Belgium is a curious country. Its northern half is peopled by Flemish speakers (Dutch, basically) and the south by French speakers. A fissure of attitude separates these halves — known locally as Flanders and Wallonia — as decisively as language, and things got so contentious that for nearly two years in 2010 and 2011, Belgium limped along with a caretaker government as each member of the couple fumed about the other. The rivalries date back to the nineteenth century, and there’s little hope things will get better any time soon. For a country without much national identity and few cultural touchstones, it may be that the only thing that really unites the country is beer. But unite it beer does and has done since the time of the Romans.
We know this because Julius Caesar wrote about his encounters with the pastoral Belgae tribes, whom he admired, calling them the “bravest of the three peoples” of Gaul. (He admitted that bravery may not have been the sole province of wine-drinking people.) But even before Caesar they were known for their beer — decades earlier the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus wrote that they “make a drink out of barley which they call zythos or beer.”
Over the centuries Belgians brewed a rich tapestry of beer styles. In Flanders to the northeast, they drank dark beers. The region around Brussels and extending east constituted a wheat beer belt. In the south they drank rustic saisons. One of the best portraits of this diversity comes from the mid-nineteenth century, when a brewer from Leuven decided to tour Europe and document the brewing practices he found. Georges Lacambre’s (sometimes rendered La Cambre) Traité Complet de la Fabrication des Bières is an amazing survey of traditional brewing of the time. His 1851 work, which expanded on writing done earlier in the century by two men, J. B. Vrancken and Auguste Dubrunfaut, details a fascinating world of brewing — great variation on the one hand and inconceivably baroque brewing methods on the other. Most of the beers he wrote about don’t exist any longer, but we can see in these distant ancestors the DNA that would lead to most of the styles currently brewed in Belgium.
Modern Belgian beers have a reputation for quirkiness, and reading through Lacambre, you can see it has always been thus. He described around 20 different beers (he actually found more but took time to document only the “major” ones), and only one was what we’d consider “normal.” To begin with, those old brewers used lots of different grains. Only three used all-barley formulations; oats were used in more than half the beers, and wheat in even more. Some brewed with spelt. The mashing regimes were very exotic. The reason had to do with taxes — fees were levied based on the size of their mash tuns, not their production volume. As a result, they all used tiny tuns, which they packed with as much grain as possible. (“Turbid mashing,” the method still used to make lambics, is a legacy of these laws.)
Breweries typically did a series of mashes to get all the sugars from those overstuffed tuns. Some had auxiliary vessels for mashing (apparently those weren’t taxed); and one, bière blanche de Louvain, required five vessels as well as baskets and pans to strain and spoon out wort, not to mention “eight to ten strong brewers” to manage the ordeal.
Boil lengths were shocking. The average boil was 9 hours. Only four of the beers Lacambre found used boils of 3 hours or less, while five ran over 12 hours, and the longest took 20 hours. Drinkers regarded deep color as a sign of wholesomeness, so in most cases the long boils were used to darken wort. Brewers sometimes cheated by adding the mineral lime (not, strangely enough, dark malt), a practice Lacambre not unreasonably said was “very detrimental to the interests and even the health of consumers.”
Writing a century later, the famous brewing professor Jean de Clerck did another survey of Belgium’s extant styles and found many of the same ones Lacambre described, including blanche de Louvain, Peeterman, Diest, uytzet (uitzet), Antwerp barley beer, Hoegaarden, and Liege saison. Many of these were, alas, in their final days. Lager was already eating away at the traditional styles, which suffered from poor quality. Rustic wasn’t always a positive adjective; the bottled lagers were more consistent and stayed fresh longer than local brews. The lambic maker Frank Boon witnessed the transition as it was happening in the 1960s. “I remember my uncles said that in the summer they could keep their beer for two weeks. Midsize breweries had beer that could keep one month or six weeks. In the 1960s, Stella Artois was the first to make beer that could keep for six months.”
Modern Belgian brewing is a direct part of this long lineage, and we see in it many of the echoes of the past (18-hour boils excepted). Rustic grains, spices, dark beers, sour and wild-fermented beers, beers of impressive strength. But twenty-first-century Belgian beer is also a product of modernity, so methods have changed considerably. Moreover, despite brewing the largest range of indigenous beers, Belgium also has developed features that are consistent, or at least common, across the country. To wit:
Yeast character. The word “Belgian,” as used to describe certain kinds of beers, refers to yeast. Belgians practice “high fermentation” (warm fermentation), and it is often very warm when compared to other countries. Mid-70s F (24°C) for pitching is not unusual, and terminal temps in the 80s or 90s (27–37°C) is not unheard of. The result is beer with tons of fruity esters and spicy phenols. The fact that American brewers rarely have the temerity to let their temps run as high as Belgians when making these styles is evident in the subdued flavors that result.
Secondary fermentation/bottle conditioning. Nearly every ale brewery in Belgium has a “warm room.” It’s a temperature-controlled room where bottles ripen while bottle-conditioning. For Belgians the carbonation is only a secondary effect — the real goal is secondary fermentation in the bottle. That’s when the yeast flavors mature and evolve. It’s why you mostly don’t find Belgium’s famous ales on tap; to properly develop, those beers must go through this secondary fermentation.
