Autumn in Belgium tends to be a mixed bag weather-wise. Absolutely spectacular crisp sunny days off set by miserable cold rainy days. So when the weather is nice, it is best to take advantage of it. Recently, that has meant visiting some breweries and trappist monasteries (along with their breweries).
Earlier in the month we visited Oud Beersel in the town of Beersel. Oud Beersel specializes in lambic beers. A lambic is a beer that is fermented using atmospheric yeasts and bacteria. The result of this are beers that tend to be tart, with a pretty unique flavor profile. They also tend to be lower in alcohol because the natural yeast do not convert the sugars to alcohol as efficiently.
SWMBO and I thought we would pop in for their once monthly English tour and then get some lunch afterward. We figured that the tour would be about 30-45 minutes with a brief tasting. It actually turned into three and a half hours of education with our enthusiastic guide giving us tastings of every beer they make.
Oud Beersel makes a few different versions of lambics, they make a basic lambic which is packaged in a 5L a in a box. It is very crisp with apple and pear notes and would be excellent on a hot summer day. They also make gueze. Gueze are lambics that are aged in wooden barrels for a couple of years before being blended into the final product. According to our tour guide, each barrel has its own micro-environment of yeasts and bacteria going back 50+ years. Consequently, each barrel develops its own personality and flavor profile. A byproduct of this is that lambic breweries do not clean anything. They want to preserve the environment that they have worked years to develop, so the brewery itself is covered in cobwebs and dust going back generations.
I had tried to introduce SWMBO to gueze once before, I believe it was a Cantillon, and she was not a fan. Because of the methods used, some of the gueze can rely on a lot of lactic fermentation from the many species of lactobacilli in the environment. This can give a very sour vinegar flavor. Oud Beersel works to keep this type of fermentation down to make a much more balanced beer. SWMBO actually liked these.
The other, and arguably more popular, lambics are krieks (cherry) and framboise (raspberry). These beers are made from a base lambic with a huge quantity of fruit placed in the barrel to macerate and add to the fermentation. Krieks and framboise are very popular year round in Belgium but especially so in the spring and summer where the fruity tartness and low alcohol make them the go to choice for a light lunch or aperitif. Oud Beersel’s kriek is really excellent, but their framboise is spectacular. It smells like a bowl of fresh raspberries. The fruit is well balanced by the lambic beer. it is not sweet, but rather tart and refreshing. On a drunk monk scale, certainly 4.5. Interestingly, our guide commented that they added a small percentage of kriek to the framboise for color because “consumers are stupid and they expect a framboise to be pink.” He also commented that the big producers used food coloring. All I know is that we brought samples of all of them home for further taste testing.
Following our trip to Oud Beersel, SWMBO signed up with a Flemish women’s group to tour the Abbey at Chimay, home to Chimay beer which is one of the best known Belgian beers outside of Belgium. SWMBO’s flemish is coming along nicely and is at a point where she can begin to have legitimate conversations with people and can follow along just fine with the flemish tour. With the tour, SWMBO was able to try Chimay Doree which is only available at the Abby and is the beer that the monks have with meals. I am very jealous that I have not yet had the opportunity to add this rarity to the beer list.
The weekend after our trip to Oud Beersel, we drove out to Westvleteren to pick up a couple of cases of the Westvleteren 12 that SWMBO reserved to get us through the winter. I have talked about this beer a couple of other times on the blog. It is excellent and has won the Best Beer in the World award on multiple occasions. The 2 hour drive from Brussels takes you through much of what constituted the front line during WWI. We did what we typically do when we make a run to the Abby. We had lunch in cafe. (The Abbey Pate is excellent.) Then we picked up our cases from the monks. Beer secured, we decided to drive through Ieper (Ypres) and visit a couple of WWI battlefields and cemeteries. The weather was beautiful, but it was a bit somber visiting the Menin Gate and then the cemetery at Polygon Wood. I always feel like I should know more about WWI whenever we drive through this area. The cemeteries and memorials dot the landscape and it is always surprising just how many people lost their lives in this area to accomplish very little. We also stopped by the American Cemetery at Flanders Fields to see if it was closed due to the Government Shutdown. Sure enough, it was.
