a new
product that was first brewed two years ago. They made an all barley
lambic to be called Cuvee Iris, they do have coasters made up with the
name and logo. A coaster is as close as we could get to Cuvee Iris.
In De Rare Vos
In Schepdaal we stopped for lunch at In De Rare Vos (The Strange Fox),
a village bar that use to produce a unique almond-marzipan house kriek
but was forced to stop production due to problems with the Belgium
Excise office (their equivalent of the BATF). I think an
almond-marzipan kriek would be interesting, occasionally. The beer
list includes Boon, unfiltered, unpasturized Girardin, and De Neve
lambics and gueuze to accompany lunch of guinea hen and the usual
Belgian fries.
Brouwerij Frank Boon
While Brouwerij Frank Boon (Frank Boon Brewery) is much newer than the
Cantillon brewery, having started brewing on the current site in 1989,
much of the operation is similar. The brewhouse was not new in 1989
though the stainless steel coolship appears to have been built for the
location. Frank stood in his coolship to point out features of the
brewery during the tour. Boon produces 90 batches a season. He
started the current brewery in part because the wort he was getting for
blending was becoming too acidic.
Boon still uses the old, turbid mash process. Frank says that with the
turbid mash the wort is still clear when it is run into the kettle and
feels that the wort may have even less protein than that from an
infusion mash. When the castout wort is sitting in the coolship
overnight there are just a couple of small fans that are used to draw
outside air into the room and over the wort. For the fruit lambic the
fruit is added after the lambic has been pumped to large stainless
steel tanks. The fruit is frozen so that it is available throughout
the brewing season as needed. The beer is dosed with isinglass several
days before bottling and then chilled. Since the beers are bottle
conditioned the beer is warmed with a heat exchanger (just like those
used to cool wort) prior to being run into the bottles. Note, Frank
says they have switched the type of corks they use so that the bottles
can now be stored vertically - the corks are more expensive but felt to
be necessary in today's market.
The walls of bottles aging seemed even larger than at Cantillon. The
inventory required is impressive, getting started in this business
requires a lot of capital. The walls have an occasional void where a
bottle has broken.
The rows of assorted sizes of casks are impressive. I always wondered
why some of the cask had the ends of the staves painted in the pictures
of lambic breweries I saw in places like Michael Jackson's books.
Frank said that the oak casks don't need to be painted but that the
chestnut ones need the paint on the ends to reduce the amount of liquid
that is lost through the wood. It looks like Frank has a lot of
Chestnut casks in his brewery.
As we walked along the rows of casks, Frank showed us how active the
fermentation was by blowing away the foam at the opening so we could
see how fast it reformed. He also drained samples from a few of the
casks so we could compare the product at different ages. Early on the
beer has a little hop character but it doesn't last long, it rapidly
changes from a "normal" beer in to a sour, young lambic.
The Boon Kriek is made from 75% young lambic and 25% old lambic while
the Mariage Parfait is made from 100% old lambic. Young lambic in this
context is from 6 to 8 months old.
Boon uses a 4 to 5 hour boil and only whole hops that are over a year
old. They only use hops that have been treated with sulfur in the old
way. The sulfur helps the hops stay green as they age. Frank says hops
used to make pellets aren't treated with sulfur. The grist consists of
30% to 40% red winter wheat. The barley is typically a pils type of
malt (Boon currently uses a malt custom made to their specification)
made from a winter barley since winter barley has more husk for use in
filtering. The turbid mash system results in a 12 or more hour brew
cycle. Frank said Lindemans also uses the turbid mash while Cantillon
and Timmerman use an infusion mash. We could have easy stayed and
talked to Frank from hours longer but we had a schedule to adhere to,
we were past due at our next stop.
De Cam
The first new gueuze blender in years is De Cam. Proprietor Willem van
Herreweghen says de cam is an old term for a brewery associated with a
farm. In addition to starting De Cam, Willem has a regular job at the
Palm brewery and is involved with a new brewery in Poland.
De Cam's casks are new to the production of lambic. They were built by
the coopers at Pilsner Urquell from wood used to make the old (circa
1860) Pilsner Urquell casks. The casks even have the Pilsner Urquell
brand on the end. In the process of making the casks Willem wanted
(which are smaller than those formerly used at Pilsner Urquell) I think
he said the wood was milled from the original 7 centimeter thickness to
something closer to 3 centimeters in thickness. Willem also said that
Pilsner Urquell no longer uses wood for any of their beer. Willem has
approximately 30 casks in the area we saw, he has sold some of the
Pilsner Urquell casks to Armand Debelder from Drie Fonteinen (Three
Fountains) Gueuzeblendery.
