Toasting with the 2015 Zwanze beer

While we toasted in Belgium, our friends Brian and Josh in San Francisco celebrated with us from the other side of the world. We geeked out digitally on iMessage:

You can also read Brian’s state-side write-up of the event, complete with pictures of the puny American pours.

Zwanze Pre-Party

While you can get the Zwanze beer around the world on the day of the event, in Belgium they pull out all the stops for a three-day Cantillon-fest. A lot of rarities from the cellar were on offer at Moeder Lambic, a Brussels bar that works closely with Cantillon..

This is likely the best Cantillon list anywhere in the world.

We happened to catch a brief patch of sun at Moeder, so we made the best of it and powered through some ‘loons.

Fou Foune (left) and 2009 Loue Pepe Kriek (right). Sausage made with Cantillon gueuze (front)

That bright orange beer on the left is summer in a cup. It’s a 1 week old apricot beer, and the fruit flavor was just bursting out.  Smelling it was a huge whiff of fresh ripe apricots. Just an outstanding beer.

On the right is a 6 year old cherry beer. The Lou Pepe series is designed to hold up to aging; they use extra fruit so the flavor will last, and unblended lambic so each vintage varies a little. The result is a really complex fruity beer that’s bone dry.

Cantillon Saint Gilloise 2009 and Cuvee Bija (Zwanze 2014)

Our next round was an aged Saint Gilloise, which is a dry-hopped lambic, plus last year’s Zwanze beer.  The aged Saint Gilloise was still a damn fine beer, though I think I prefer it fresh.

Last year’s Zwanze is also a dry-hopped beer (Grand Cru Iris base), with the addition of a small amount of cherries. The result is a delightful tart beer with hints of caramel. It tastes like cherry pie in the best possible way.

Saint Lamvinus

We were going to call it quits after two rounds, but Saint Lamvinus was on the menu, a beer I’d heard a lot about and never had the chance to try. Saint Lamvinus is a lambic with Merlot grapes aged in Bordeaux barrels.

This beer has the most amazing nose of anything I’ve ever tried. Tiara described it as “tromping through a muddy vineyard.” I took one sniff and got a huge smell memory of being a kid walking home from the bus after the rain. The taste is all grapes with only a hint of that earthy mustiness, but I kept going back to the glass just to smell it.  I need to figure out how to get my hands/nose on some more of this stuff.

Bonus: “The Best Beer in the World” – Westvleteren 12

For several years running Westvleteren 12 (or Westy 12 to the in-crowd) was rated #1 in the world by the beer community site Ratebeer (it currently hovers at a paltry #2). It is as obnoxiously rare as it is good; the beer is only sold by monks on site by appointment. Limit 1 order per person/license plate per 60 days. Yeesh.  We spotted a bar in Brussels that had a couple bottles available, so we gave it a try.

The only branding on Westvleterens beer itself is on the cap; the bottles are blank.

I wrote down my “tasting notes” like a good little beer geek. I got lots of banana, chocolate, molasses, blackstrap rum, and malt.  It was good, maybe even great. I would not choose it as the world’s best beer, but honestly the crazy dark/strong belgian beers are not my favorite category, so it probably never had a chance.

It is probably the best abt/quad I’ve had, YMMV. I’ve read that the recipe is the same as St Bernardus 12, which is a lot easier to get your hands on, so start there first before deciding you need to make a pilgrimage.

Alternatively, if you want a strong dark beer in a hurry, you can just grab a Chimay Blue at the airport.

Oh Brussels, we will miss you and your amazing beer culture

Unlike most breweries in Belgium, at Cantillon you can just show up and walk around on their “self guided tour.” 7 euros gets you a booklet, entrance to the brewery floor, and three ~6oz pours of lambic and geuze.

Mash Tun

The mash tun; this is where the magic starts

The first step in brewing is extracting sugar from your grains by soaking them in hot water; you’re essentially making a big ‘ol batch of grain tea.  Some beers aim to emphasize grain character and use lots of flavorful and/or roasted grains – think stouts and porters. Cantillon brews lambics, which are all about the yeast and bacteria (henceforth “bugs”).  The grain bill is composed of mild grains (wheat and barley) that won’t compete with the flavors being produced by the bugs.

The sugary liquid that comes out at the end of this step is known as wort.

Brew Kettle

The brew kettle

After you make your sugary wort, you need to boil it to sterilize the liquid to ensure you’re only adding the yeast and bacteria you want in your fermentation.