Sugar and strength. It’s common for Belgian beers to be strong; 7% and higher is completely typical. To keep the beers light on the palate and attenuative, breweries regularly use sugar, often in high proportion. (Occasionally they use adjunct grains, often deploying a cereal cooker, to achieve the same thing.) Belgium has not had a strong history of hoppy beers, and one of the reasons is that these thin beers do not receive bitterness well. As the influence of American brewing arrived in Belgium, it took the breweries there a decade to figure out how to use hops without making the beers unpleasantly bitter. Also note: Nearly all breweries just use dextrose, not whatever it is Americans think “candi” sugar is. Plain old corn sugar is the ticket.
Spices. Only a minority of beers contains spices — but perhaps more than the average drinker realizes. The judicious use of spice accentuates yeast characteristics, and breweries use spice even when it is very difficult to recognize. (Rochefort, for example, uses a pinch of coriander in their beers, a flavor no one can identify.) Some beers use obvious spice, of course, but even when they do, the intent is to mimic flavors already extant in the beer, not to create a treacly stew.
There are many other characteristics common in Belgian brewing — the use of wheat, oats, and other grains; coruscating effervescence; sourness from wild fermentation — that are typical in the tradition, if not characteristic of it. But the wide variability among Belgium’s beers belies the collection of shared features that make them consistent in many ways.
For centuries, Belgium was a dark ale country. There was a separate tradition of wheat beers, colloquially known as “white beers,” but barley beers were typically amber to brown. Pale lager was late in coming to Belgium, but local breweries, like those in Britain, Germany, and France, scrambled to make sparkling ales to hold on to their customers. Belgium being Belgium, the resulting beers weren’t much like pale lager. They were stronger and much more strongly flavored. But they did have wonderful golden hues, bright effervescence, and light bodies. And they became popular fast.
(There is a fascinating irony to the emergence of golden ales. Once, deep amber and brown colors signaled to consumers that a beer was well made — the color was proof they had gone through a long boil. If breweries weren’t making good beers, they at least artificially darkened them to try to fool customers. When lagers arrived, customer demands shifted, and breweries felt compelled to make ever more clarion, sparkling ales. Within a few decades, breweries felt they had to make certain kinds of golden ales to demonstrate they were of the quality of international lagers.)
So in the twentieth century Belgium began adding to its retinue of amber and brown beers. What emerged was a range of golden beers running from what are sometimes called “Belgian pale ales” (around 5.5%) to midrange ales that don’t really have a name to the strong ones of 8 to 10% that are called variously tripels or strong golden ales. (More often, the brewery affixes no style at all to their beer.) Compared to the older, darker ales, they’re not that different in the way they’re brewed or even in their range of flavors. Indeed, today amber, brown, and pale ales are all made in a similar manner, the styles differing only in the malts used to color them. To understand how these beers are made, we’ll turn to the most famous producer of blond ales — Moortgat, which makes the famous Duvel.
Duvel is a great example of this style because, like Belgian ales themselves, the beer has gone through a transformation. Duvel dates to the early part of the twentieth century, back to a time when it was an amber ale. In 1970 Duvel Moortgat decided to update its flagship beer to suit modern tastes. They collaborated with the famous scientist Jean de Clerck, who had already consulted with Chimay, Rochefort, and Orval. The formulation they settled on is the modern incarnation of the beer — one of the most influential in Belgium’s history.
Duvel’s name comes from the Flemish word for devil, and although it goes back to the 1920s, it’s especially fitting for this incarnation. With its towering effervescence, which piles a snowy head atop a roiling golden body, this is one of the most beautiful beers in the world. The high carbonation gives it a silky decadence, which leads to that famously rich palette of flavors — slightly honeyed malt to layered ester profile to surprisingly insistent spicy hopping. What you don’t detect is the alcohol — the devil in the details — and more than a few people have been seduced by this sumptuous, beautiful beer to drink too much. Thus is the Devil’s allure.
Buoyed by the success of Duvel, the brewery was able to begin buying smaller breweries, assembling an impressive portfolio that includes Liefmans, Maredsous, La Chouffe, De Koninck, Ommegang, and most recently, Boulevard and Firestone Walker. Duvel remains the engine that powers the empire, though, and is one of the principal standard-bearers for Belgian beer outside the country. If any beer can stand in for an entire country’s approach to brewing, it’s Duvel.
One of the most reproduced beer photographs in the world is an exterior shot of the Duvel brewery, on which is written (in Dutch), “Shh, here ripens the Duvel.” The man who oversees that ripening is Hedwig Neven. He has been with the company since 1997 and has been the master brewer for the past decade and a half. He started out studying chemistry but then finished his PhD with the sponsorship of Duvel Moortgat.
Most of the acquisitions have happened since Neven has helmed Duvel. From his laboratory in Puurs, he checks the technical quality of the beer and coordinates activities of all Moortgat’s breweries. Whenever Duvel Moortgat acquires another brewery, Neven sets about improving the technical aspects of the process — though he leaves local brewmasters to keep making the beer according to the original recipes. He has also been entrusted with the Duvel brand and has been slowly releasing extensions such as Duvel Single Fermented and Tripel Hop.