De Cam has 4000 liters of old lambic made from wort obtained from Boon
and Lindemans. Their young lambic is 8 months old, made from wort from
the same sources. The kriek spends 7 to 9 months on the cherries. The
young lambic (8 months old) is 4.8% alcohol while the old lambic is
6.2% alcohol, lambic becomes very attenuated over time. The pH of the
beer is about 3.8 which is pretty sour.
Just as Frank Boon tapped a few casks to offer us samples, Willem
offered samples from several different casks of his beer.
Unfortunately, he hasn't bottled any, yet, so there wasn't an
opportunity to take some with us. Note, he does have a bottling
system.
Willem talked briefly about the new activity to protect the term
gueuze. De Cam is one of the producers involved with the HORAL v.z.w.
that is working to protect the term gueuze. According to Willem the
St. Louis and Jacobins breweries would no longer be considered gueuze
breweries since they are actually outside of the geographic area
considered essential for producing gueuze. If you have tasted the St.
Louis or Jacobins products you won't be disappointed to hear this.
These two breweries get their lambic character by using casks that were
previously used in the Senne valley. If you have internet access you
can learn more about the ongoing activities of HORAL starting at the
URL http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/pvosta/pcrbier1.htm.
We had to leave De Cam to continue on our schedule and Willem had to
leave to catch a plane to Poland.
In Den Haas
Our next stop was In Den Hass (The Hare). Even with a guide who had
been there (Stephen D'Arcy) this place was hard to find. We had to go
down an extremely narrow gravel/mud road to get there, the brush on
both sides of the road was brushing the van at the same time. Once we
arrived the parking lot was very busy, they were having some sort of
mussels special in a large tent on the property. The beer list here
was very surprising for a rural pub, the selections included several
brands of gueuze, some trappists and an assortment of other good beers.
The beer list even includes a breakdown of the beers by
characteristics, alas the breakdown was in Flemmish. It was pointed
out to me the next day (by our tour leader, Dick Cantwell) that this
was where I screwed up and had my only non-gueuze liquid for the day.
I don't remember if I ordered it for Janis or me but I did drink some
Westvleteren Abt 12 thus destroying my chance at a perfect gueuze day.
Nirvana is hard to achieve, sometimes the rules are very hard to
remember.
In 't Bierhuis
Next to the Oud Beersel (Vandervelden) Brewery Museum is the bierhuis
with an interesting old organ. The lambic comes from the brewery next
door. Unfortunately, there just weren't enough hours in the day for us
to visit the brewery. In Belgium people bring their dogs into pubs, we
had a good time watching a little boy play with another patron's puppy
while we drank our gueuze.
Drie Fonteinen
At present, Drie Fonteinen (Three Fountains) is merely a gueuzeblender.
However, on November 12th the welders were to start the installation of
the new brewery at Three Fountains. Come January of 1998, Three
Fountains will become a brewery. The current product is blended from
wort obtained from Boon, Girardin, and Lindemans. Armand Debelder, the
proprietor walked us through the cellars where the lambic is aged in
the traditional casks. He said that humid cellars result is a more
sour beer. Armand is an experienced gueuzeblender and is the chairman
of the HORAL v.z.w. Beyond adding a brewery Armand has gone so far as
to plant cherry trees to provide for more of the scarce Shaarbeek
cherries in the future. Three Fountains now has a label (sometimes an
unusual feature for lambic beers in Belgium) and sells shirts with
their logo. They also sell 750 ml bottles as well as 5 and 10 liter
plastic barrels to go. In the cellar it looked like they were also
filling a few corny kegs - a tempting concept.
After the tour, Armand brought out an old bottle of gueuze for us to
sample. The bottle was from an 1990 batch, after waiting 4 years for
it to clear after the isinglass treatment it was deemed to be "lazy"
lambic and was relegated to kitchen use. Many of the menu items are
cooked with gueuze, my venison cooked in gueuze was excellent. After 5
years the beer was considered to be good. When we tasted it it was
effervescent with an almost citric-like acidity with some fruitiness.
The color was darker than the standard gueuze. This beer was made from
Lindemans and Girardin wort.
Armand said he has 90,000 liters of gueuze in stock and doesn't have
the capacity to export since the bar/restaurant needs nearly all he
produces. At first I though I heard wrong but then remembered that De
Cam has 4000 liters on hand and only started in June so I guess 90,000
liters isn't that much when you age the stuff for years. Note,
Cantillon only produces 85,000 liters per year. The cellars have the
typical walls of bottles aging. Armand said he has another aging
cellar nearby.
- --
Steve Piatz (piatz at cray.com)
------------------------------
End of lambic-digest V1 #34
***************************
