On this episode, we talk about Belgian beer styles. Be sure to check out our Facebook page, Facebook@theombibulouspodcast for the accompanying photos. You can also head over to https://youtu.be/-9c4UN_yB74 to check out our first tasting video too. Cheers!
Belgian Beer
SPEAKERS
Connor Brekke, Dylan Schafer
Connor Brekke 00:05
Hello everyone and welcome back to The Ombibulous, a show where we discuss a variety of topics about alcohol. From beer styles, the brewing process, distillation in spirits and even liquor laws there's a fascinating world to discover. On today's episode, we have an overview of Belgian style beers. Joining me today is Dylan Schafer, owner of Dialectic Brewing Company here in Mandan, North Dakota. I'm your host, Connor Brekke. Let's all raise a glass to, The Ombibulous.
Connor Brekke 00:39
Welcome back to the show everybody. I'm back at Dialectic and joining me is Dylan. And we are going to go through some... kind of a broad topic actually, it's... we're going through Belgian beer styles. It's a very diverse topic, but we're going to kind of give you a rundown. That way we can branch off into future episodes. Welcome back, Dylan. Always good to see you.
Dylan Schafer 01:00
Yeah, thanks again for having me.
Connor Brekke 01:01
Well, it's... I guess you're having me since...
Dylan Schafer 01:03
Oh, yeah, I suppose.
Connor Brekke 01:06
So today, we actually have kind of a different episode as we have some visuals. So we're going to do some video with our Facebook page. And we're going to do some photos. So be sure you check out The Ombibulous Podcast at Facebook so you don't miss out on any of that. But, let's, let's kick it off. Belgian ales. Right, let's kind of just briefly run down what exactly's out there. There's some familiar ones like Stella... I think most people are familiar with Stella.
Dylan Schafer 01:35
Yeah, absolutely.
Connor Brekke 01:36
And then beyond that, it's...
Dylan Schafer 01:38
And it's it's funny that you mentioned Belgian ales, because I was going to point out that a lot of the Belgian beer styles that we do see, are going to be ales. I think I mentioned in a previous episode that we can kind of... here in the US especially and in a lot of Europe, we generally break down beer into two categories based on the type of fermentation. So ales are going to be anything that is a top fermenting or warm fermenting yeast and then lagers are going to be anything that's cool fermented or bottom fermenting yeast. And a lot of the Belgian beer styles that we see do fall into that ale category. So any of your stuff like your... I will even your Belgian saisons, your doubbels, your trippels, all that stuff is going to kind of fall into the Belgian ale category. However, they do have some loggers in the mix too. Things like your bocks and, and they even do some pillsners and, and some of those other really classic lagered styles as well. Historically speaking, though, we do see a lot of these styles fall under the ale category for sure.
Connor Brekke 02:45
And now as far as you know... it's a broad spectrum of different things to drink. You know, like any other style of beer, there's darks, there's lights, there's sours. These can be broken into like... like, you said, there's bocks, there's pilsners, amber, doubble, trippel, Lambic, Flemish, oud bruin, you know, just all kinds of different styles. But we're just going to kind of go through an overview in a sense. I actually brought with me a Pauwel Kwak, that is what we'll be tasting later. More on that to come. But... so Belgian, Belgian nails have been around for a while. I mean, if you want to argue how long beers been around, we won't go there, but we'll just kind of start with like the Roman-ish era... so like brewing and malt housing dating back from the third and fourth centuries. You know, they're... they've been around for a while they're early in high Middle Ages. From my knowledge, they're produced with a thing called gruit.
Dylan Schafer 03:40
Yeah.
Connor Brekke 03:40
A mix of herbs and spices.
Dylan Schafer 03:43
And you can still see today, you can still see some brews produced... beers produced that way on both Belgian beers, as well as some American brewing companies that are taking advantage of that gruit it. But like you said, that was just basically a blend of different herbs and spices. And the whole idea was, when you brew beer with malt, that malt is going to give it a sweet character. And they needed something to balance out that sweetness to give it a little bit of bitterness. And that's where that gruit came in. Where's today... more now today, we definitely see hops. If I'm not mistaken, it was probably... I don't know... 14th, 15th century somewhere in there when they started switching over to hops over in Belgium and Europe and stuff.
Connor Brekke 04:25
So I was just gonna say gruit is kind of like the proto-hops sort of wasn't it? They didn't use hops, but it was kind of getting in that... toward.... more towards the happiness.