Many of the chapters in this book offer special techniques or point to key ingredients as a way of creating authentic versions of traditional ales. The Belgian tradition does include a few interesting quirks — warm rooms, high fermentation temperatures and exotic yeasts, sugar — but sometimes there are no tricks. Duvel is perhaps the best example of any Belgian beer that gross technique will only take you so far. It is one of the few beers that has never really been reproduced, and not because Hedwig Neven keeps his secrets. It’s because the brewery has been making this beer for decades and has slowly, slowly fine-tuned all the elements so that a bubbling tulip glass of Duvel looks something like a magic trick.
It’s not that any one element is hard to manage; rather, it’s when you start stacking them together that they look impossible. Let’s start with the attenuation. Just getting the beer as dry as Duvel does is a challenge, but the trouble is that in doing so the brewery lays everything bare. There are no margins for error because everything is revealed. Homebrewers usually have some wiggle room in their numbers. But the art of truly accomplished Belgian ales lies in precision — mash, fermentation, and warm room temperatures must be nailed exactly.
It’s not that any one element is hard to manage; rather, it’s when you start stacking them together that they look impossible.
All beers depend on balance. Belgian beers often use alcohol strength, carbonation, and attenuation rather than hops to balance sweet bodies and florid ester displays. Darker ales may contain hints of nuts or cocoa to aid in the endeavor, and some yeast strains contribute balancing phenolics. Only a few beers bring hops into the equation, and Duvel is a case in point. It has all the usual hallmarks of a Belgian ale — a silken body whipped by carbonation, a candy-sweet palate, and gentle floral and fruity esters — but it adds a peppery layer that comes from both phenols and spicy European hopping.
The lesson I’ve taken from tasting and brewing these beers and visiting breweries in Belgium is that the way to perfect them is slowly, variable by variable at a time. First you have to master the individual parts and then adjust them so that they work in concert. You have to find what works and try to reproduce it as closely as possible every time. So far as I know, there aren’t any tricks with Belgian ales — you just have to put in the time.
Let’s start with the body. Pale Belgian ales are amazingly lithe beers born of very high rates of attenuation. Duvel finishes out at 1.5° P/1.006, achieving its incredible attenuation through a multistage mash that breaks the malt down into perfectly digestible parts. In many cases you may look at these recipes and think about skipping some of the rests, but that’s less advisable here. You want all those enzymes working in your favor throughout the mash.
Neven was a bit vague on the malts he uses for Duvel — not atypical for a Belgian brewer — but says you can achieve that rich golden color with pilsner malts alone. “Typically, a strong blond Belgian ale will use pale malts and an amount of easily fermentable sugars such as dextrose in the brewhouse. The ratio depends on the specificities of the beer you desire.” You could achieve a slightly deeper gold with a hint of Vienna or Munich malt. There are always trade-offs; Vienna will give a fuller flavor and will increase the body, sending the beer tripel-ward. All-pilsner malts require longer boiling to achieve deeper colors. In either case, that multirest mash will also help you create that thick, pillowy head. There are some ways to help this along, such as including a touch of Carapils or wheat in the grist, but if you skip a rest, you’ll sacrifice some fermentability.
Unusual for most Belgian beers, hops are a big part of Duvel’s palate. It only tips the scale at around 30 IBUs, but Duvel tastes bitter. This is a lesson in extreme attenuation and slender malt profiles — and it’s what makes hoppy Belgian beers challenging. Because they have so little body, Belgian ales can easily be overwhelmed by bittering hops. Use hops with clean, gentle bitterness — Neven recommends continental hops. Belgians don’t do much late-addition hopping; it’s just not part of the flavor profile. Indeed, Duvel doesn’t add hops at all later in the boil, and it’s evident in the beer’s stiff, almost Czech-like hop profile.
Gentle but insistent hopping is the secret of Duvel. I don’t believe that strongly in secrets, but I do know that we control this balance aspect better than others.
— Hedwig Neven, DuvEl Moortgat
Finally, as with all Belgian beer, so much of the process happens after the boil. Duvel goes through a complex process of fermentation and lagering, dropping to near freezing at the conclusion of primary fermentation. It spends time in a warm room for secondary fermentation and then is dropped to around 41°F (5°C) for six weeks to condition. The cold temperatures allow the beer to ripen and also clear, and it’s a good technique to adopt for homebrewers who lack filtration.
One thing Duvel is not secretive about is yeast. Theirs, they proudly note, originally came from a Scottish brewery. I have no reason to doubt that, but neither do I think it has much relevance to the yeast the brewery uses today. Scottish yeast is famous for making very clean, ester-free beer. Duvel’s yeast, by contrast, is hugely characterful.
This is what happens when yeast takes on “house character,” evolving to behave differently (Duvel survives very warm temps; Scots ferment on the coldest edge of the ale spectrum) and produce different flavors. Duvel’s yeast may have once been Scottish; today it is very much Belgian.
