Many British beer drinkers have a soft spot for Belgian beers and many regularly pop over on Eurostar to sample the delights on offer. Belgium has a reputation for heritage, which was acknowledged by UNESCO adding Belgian beer styles to the Intangible Cultural Heritage List in 2016. However, heritage does not mean stagnation. Belgium has seen a doubling of breweries in the last eight years and there are currently around 400 in operation.
Alas, it’s not all good news. In 2021, Achel lost its Authentic Trappist Product branding when the brewing process ceased to be supervised by monks when the last two monks left the Abbey. Fortunately, Westmalle (another Trappist Brewery, who owned Achel) sold the abbey early in 2023, so brewing is going to continue on the site. This leaves just five genuine Trappist breweries and at least one has reported that they are also struggling to recruit new monks.
Although there is some doom and gloom surrounding Trappist brewing, this cannot be said for the rest of the Belgian beer industry. A recent event run by the Flanders Tourist Board (an area well known for its beer) gave me an opportunity to meet a few of them.
The first was the well-known St Bernardus, who brew in Watou. Established in 1946, their oldest beer is the ‘12’ (Abbot), which was formulated in the same year as the brewery was founded and is still brewed to the same recipe. A typical strong Belgian beer, it is well balanced with bubble gum, banana, vanilla and chocolate notes, a toffee-like sweetness and a growing bitterness. St Bernardus has a sense of humour; ‘12’ accounts for 50% of their volume and, on every 1,000th bottle, the Abbot is winking.
The brewery was set up by Evariste Deconinck, who was originally a cheese maker. He was invited by the monks at Westvleteren to brew and market beer, which they did until 1992. That year, the Trappist breweries got together and established the Authentic Trappist Beer designation and the contract was terminated, meaning it was no longer an Abbey beer. This was not the end however; beer continued to be produced. In 1998, Hans Depypere took over the brewery and, with a fair amount of investment, the brewery has steadily grown, still keeping to the traditional nuances.
St Bernardus was not however the oldest brewery I spoke to; that distinction went to Brouwer Roman. The brewery, which dates from 1545, is in Mater, about 30 miles from Ghent. It is still in family hands after 14 generations and is currently run by a brother and sister. It is a reasonably sized operation, having 62 employees and a brew length of 125 hectolitres, housed in their brewhouse that was built around 1930.
For a number of years, they concentrated on producing Pils but, under Louis Roman, they started to expand the range, including the introduction of Ename Abbey beers in 1990. More recently, in 2003, they launched the Adriaen Brouwer range, named after the Flemish painter. The first beer was their Oudenaards Brown, rebranded as a way of bringing this traditional beer style back to life. The Brown now has two brothers: an Oaked Brown and a Tripel. The innovation has necessitated an expansion and Roman are intending to open a new brewhouse in the spring, which will increase their production by over 50%.
Near to Roman is a much newer brewer, Hedonis, which is only eight years old. The brewery was set up in Mater because the owner, Thibaut, decided he couldn’t afford the house prices in Ghent. He had a chemical industry background and was a home brewer but it all started when his family threw him a birthday party and asked him to brew a case of beer. The beer was named Ouwen Duiker, meaning Old Diver. His friends liked the beer so much he decided to carry on brewing, setting up in business with another brewer who had previously worked for Omer. They started as a gipsy brewer but last year they moved into their own brewery and currently brew over 90 barrels per annum. The brewery has two beer ranges: Hedonis Craft and Julia. The five beers in the former range are designed to ‘show a respect for Belgian’s tradition combined with innovation’. It was explained that many of Belgium’s beer drinkers tend to be a little conservative in their drinking. Julia is a range of beers designed to be drunk as an aperitif and named after Mathieu’s wife. The brewery’s hops mostly come from the USA and Germany. There are only 23 hop farms in Belgium, all of which are independent and relatively expensive. This might explain why Belgium is the biggest importer of USA hops. The brewery not only sells their beers locally; they have a reasonable export market to Japan.
Another young brewery is Brouwerij Eylenbosch. It was founded in 2019 but has a genuine heritage. The owner’s father, Andre De Keersmaeker, used to own Mort Subite, until he sold it to Heineken. He then bought Eylenbosch brewery, originally founded in 1886 but closed in 1965. However, for over 30 years, nothing had been done with it. His son, Erik, had spent many years working for large companies such as Mars and Disney before deciding to move into brewing and took on the brewery, thus becoming the fifth generation of brewers. Not surprisingly, his beers are mainly sours but they do produce a saison. Erik resurrected the Eylenbosch beers, using open vats and oak barrels to create authentic lambics. He was fortunate enough to know Frank Boon (of Boon beers fame) who became a mentor. The result is a lovely range of beers. The Oude Kriek (6.2% ABV) is a good example. Matured for three years, it uses the Schaerbeek variety of sour cherries which create a full flavoured, strawberry coloured beer with lemon notes and a gentle bitter finish.
The final beer producer I spoke to was Bar Belge, who do own their own brewery. They have been in operation less than four years and use different third party brewers to produce their beers. The owners had the idea that beer is the perfect accompaniment to food and their aim was to show that beer could be a premium product as much as wine. To define their beers, co-owner Wouter Casteleyn, called them ‘beers with a modern twist’. A good example of this is their Wheat Beer, which uses yuzu rather than the traditional orange peel, along with added vanilla. Although they have a range of beers based on traditional recipes, their best seller is their IPA. As with the Julia range of beers, they are trying to introduce Belgian beer drinkers to new tastes.
Most of the above breweries have their own websites and you can find out more about Belgian beer at www.visitflanders.com, www.beertourism.com and www.zythos.be (CAMRA’s equivalent in Belgium).
Christine Cryne