Dylan Schafer 04:33
Yeah, that kind of, you know, slightly acidic, bitter character that you'd get some... from some of those traditional herbs. And like I said, there are still breweries doing it, a lot of you know, you'll see like dandelion root and caraway and all these different things, used it... to give beer, that bitterness, that distinctive bitterness.
Connor Brekke 04:52
So after you... after the 14th century, we kind of have that replacement with hops and then some Belgian town started to develope their own types of beer for export. Notably, what I know is the... sorry if I mispronounce, all these, the beer of Leuven and Hoegaarden. You know, I don't really know a lot about those. But I also know that a monasteries also had kind of a role in beer production. We'll kind of do a spin off series into Trappist Monk beer, but they mostly brewed for their guests and themselves.
Dylan Schafer 05:26
Absolutely. And, you know, kind of historically speaking, like you mentioned, a lot of these communities around Belgium started to develop their own brewing scene. And we can see that all over Europe to where you didn't have as many, you know, large scale production facilities early on. A lot of these ones were a little community based. But basically little brew pubs that produced for that community and really that community alone. And then it was a little bit later on in history that we started seeing the development of the bigger facilities that were capable to kind of export things to other regions and stuff.
Connor Brekke 06:01
So going back to monastery brewing, you know, that trap is beer now is kind of a... I don't want to say it's like, hugely popular, but because we have one in the US, it's definitely becoming more and more of a thing. I actually listened to NPR show about it, but realistically, it hasn't really been a thing for all that long. It kind of started in the 19th century. And from, from then on, it was again, it was pretty much just community or mainly just for the monks.
Dylan Schafer 06:30
And especially with the monks, you know, a lot of these, you know, touching on the Trappist monks a little... beer served as this... you know, a sustenance purpose. And I'm sure we can dive into that a little bit deeper when we talk specifically about some Trappist beers and stuff. But it was absolutely mostly for consumption on site at the monastery. It wasn't to be sold or produced for others really.
Connor Brekke 06:52
So then comes some law changes about in the late 1800s. Basically, legislation made ah, brewing of German style bottom fermented beers viable in Belgium. And that's kind of when the large scale brewing happened. Coming into the 20th century, brewers in Belgium kind of declined. There used to be a little over 3000, in 1900, all the way down to 106, in 1993. And there's a lot of reasons because of that. We had all the... two world wars, and conflict and, depression, and each country kind of went through their own version of prohibition.
Dylan Schafer 07:29
And you know, a lot of these smaller breweries that were existing kind of before the 19th and 20th century and 21st century, even, a lot of these smaller breweries were again, kind of community based brewers. And for one, big beer really did start to take over< the big conglomerates< could produce much more beer and make a lot more money than the smaller guys. And on top of that, like you were saying, worldwide conflict really decimated some of the infrastructure necessary for that brewing. But we did see, and you were mentioning, when we had some law changes that allowed for some German styles, bottom fermented German styles. That's where we really started to see Belgian ales transition from being just exclusively ale brewed beer or warm fermented beer over to that cool fermented, bottom fermented beer.
Connor Brekke 08:17
And then not every single style was lost. A few notable styles did... that did survive were the wit beers, so your white beer, lambic, which is a personal favorite of mine, Flemish, old brown... a couple that managed to get through and of course, you know, people are rediscovering recipes and more stuff's coming out slowly but surely so...
Dylan Schafer 08:39
Oh, absolutely. And those Flemish beers, particularly the Flanders Red Ale, and that oud Bruin or old brown. Those are some that have have had some really good staying power. And even here in the United States, there's people producing some really, really good examples of those beer. Some of my all time favorite sours are from that Flemish region either being oud bruins, or a little bit of a mix of styles of kind of oud bruin and Flanders Red. Makes me think of, you know, Love Child from Boulevard and any of that kind of Lips of Faith series... that a lot of those guys are doing some of those traditional Belgian sour styles.
Connor Brekke 09:20
And then with the local stuff we have, of course, as I mentioned earlier, Artois, Stella Artois. So in about the late 80s, 1980s Belgium's two biggest brewing companies Artois and, probably going to mispronounce the name again, but... Piedboeuf merged to basically become Interbrew. So now it's the 18th largest Brewer in the world. And then that's where a lot of... they have quite a big, quite a few names underneath their house. So Interbrew then merged with AmBev in 2004. And now, today, it's the biggest beer producing company in the world. So even more things under its roof.