Hedwig Neven
Duvel
Ferment with Wyeast 1388/White Labs WLP570, starting at 68°F (20°C), encouraging it to rise to the upper 70s F (25–26°C) (but stopping before it gets to 80°F [27°C]) for 5 days. If you are using a standard carboy and have no way to control temperature, consider pitching a little warmer (72°F [22°C]), since the yeast activity in 5 gallons won’t create the same temperature rise commercial breweries do.
Bottle-condition only. These beers are typically built around serious carbonation levels, so shoot for 4 to 5 volumes. Re-ferment at 75°F (24°C) for 2 weeks, then condition at 40 to 45°F (4–7°C) for 6 weeks. (You shouldn’t have to add yeast, as enough yeast will be left over to re-ferment. You just add sugar.) This conditioning period will allow the beer to mature and clarify. Note that many standard bottles are not built for this level of carbonation, so stockpile a collection of thick-walled bottles from such breweries as Duvel and Orval that can handle the pressure.
Notes: This follows a typical Belgian mash, though in some cases brewers might begin with a ferulic acid rest at 113°F (45°C) to boost phenols, either continuing on as written, or skipping the step at 131°F (55°C). Neven notes that the sugar is “typically dosed in the kettle, or even in the cold wort stream.” Hop selection is not critical, but you should shoot for spicy, aromatic hops. “Most of the time continental European, Slovenian, and Czech hops can be used, added in multiple stages during boiling.” Do not use American varieties if you are shooting for a typical Belgian flavor profile.
This recipe has been groomed to optimize the flavors in Duvel, but the basic approach and process is applicable to most Belgian styles. It will work on lighter pale ales, amber ales, and strong abbey-style ales, as well as standard brown ales that don’t use wild yeasts. Belgian brewers use basically the same approach, varying just the recipe: they use a base of pilsner malt with small proportions of specialty malt for color; nearly all use sugar or a lightening agent (corn, for example); they seek well-attenuated beers — if not always as attenuated as Duvel; they don’t use many hops. The beers are bottle-conditioned and almost always effervescent; while generally strong (6.5–12%), they can be as low as 3 or 4%.
The differences among these beers rest far more on execution than recipe or method. It comes from yeast selection, dialing in the fermentation and bottle-conditioning temperatures, and levels of attenuation. Many Belgian ales use wheat, and some may use spelt or spices; others might be dark, some might even be hoppy, but the contours of the Belgian ale, whether it’s called a dubbel, an abbey, a Belgian pale, or a strong golden, are the same.
If you are making basic Belgian ales of any color (pale ales, ambers, browns, dubbels, strong dark abbey ales), the principles don’t differ wildly. You are going to use a mashing regime similar to the one listed here (more on that in a moment), you’ll be adding sugar, fermenting warm, and doing bottle conditioning. You might alter the mash schedule depending on the attenuation you’re seeking. Duvel is made for very high attenuation, but some of these beers have a fuller body. If you’re looking for more body, your rests will look more like this: 145 to 148°F (63–64°C) for 30 minutes, 158 to 162°F (70–72°C) for 25 minutes, and a mash out of 167 to 172°F (75–78°C) for 5 minutes. If you’re looking to create spicy phenolics, you may want to add a ferulic acid rest at 113°F (45°C) — though many Belgian yeast strains will give some phenolics just by dint of the very warm fermentation.
That leaves you mainly with the question of color and subtle flavors, all of which can be achieved through the grist. I spoke to Kerkom’s Marc Limet, who makes an absolutely wonderful dark ale (Bink Bruin) with a rich cacao character and a biscotti-dry finish. Is there any secret to darker ales? Not really, he says. He alludes to the convoluted processes of old, but says that “now you have so many choices in good malts, dark sugars, and other things you can use to brew a dark beer.” At one time, breweries may have boiled their beers for 16 hours to make them brown; now they just add darker malts and sugars.
Following are a few guidelines should you wish to make one of these darker ales. Note that where possible, always try to source Belgian malts.
Amber ales (5–7% ABV, 15–20 IBU). Until a hundred years ago, the lightest that barley beers got was amber. These are fuller bodied and sweeter than pale ales, generally with a somewhat subdued yeast profile (at least for a Belgian ale). Make an all-malt grist using Belgian Munich for color and pale ale malt.
Brown ales (4.5–8% ABV, 18–35 IBU). Slightly different from the dark monastic ales, Belgian browns have a touch of bitterness, either in the form of cocoa or roast, but just enough to balance the beer. Use a grist with some combination of dark caramel sugar, a dark caramel malt (not Special B, which will turn it in the direction of an abbey ale), Munich malt, or biscuit malt to build color, sweet flavor, and body. Include a small amount of roasted malt (1–2 percent) to add a hint of roast and drying flavor. Use either pilsner or pale ale malt as the base malt. Yeast character is typically mild (again, for Belgian ales).
Dubbels (6–8% ABV, 15–25 IBU). Dubbels differ from brown ales in the following ways: they lack any roasty flavors, they are sweeter, and they usually have more yeast-driven flavors. Build color with dark caramel sugar, Belgian Munich malt, and caramel malt (including Special B), and use pilsner as a base malt.