Boiling is also where you add your “boil addition” hops. Hops do three things to beer: (1) they have antibacterial properties that inhibit certain nasties from growing in the beer (2) they make the beer bitter, and (3) they impart flavor. Again, lambic is all about the bugs, so Cantillon uses hops that have been aged for 3 years to lose most of their aromatic flavors.

Coolship

This is about half of the open inoculation vessel; it stretches right of frame

Nearly all beers are made by cooling down the wort and adding carefully selected yeast and bacteria in a sterile environment. Cantillon is not like most other beers. They employ a process known as “spontaneous fermentation.” In this case, they have a big shallow open-top copper dish in the attic that they pump the hot wort into. The high exposed surface area makes the wort cool down faster, and also lets in a bunch of yeast and bacteria from the air. These bugs will become the fermenters that turn the wort into beer.

It’s not all random chance; because Cantillon has been brewing here for over 100 years, the rafters above the vessel host colonies of yeast and bacteria friendly to the brewing process.

Fermentation

Once the inoculated with wild bacteria and yeast, the proto-beer is pumped into wooden barrels. It is in these barrels that the yeast and bacteria will convert the sugar extracted from the grain into alcohol – the miracle of fermentation! Wild bugs tend to act slower than their commercial counterparts, but they are given plenty of time to do their job (3 years, at Cantillon). While most beers have some unfermented sugars left at the end, Cantillon’s are incredibly dry, with nearly all of the sugars converted to alcohol.

Blending and Fruiting

Once the lambic is ready, it can be put into bottles and shipped out to the world. The classic beer made from lambic is gueuze, a blend of 1, 2, and 3 year old lambic.

Cantillon also bottles beer that have had fresh fruit. When we were there they had just received a bunch of wine grapes that they were destemming for addition to the lambic.

Bottling and Labeling

If you’re a Cantillon fanboy like I am, the picture of a wall of Fou’foune will make you start salivating. Otherwise I guess it just looks like a lot of bottles:

I have seen the promised land

The labeling operation has that classic old factory look. Here you can see labels waiting to be applied to those lovely ‘foone bottles.

Love the beer glass next to the bottling line. Gotta stay hydrated on the shift.

Again, limited audience that will be excited about these things, but OMG WTF FOUNE JÉROBOAM!

A jéroboam is 3 liters (twice the size of a magnum). Don’t worry, I had to look it up too.

???

They called me mad at the academy. I’ll show them!

I saw this machine in the brewery. I have no idea what it is. It looks like something operated by a man with a white lab coat and unmanageable hair.

Drinking

The most important step in any brewing process. Cantillon has a lovely little space downstairs for enjoying the wonders on sale. In addition to a nice tap selection (lambic, geuze, kriek, and st gilloise for ~2.5 EUR), they also have bottles of rare and hard to find stuff.

No, I don’t know what I’m doing.

We started with the Carignan, a beer that has only been sold at the brewery itself. It’s a 2 year old single-barrel lambic with the addition of red wine grapes. Those grapes were front and center, definitely the most “wine-y” beer I have tasted. Just lovely.

We also got a bottle of the Lou Pepe Framboise (think juicy funky raspberries), and did some sharing with other tables to sample more of the goods. We also tried:

• Zwanze 2012, a lambic with organic rhubarb (?!). Bizarre stuff, lots of vegetal flavor. Still delicious.
• Grand Cru Bruscella from 2012. This is an aged lambic that is not bottle conditioned (read: flat). The flavors were interesting, but totally flat beer is still a hard one for me.
• Iris. A dry-hopped Cantillon that would be a great every day beer if you could find it.

Buying

Also a very important step. I got a case of the good juice. Now I just need to get it home.

I still need to do a write-up on my excellent MEI Voyager pack, but the key take-away is it holds a case of Cantillon.

Verdict

There is no reason not to go here if you are in Belgium. Even if you (*gasp*) don’t like sour beer, it’s a classic brewery that’s worth the visit.

We checked out Fortuna Brewery’s Komes Baltic Porter at our meat-filled bash on a Polish farm.  It was the highest rated thing we could find in the Polish grocery store.

Why hello table full of alcohol.

My tasting notes are… scattered.  You may see the table full of beers behind the Komes Porter Bałtycki. Or perhaps the straw poking out from one of the Gold Rushes I was making for our hosts. You may even see a bottle of jäger prowling in the background. No I’m not that kind of lush; there were 8 other people there. Most of them Polish.  And honestly I’m pretty sure I didn’t touch the master of hunters. But there was enough else going on and it was long enough ago that it’s fair to say I am an unreliable witness.

Here are the things I remember:

• Lots of dark roasted malt flavor. I’m usually not a fan of especially malty beers, but I did like this guy.
• Rich dark fruits and chocolate.
• Not overly sweet or cloying. This surprised me; usually high ABV dark beers are borderline syrup.
• Well hidden alcohol (9%, but you’d never know it).