Dylan Schafer 09:58
Oh yeah. All I mean, all of those now fall under AB InBev these days. And I mean, it's... Anheuser Busch products... so a vast majority of the beer produced in the United States even falls under that umbrella company, as well as a good majority of European beers fall under that umbrella as well.
Dylan Schafer 10:16
So generally speaking, I mentioned earlier that you know, here, especially in the US and in parts of Europe, we largely categorize beer into either lagers or ales. Again, just based on their fermentation. Um... Belgium takes a little bit of a unique approach to this. They actually kind of have four categories based on fermentation. So they have your basic, you know, warm fermented beer or top fermented beer, which is going to be your ales. They also have your cool fermented or bottom fermented beer, which is going to be your lagers, pilsners, bocks, things like that. And then they do also have kind of two other categories that are very unique to Belgium for the most part.
Dylan Schafer 10:56
And those are going to be spontaneous fermentation. And basically, spontaneous fermentation is referencing the fact that the brewer is not adding any yeast to the product. They're doing the barley, the hops or whatever ingredients they're brewing with. And then they're just taking advantage of open air fermentation and letting whatever wild yeast happens to live in that particular region, inoculate the beer and ferment it out. So it's a very... somewhat unpredictable way of fermenting beer. But a lot of these regions in Belgium and France and stuff had very specific yeast strains that lived in those areas. And so they gave the beer it's, you know, iconic flavor characteristics from that spontaneous fermentation.
Dylan Schafer 11:37
And then, the fourth category that the Belgium... that the Belgians kind of really take advantage of is mixed fermentation. Historically speaking, mixed fermentation is going to largely be kind of a subset of spontaneous fermentation, where the brewer isn't introducing yeast into the wort. He's just getting it out of the air, open fermentation. However, in a mixed fermentation environment, we're going to see not just wild yeast introduced into the beer, but wild yeast as well as also some wild bacterias. Primarily things like brettanomyces is one of our wild yeasts that's really common. And then we'll also see some wild bacteria like lactobacillus, pediococcus. And those are the bacteria that are going to be responsible for giving beer, a sour beer, its sour character. So you're things like your lambics, your creeks, your Flanders Reds, and oud browns... a lot of those are going to be a mixed fermentation beer.
Dylan Schafer 12:35
That mixed fermentation has changed a little bit as time has gone on. In modern day commercial brewing both in the United States and over in Europe, we see a lot of brewers that are kind of pseudo mixed fermenting. Where they are actually introducing the bacteria and yeast themselves, instead of just letting the wild stuff come in from the open air. So it's... the Belgians really have a unique take on their different styles of beer, because all of their different styles of beer will fall into those four general categories instead of the two general categories that we usually see over here in the States. So again, that being warm fermented beer, cool fermented beer, mixed fermented beer, and then spontaneously fermented beer.
Connor Brekke 13:17
I'm a sour person so... do you have a preference? Or do you just love all beer?
Dylan Schafer 13:22
Yeah, you know, I do always tell people I'm a pretty indiscriminate drinker. I will say from my experience, and just about everyone else I talked to... a mixed fermentation beer is, as far as sours go, is going to have a much more nuanced and complex flavor profile to it. So a lot of modern day sours are brewed with a technique called kettle souring, where you do all the showering in a very, very controlled environment. Historically speaking, this mixed fermentation was not necessarily a very controlled environment. It was whatever bacteria and yeast happened to be around. And that aspect of it really gave the beer, a lot of nuance and a lot of complexity. So personally speaking, I do really enjoy a mixed fermentation or spontaneous fermentation beer. There are some risks that go along with it. The kind of the industry standard for those people who are still doing spontaneous fermentation is that on average, you'll dump between one and seven or one and 10 batches will go down the drain, because it's just not as controlled of an environment and you may not get the flavor profile you're looking for.
Connor Brekke 14:30
Right, because you're just letting wild yeast strains come in. They do whatever they feel like then...
Dylan Schafer 14:36
Yeah.
Connor Brekke 14:36
....instead of having a specific... strain, it's just kind of a piñata.
Dylan Schafer 14:41
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, sometimes that turns out phenomenally. And when it turns out good, I'll say this... they are just absolutely awesome. When it turns out poor, they're usually pretty gross, and they wind up going down the drain.