Strong, dark abbey ales (9–12% ABV, 20–45 IBU). Strong, dark abbey ales — sometimes called quadrupels — follow the same prescription as dubbels but are brewed to higher gravities.
There is some confusion about the sugars used to make Belgian ales. Many homebrewers know about Belgian “candi” sugar — it is sold as cubes or rocks of raw-looking sugar. Apparently there was a time when Belgians used this stuff regularly, but now they typically use liquid dextrose or sucrose. (It’s why Neven references adding it directly to the cold wort stream.)
When making dark ales, dark sugar is a nearly ubiquitous ingredient, but there’s a catch. As Stan Hieronymus describes in Brew Like a Monk, this isn’t the same stuff you buy at the homebrew store called “dark candi sugar.” He explains: “Caramel syrups are sold in Europe, giving brewers a variety of choices not available in the United States. Many American brewers use dark candi (rocks) as a substitute, but while the darkest provide a rummy, unrefined character, they don’t come close to replicating the caramelized flavors found in darker Belgian ales.” There is at least one company selling this now in the United States (Dark Candi), and you might be able to track down other caramelized sugars from Europe on the Internet.
Let’s spend a moment talking about yeast. Two things affect the production of flavor compounds: temperature and pitching rates. The higher the temperature, the more “stuff” yeast produces — it’s why lagers are cold fermented. For Belgian beers warm ferments are important to producing the esters and phenols that give the beer its character. But there’s a point at which yeast starts producing stuff you don’t want — solventlike flavors, for example. The yeast strains cultured from Duvel sold in the United States (Wyeast 1388 and White Labs WLP570) are fairly clean and neutral at lower temperatures and need to get into the 70s F (21–26°C) before they start producing fruit and spice.
The harder yeast has to work, the more it will produce that “stuff” as well. Breweries control this by pitching more or less yeast, as measured by millions of cells per milliliter of wort. A rule of thumb is a million cells per mL for every point of gravity on the Plato scale (0.004 of specific gravity). A 10 Plato beer (1.040) would therefore require a pitch of 10 million cells per mL. Underpitching stresses the yeast, causing it to create more esters and phenols. And guess what? Many Belgian breweries pitch at lower rates than breweries elsewhere.
Duvel pitches at 7.5 million cells per mL, which is quite a bit lower than you would expect for a 1.069 beer (though it’s also true that the simple sugars Belgians add to their grists make them easier to ferment). By comparison, one pack of Wyeast or White Labs contains 100 billion cells, or 6 million cells per mL in a 5-gallon batch. Even by Duvel’s standard, that’s quite low, and you should be worried about underpitching too much. Low pitch rates can lead to anemic fermentation, stuck fermentation, high terminal gravity, and the production of higher/fusel alcohols and diacetyl.
Underpitching is risky, and I personally never want to risk sluggish fermentations. If you pitch two packs of yeast or create a starter, your rates will exceed Duvel’s. However, if you monitor the temperature closely and make sure it rises to around 75°F (24°C) (and not more than 79°F [26°C]), you should get plenty of yeast character. As with all things, if you’re curious about the effect of these techniques, experiment. Underpitching is risky, but there’s a reason Belgians do it.
The twentieth century was not kind to funky Belgian beer styles (see here), and following the Second World War, they were dying off in droves. One of the more famous local specialties was brewed in the tiny hamlet of Hoegaarden (pronounced hoo garden), a milky-white, acidic ale not wildly dissimilar to lambic. Belgians were turning to industrially made lagers and soda pop, and rapidly dwindling sales forced the last of the Hoegaarden breweries, Tomsin, to shut down in 1957.
Fortunately, it wasn’t long before Pierre Celis, a milkman who had once worked at the Tomsin brewery, decided to revive it. He consulted with a retired brewer to create a new recipe in 1966, one that harnessed spicing in place of older, more rustic techniques. It took decades for the beer to find a wide audience, but in 1995, a division within Coors launched a beer that would be renamed Blue Moon. It was lightly wheaty, with a balance of orangey sweetness and a crisp finish. It went from extinction to being one of the most widely brewed styles in the world. In 1960 not a single person on the planet expected Belgian white beer (wit or witte in Flemish, bière blanche in French) to be the best-selling ale in America in the early twenty-first century, but that’s exactly what has happened.
When a group of Belgian beer proponents, including importers Don Feinberg and Wendy Littlefield and officials from the Belgian brewery Duvel Moortgat, founded Brewery Ommegang in 1997, Americans had little concept of “Belgian ale.” As importers, Don and Wendy specialized in Belgian beers and had been championing breweries such as Duvel, Rodenbach, and Dupont for 15 years. With Ommegang they built not only a brewery but a mechanism for educating Americans about the Belgian brewing tradition. It was purpose-built to make beer like Belgians do — and look like a Belgian brewery to boot.
By any measure, the endeavor was successful. Ommegang has established itself as one of the most respected breweries in the country, and now Belgian styles proliferate. One of the best examples of Ommegang’s influence is saison. Farmhouse ales are now standard styles in many breweries’ rotations, but when Ommegang introduced Hennepin in the late 1990s, there was Saison Dupont and not a lot else. It was Hennepin, much more than the Saison Dupont, that introduced Americans to the style. With each release, Ommegang made Americans aware of ambrée, dubbel, Belgian pale, and strong dark ales.