It’s not a style of tried much before, but I thought it was a really well put-together beer. I would buy it again, and it’s worth checking out if you have the chance. Bring some friends. Or a sleeping bag.

La Cagole – La Cagole de Marseille

La Cagole de Marseille. Honestly one of the worst beers I have ever had

You have been warned: do not drink this beer. It is horrible. I’m actually not sure it’s technically beer; the ingredients list does not even include hops. It just tastes like sugary malt and food coloring. Avoid.

Thiriez / Jester King – La Petite Princess

This beer is actually delicious.

This is a much more enjoyable brew.  It’s a collaboration between Thiriez and Jester King. Thiriez is kind of the OG of French craft brewing that does mostly lighter hoppy things.  Jester King is a Texas institution that specializes in saisons and sours. The result is about what you’d expect:a hop-forward saison that’s light, balanced, and super drinkable (especially with that sessionable 3% abv).  I wish this is what Heineken tasted like.

Get Radical – Mars Needs Women

Weird but satisfying bretted saison

This beer is… different. It’s brewed on Thiriez’s equipment in collaboration with a couple of guys at La Cave a Bulles (a Parisian bottle shop) under the label Get Radical.  This particular beer started as Train to Mars, then went into secondary fermentation with brettanomyces and honey in an oak barrel.

The brett character is there but not overwhelming, but something (maybe old hops plus honey?) introduces a really strong basil note to the beer. We paired it with some stinky cheese/bread/tomatoes and it was a perfect accompaniment. I’m not sure how much I’d enjoy it without food to balance the herb notes, but it’s good at a picnic.

Boon – Mariage Parfait Kriek 2011

God bless Frank Boon, god bless belgium

Okay, this one’s not actually French.  It’s brewed by Boon in Belgium. Mariage Parfait is their premium line, (lit: “perfect marriage”), and Kriek indicates cherry’s added. In this case, there’s about a third pound of cherries for each 375ml bottle, or 3.3 lbs/gallon.

I was a little nervous about this particular bottle; we picked it up in a little shop in Paris that was well stocked but poorly climate controlled (and this was on the top shelf). It’s a continual heat wave, and it was a little sticky in there – you can see the label was peeling off.

This beer was brewed in 2011 and had been sitting in the bottle for another 2 years after the brewery released it. The extra age was intriguing to me, for reasons I’ve outlined previously, but I wasn’t sure if high temperatures might have damaged it.

The cork blew off as soon as I loosened the cage, which is something I have not had happen to me before.  Definitely a live one. Once into a glass, it was clear my fears were baseless. It is pretty much a perfect Kriek. Lots of ripe cherry flavor, not too sweet, and well balanced by geuze funk. Plus a ton of carbonation. I wish I had bought all the ones on the shelf.

Protip: Boon Oude Geuze is one of the easier to find Belgian Geuzes. You can pick it up at Whole Foods in most states; some of them even get the Mariage Parfait line.

Cantillon – Iris

Cantillon + Hops. Yum.

Another Belgian. Cantillon’s Iris is a bit of an odd-ball. It’s spontaneously fermented, but uses a different grain and hop bill from the rest of their lambics. It’s not blended, so it’s not a geuze. They also dry hop for two weeks immediately before bottling. The result is a beer with character notably different from Cantillon’s other offerings.

I am not a hop head, and expected not to like this as much as their other stuff, but was happily wrong. The hops are present but not overwhelming, and enhance a lot of the notes from the lambic. Quite a nice beer if you can get it.

Tilquin is one of the smaller lambic brewers; they make two beers, their Oude Geuze (1, 2, and 3 year lambics), and their plum lambic (Oude Quetsche). This year they also did a small batch of blackberry, Oude Mûre, which is the bottle above.

Scenic balcony not included

I’m a big fan of Tilquin’s regular geuze, and this bottle doesn’t stray far from it. Same funk/barnyard notes, not too tart. The berry flavor comes out mostly as underripe blackberry or raspberry; lemony and tangy, but not the rich dark fruit flavors of a ripe blackberry off the vine.  It’s most like the blackberry character from the Almanac’s Farmers Reserve, if you’ve tried that bottle.

As you can see from the picture, the color is beautiful, and the head is mostly non-existent. I expect this is a bottle that would improve with time in a cellar, given that there is less of that fresh fruit character to lose, and it could do with a little more carbonation.

The Tilquin Mûre is a neat beer, and if you’re lucky enough to see it you should buy one and let it sit a year or two.