Connor Brekke 14:55
So as with any beers, there's always glassware that accompanies it. And then Belgian ales kind of have their... I don't know they have kind of their own unique take on glassware. They seem to have different types of glassware more abundant than other styles of beer. Just to name a few of them, like tulip glasses, they're pretty common. The basically enhance your olfactory sensations and visuals they kind of. It's kind of like wine tasting sort of, in that aspect. And then you got like the champagne like flute glasses for lambic and fruited beer. They basically help retain that carbonated sparkle. And then the one I'm excited to talk about, the one that I brought with me today is the Kwak glass.
Connor Brekke 15:37
The Pauwel Kwak story is kind of an interesting thing. I can't really... it's kind of one of those legend things. So I might be true? It might not be true? But I'll tell the story anyways. So Pauwel Kwak is a Belgian ale. It's been brewed since the 1980s. It's currently got about well, there's different styles, but generally, it's an 8.4% ABV. It was supposedly named after the 18th century innkeeper and brewer, Pauwel Kwak. And this is significant because this was back when you took a coach, you know, horse drawn coach to wherever you needed to go, then the coach driver would drive from place to place. But the poor guy couldn't get out of his coach and go into the tavern or wherever and get a drink... you know, feel sad for them. So this gentleman, Pauwel Kwak, supposedly invented this glass for the coach drivers. When you see it on the Facebook page, it's it's a very interesting looking contraption. The glass itself kind of looks like one of those old fashioned horns with the rubber squeezy part and then the cone shaped top of it, and it sits in this interesting glass holder. And then that's significant because it was designed to be mountable in the coach and then the driver could drink it really easily without spilling it. And then he would be served by somebody from the inn would come out and pour him a glass. So it's a very interesting way to drink beer. I remember the first time I encountered this was in... St. Paul, Minnesota, and we were at a place and I saw this thing come out and I'm like, "What is that?" And my buddy and I were like, "yeah, we'll just order whatever that is. We don't care what's in it. We just want the glass." So yeah, it's a it's a very interesting way to, to drink beer.
Dylan Schafer 17:22
And it's a really cool glass. It's almost like the traditional shaped glassware of Belgian meats like the beer stein with the wood handle and, and base and everything for it. They are really, really cool glass and I had the pleasure of drinking a beer out of one yesterday and I drank out of a straight pint versus drinking out of the Kwak. And it does really change the presentation of the beer pretty significantly and... credit where credit is due. The Belgians really pioneered the... some of the effects of glassware. They were designing just fantastic glassware that just amplified all your your senses when you're consuming beer. Even here down at Dialectic we started serving all of our hoppy beers are IPAs and stuff out of about a Belgian tulip. Primary reason is we were serving them out of kind of a traditional straight sided pint. And one day I accidentally poured the beer into the wrong glass and the aroma and just the way the beer presents is so much more appealing out of that Belgian glass than it is just a typical straight sided glass. So the Belgians do have a lot of unique glassware out there. And they all do serve some really awesome purposes.
Connor Brekke 18:33
And actually the other day I brought... I brought this glass in and then we just started trying random beers out of it and... I tell you what, it definitely launches that aroma into your face. And whenever you drink it, towards the bottom, it has kind of this volute effect. It creates like an air bubble and it basically launches all the carbonation and all the aroma just straight up in your face. It's, it's quite a difference. It's actually surprising how different of a experience it is.
Dylan Schafer 19:02
Yeah, it really keeps that beer bubbling and releasing CO2, keeps it feeling effervescent, keeps a nice head on it and just really focuses those aromas.
Connor Brekke 19:12
So we're gonna take a break right now while we get set up for the tasting. So, stay tuned.
Connor Brekke 19:31
Welcome back guys. We took a little break here. Poured ourselves some of this very interesting Pauwel Kwak Traditional Belgian Special Ale, Family Brewing... not gonna pronounce that... ABV of 8.4 so I'm going to take my first sip here, before getting blasted with that wonderful aroma.
Dylan Schafer 19:51
Yeah, that glass really does just funnel that aroma right there.
Connor Brekke 19:55
That is smooth, beautiful amber color. Now you can see the little vortex that it created when I drink it.
Dylan Schafer 20:02
Yeah, all...
Connor Brekke 20:03
Launching everything.