They were not the first to introduce witbier when they released Witte a dozen years ago, but Ommegang brought a sense of Belgian-ness to their version. Few American witbiers spend time bottle conditioning, but Ommegang’s witbiers rest in a 75°F (24°C) warm room to finish a secondary fermentation. Along with Allagash (White) and Unibroue (Blanche de Chambly), Ommegang revealed to the world depths not evident in Blue Moon and other earlier examples.
In the past few years, Ommegang has taken further advantage of its sibling breweries — Duvel Moortgat bought out Feinberg and Littlefield in 2003 — by releasing such beers as Gnomegang (with Brasserie d’Achouffe), Spiced Saison (Boulevard), Zuur (Brouwerij Liefmans), and of course Duvel Rustica (with Duvel). Belgian ales are no longer uncommon in the United States, and Ommegang is one of the reasons that is so.
Very few people have been inducted by the Belgian Brewers Guild into the Knighthood of the Brewers’ Mash Staff — a kind of hall of fame for masters of the Belgian tradition — but Phil Leinhart is one. He has over 25 years of brewing experience, including stops in England and Germany, brewing on systems as small as brewpubs and as large as Anheuser-Busch’s. He arrived at Brewery Ommegang in 2007, refining processes, expanding production, and adding many more beers to the rotation. In 2011 and 2016 Leinhart’s Witte won the Great American Beer Festival gold medal in the witbier category.
It’s usually not necessary to dip into the distant past to understand beer styles, but with witbier it’s instructive. The small town of Hoegaarden, 30 miles west of Brussels, was in the sixteenth century located in a seam between ruling powers — and their tax collectors. This led to a proliferation of local breweries and a style known as Hoegaarden beer. The nineteenth-century brewer Georges Lacambre described that beer this way: it is made “of five to six parts barley malt to two of wheat and one or one and a half of oats.” It went through a typically convoluted mashing process before boiling and then was sent to a coolship for spontaneous fermentation. It was served within a few days, while still fermenting. “This beer is very pale,” wrote Lacambre, “very refreshing and strongly sparkling. When fresh its raw taste has something wild, similar to that of beer from Leuven.”
When Pierre Celis decided to revive this style in the 1960s, he adapted the beer to modern brewing methods, trying to replicate the lactic zing through the use of a crisp, dry yeast and the additions of coriander and bitter orange peel. It was less a re-creation than an impressionistic reimagining. You’d think this would make modern witbiers canvases for broad reinterpretation, but oddly, Celis’s blueprint has become an orthodoxy from which few deviate. There’s no reason this should be the case, and gradually breweries have begun to experiment with different spicing and more rustic (and sometimes wild) yeasts. For homebrewers it’s a style that offers huge possibilities.
As the name implies, these beers were historically a very pale, milky color. This points to the one aspect of the recipe in which it’s important to stay close to historical norms. The zinginess of the palate, the flavors of citrus and spice, the crisp finish — all of these are realms for experimentation, but first we have to make sure the witbier is white and wheaty. Leinhart notes that the “original wits were brewed with ‘wind malt,’ which wasn’t even kilned after germination — just air-dried, so it was extremely pale. Most Belgian brewers use two-row pilsen malt as base for most of their beers. Even standard [American] two-row pale can impart more toasted, malty notes (and color) than I like to see in the style.”
You can use either unmalted or malted wheat — and different breweries make different choices — and in amounts up to 55 percent of the malt bill. Either white or red wheat (the color of the seed coat) is fine, but “some say red wheat contributes to a rounder flavor,” Leinhart notes. At Ommegang, “we use a combination of hard red wheat flakes (raw) and soft white wheat (malted).” The reason, as Leinhart explains it, has to do with particle size and weight. “Raw (unmalted wheat) has a lot of large, high-molecular-weight proteins. Very high amounts of said proteins can create very large particles in beer, which actually decrease the haze because these particles succumb to gravity and settle out. Some malted wheat can stabilize the haze since the large proteins are partially broken down into smaller proteins/peptides during the malting process. The haze is more stable because the smaller particles so formed tend to stay dispersed in the beer longer.” Oats round out the grist and help add to the cloudy appearance and also a rounder mouthfeel, but should be used in amounts around 5 percent of the grist.
Leinhart follows a mash schedule similar to the one Celis originally used, beginning with a ferulic acid rest at 113°F (45°C). As with weizens, some yeast strains convert ferulic acid to 4-vinyl guaiacol, a phenol responsible for a spicy, clovelike flavor. A ferulic acid rest seems typical, but the main mash temperature ranges all over the board. Leinhart’s is very low (144°F [62°C]), while Allagash White is made with a high, single-infusion mash (153 to 155°F [67–68°C]). This starts to get to the flexibility of this ale and how to think about choosing methods to suit the style of wit you prefer.