Dylan Schafer 20:04
All those bubbles and everything, just keep releasing and rolling up the sides of that glass. And like you said it is in a ridiculously smooth beer. Had I not known what its alcohol percentage was before consuming it, I would not have guessed it's as high as 8.5%. It's got just enough sweetness to keep that booziness at bay and keep everything balanced. And then just enough bitterness to balance out the sweetness of it. So it is just a really well rounded, complex beer. Go figure it's a classic Belgian beer. It's well rounded, complex and nuanced. And it just has that that heavy kind of off-white head to it. Presents beautifully.
Connor Brekke 20:48
Yeah, this is definitely new. I don't think this is what they served me last time, though. It was... it was more come towards the wit style, I think.
Dylan Schafer 20:56
Okay.
Connor Brekke 20:57
Maybe it wasn't even a Kwak, I don't know. Maybe they just had the glasses or something... that was a long time ago.
Dylan Schafer 21:03
Could have been kind of lighter, more refreshing Belgian option?
Connor Brekke 21:08
Yeah, I mean, you, you don't necessarily have to drink a Kwak out of this. I mean, it's, I'm gonna drink all kinds of things out of it. It'd be fun to see what you can experience because like I say the flavor profile is different because it enhances your olfactory senses so heavily. How much is left in it? Go ahead and have the rest.
Dylan Schafer 21:26
I won't say no to that.
Connor Brekke 21:28
All yours.
Dylan Schafer 21:29
Yeah, I drank just a classic American blonde ale out of this glass last night. And I really wanted to see what difference the glass would make on a fairly simple, straightforward beer. So I had a straight sided glass versus the Kwak glass and poured each one with just a classic American blonde ale. And it... yeah, it really does make a significant difference. So any of you listeners out there who don't believe that glassware makes a difference, grow your glass collection and, and suit the beer to its glass.
Connor Brekke 22:03
Exactly. I mean, I'm kind of a glassware collector, but that's just because I have a problem. But I do definitely taste different things out of it. You know... this... go somewhere, get a crowler, get a growler, get a bottle, and just experiment with it. It's always kind of fun just to see those subtle differences that enhance your drinking experience.
Dylan Schafer 22:23
You know, and I will say this too, we're drinking this Kwak at what is probably 55 degrees, I would guess 55 maybe 60 degrees and drinking a somewhat multi kind of full bodied European beer at that room temperature is absolutely ideal for me. It really does help bring out all the nuance and the and the flavor characteristics in that beer having it at a little bit warmer temperature. And you absolutely get that iconic, Belgian ale yeast characteristic. You know, it's got a little bit of that funk to it. Almost a little kind of spicy phenol, you know, clove a hint of black pepper in there, and then a really nice fruity ester to it as well. That's always been one of my favorite things about drinking Belgian beers is a lot of them are very, very yeast forward flavor profile, where you get flavor coming from the hops and the yeast or the hops in the malt obviously. But a very substantial part of the flavor profile of this beer you can tell is coming from the Belgian ale yeast in it. And I am just generally speaking a big fan of the those kind of yeast forward beers. I love Belgian say saisons, Belgian blonde ales, Belgian IPAs. This is my first experience with Kwak, but it.. is it's very fantastic.
Connor Brekke 23:49
And then for those interested in where I got this, I just basically Googled Belgian ales and there's a website called... Belgian ales that you can get all kinds of fun stuff in the US. This wasn't the only one there's a whole bunch of them but I remember the glass and I was like "yeah, that's what I'm gonna get." We actually got, like I mentioned earlier, a Trappist beer segment coming up. I have some ales from Spencer Brewing, the only Trappist... official, accredited Trappist Monk brewery in the US. And I think there's only eight of them in the world. So we're pretty lucky to have that. But, stay tuned.
Dylan Schafer 24:27
Yeah, it's seven or eight. There... there's not many of them out there. So having one in the United States... is pretty surprising, but...
Connor Brekke 24:35
Well guys, I hope you enjoyed the show today. A bit different, kind of a broad topic, but it definitely will expand your mind to the world of beer, and we look forward to having you listen in next time. So until then, cheers.
Connor Brekke 24:52
The Ombibulous is made possible with Castos, giving creators the tools to connect with their audience and community and music is curtius of Pond5. With over 25 million royalty free stock videos, music, photos and sound effects, where's something for every creator. Today's content was recorded here at Dialectic Brewing Company in Mandan, North Dakota. I would like to thank Dylan Schafer for the use of his facility and time to create this episode. For the latest updates, videos, photos and web links to our guests, please consider checking out our Facebook page, The Ombibulous Podcast. And of course, a big thank you to all our listeners. Thank you for all of your support. Until next time, cheers.