Phil Leinhart
Ommegang
Ferment with Wyeast 3942, Wyeast 3944, White Labs WLP400, or WLP410 at 70°F (21°C). Rack after primary fermentation (4–5 days), and condition cool for up to 2 weeks.
Bottle-condition or keg. Pierre Celis conducted secondary fermentation typical of Belgian ales; Ommegang does as well, but most breweries do not. Bottle conditioning may subtly change the profile of your wit after it goes through a secondary fermentation.
Notes: Fermentation temperatures may begin as low as 65°F (18°C) or as high as 77°F (25°C). Use higher temperatures to boost production of esters and phenols, lower temperatures for a more neutral beer (and consider how these will interact with your spice choices). The spice suggestions here are low; other sources recommend double or more of the spices. You may also add the spice earlier, after 30 minutes. “This is the way you manage the spice,” Leinhart notes. “Some brewers add it earlier, some later.” You may want a bolder flavor, so adjust to taste. For a crisper, more tart witbier, use up to 3 percent acidulated malt.
Having addressed the body of the witbier, let’s return for a moment to its spirit. Think of a sunny summer day, and imagine what slakes the thirst: a light-bodied, low-alcohol beer that has a hint of sweetness but that relies more on acidity and a crisp finish to temper the enervating heat. To achieve that particular balance, Pierre Celis used coriander, bitter curaçao orange peel, and a dry yeast strain — now the standard for the style.
But others have addressed the spirit of a witbier differently. At Allagash Rob Tod uses a highly attenuative yeast to produce white wine notes and a bone-dry finish. Japan’s Kiuchi brewery adds orange juice, nutmeg, and unmalted barley to Hitachino Nest White Ale. Blue Moon uses sweet Valencia oranges rather than bitter ones, Saint Archer White uses whole navel oranges, and a number of breweries have begun to experiment with fresh citrus zest instead of dried peel.
The upshot is this — there are a lot of different routes you can take to achieve something flavorful and zesty. Let’s consider three different areas where you might address your attention.
The coriander-and-curaçao orthodoxy is hard to shake, but there’s nothing sacred about those spices. Indeed, a number of people find that coriander’s orange sweetness can work against the goal of crispness — it’s an easy spice to overdo. I tend to side with Ommegang’s Leinhart: spices are best in moderation, and you want your beer to taste like a beer. That doesn’t mean you can’t use a number of spices, though. One of my faves is Boulevard’s Two Jokers. Imperializing a witbier is a little odd (Two Jokers is 8% ABV), but the spicing is very understated, despite the additions of cardamom, coriander, orange peel, lavender, and grains of paradise. A number of breweries have used lemongrass to great effect, and chamomile, which Randy Mosher promoted in Radical Brewing, is now common.
But this is one area where commercial brewing lags behind the work of homebrewers. There are dozens of herbs, spices, and other flavorings that may be harnessed to achieve that special witbier spirit — and homebrewers have been experimenting with them for years. When choosing a spice, consider it in the context of other spice, hop, and yeast selections. If you’ve chosen to use a ferulic acid rest to promote spicy phenolics, lavender would harmonize more ably than perfumy elderflower. If you’re using hops to create the impression of citrus, you might use cardamom or chamomile to add complexity. As you work with different spices, you’ll begin to get a sense of what they add, so the combinations will become more intuitive. (See Alternative Witbier Spices, next page.)
The key with spices is subtlety; they should be well blended into the overall character of the beer and not stick out on their own.
— Phil Leinhart, Ommegang
Just about everything this side of jalapeño could and probably has been used in witbiers. (And Cigar City actually did make a jalapeño wit.) Some do seem more appropriate than others, though. Here are a few recommendations.
Cardamom. This sweetish spice gives Indian food its distinctive flavor (think chai tea). It’s extremely potent, so use it sparingly.
Chamomile. Phil Leinhart used this in a double wit and says it “imparted a slightly floral, honeylike quality.” It will increase the perception of sweetness as well.
Citrus zest. In typical witbier preparations dried peels are added for a bitter, slightly orange flavor. Using zest instead turbocharges this effect. Grate the peel of one-half to one whole fruit for a batch of beer, and add at knockout. You’re capturing delicate essential oils, so you don’t want to lose the volatiles. Using limes, Meyer lemon, or other unusual citrus will give it unique flavors.
Elderflower. Back in Lacambre’s time there was a French version of witbier known as bière blanche de Paris made with elderflower. It has a heavy, sweet flavor that can suggest fruit such as lychee. It’s the flavor in St. Germain liqueur.
Fruit juice. Citrus is a natural choice both for flavor and acidity, but other juices can be added for accents. Acidic fruit (raspberries, passion fruit, pomegranate) will achieve a similar effect while other fruits can mimic esters (peach, grapes, watermelon). Let your fancy be your guide.
Ginger. Becoming more common in witbiers, ginger adds an earthy pepperiness.
Heather. Like chamomile, heather gives a honey-sweet flavor and seems to add viscosity.
Lavender. This is another potent and distinctive spice — add too much, and you end up with a strong, soapy beer. Look for culinary lavender rather than buying stalks at the florist’s.
Lemongrass. This is a natural fit with witbier, but it works better when added to the conditioning tank. Heat draws harsher, weedy notes from lemongrass.
Mint. Fresh mint is rich in chemical compounds beyond mouth-tingling menthol (including peppery caryophyllene, citrusy limonene, and piney pinene) and contributes a complex cooling quality.
Orange blossoms. These add a floral orange aroma that will help suggest citrus rather than scream it but are so delicate they should not be added until knockout at the earliest.
Peppercorn. More typical in saisons, white, black, or pink pepper can add not only a spicy kick but also sweetness and aromatics.
Sage. This is an unusual choice, but it works well if you’re shooting for something with a hoppier profile. The savory elements of sage harmonize nicely with earthy or tangy hops.
Thyme. Like sage, thyme’s association with savory dishes makes it a slight outlier, but used sparingly its earthy, woody qualities can fill out an herbal profile. Consider especially lemon thyme, which has a citrusy flavor.
Without speculating too wildly about Pierre Celis’s thinking, one reason to substitute spices for wild yeast would be to mimic compounds produced during fermentation. Standard witbier strains such as White Labs WLP400 and Wyeast 3944 are known as POF+ strains; that is, they have the capacity to convert ferulic acid to the spicy phenol 4-vinyl guaiacol. (The acronym comes from a kind of lager-oriented slur. It stands for “phenolic off-flavor,” which represents the prejudice of a lager brewer, where phenols are verboten. But in wits and weissbiers these are hardly “off” flavors.) Other yeasts produce different compounds in differing arrangements, and these can all be harnessed to add complexity to your beer.
I’ve had great luck with saison yeasts and abbey strains. These kinds of yeasts create wonderful esters and phenols and typically dry beers out to a nice, crisp finish. Good attenuation is important when you’re adding spices, which create the impression of sweetness. White Labs WLP585 and Wyeast 3711 are good choices. Abbey strains produce less intense flavors, but when fermented warm do produce a more specifically Belgian character. I’d recommend White Labs WLP530 or Wyeast 3787, and pitch in the mid-70s to 80°F (24–27°C).
Witbier isn’t known as a hoppy style, but as the “white IPA” trend demonstrates, American hops and spices can work well together. It makes sense: the orangey-citrusy layer created by coriander and orange peel is very much in the same flavor family with hops such as Amarillo, Citra, El Dorado, Meridian, Sorachi Ace, and others. The idea is not to add bitterness but to layer in the flavors and aromas these hops produce at the end of the boil. As with other ingredients in the witbier, the key is choosing hop varieties that complement the spices and fermentation characteristics you’ve selected.
If you really want total authenticity, you could also tinker with wild yeasts and bacteria. The nineteenth-century Hoegaarden beers Lacambre wrote about were served young and tart, after a lactic fermentation but long before wild Brettanomyces had a chance to become active. You can accomplish something similar by mashing and boiling the witbier as usual but first pitching Lactobacillus (Wyeast 5335 or White Labs WLP677). Take regular samples, and taste the wort to assess its level of acidity. When it’s where you want it, bring the wort to a boil, cool it again, and pitch with a witbier yeast. This technique allows you the maximum control over acid levels. For even more control, consider Kettle Souring.
Block 15’s Nick Arzner made a wonderful wild example called Wonka’s Wit. His process is to divide the batch and spontaneously ferment half of it. The other half he inoculates with Lactobacillus. “When the pH drops to 3.4 (one to two days), I rack in with the [spontaneous batch].” (You could use Arzner’s approach, but the Lacto-only method will give you a more stable, predictable beer. Try it first.)
A different approach is less traditional but produces lovely flavors: adding Brettanomyces after fermentation. Because Brett consumes sugars left behind following a Saccharomyces fermentation, it will continue to ferment after primary. I’ve had the best luck with Brettanomyces bruxellensis (White Labs WLP644), which produces lush tropical esters as it finishes out the beer. If you use a highly attenuating yeast such as Wyeast 3711, it will limit the influence of Brettanomyces, giving it just a hint of wildness and great fruitiness.
One of the unexpected successes in the world of beer styles is undoubtedly the saison. According to the beers tracked on BeerAdvocate, since the new century more saisons have been brewed in the United States than all other styles except IPA and pale ales. That’s an amazing turnaround — in the 1970s there were only a couple of these still being made in the world. (Most of the other rustic Belgian styles had already died out, too: Louvain wheat ales, Peeterman, uytzets, the old Hoegaarden beers, and more — all gone.)
It’s even more interesting because the style has no real standard-bearer in terms of sales. Ommegang’s Hennepin may be the closest thing to a “flagship saison,” but it’s hardly a big seller. Here’s another measure of this style’s niche status: although it has grown since I visited in 2011, at the time Brasserie Dupont, the most famous maker of saison in the world, was making just 13,000 barrels of beer across all their brands in total.
So why are there so many of them now? Brewers love saisons. No style gives a brewer more room to fiddle around, or fewer constrains on what she “must” do; no beer is as expressive or sensitive to the brewer’s whim. There are a number of qualities that may be or usually are present, but the only one that’s mandatory is lots of yeast character. No other nonwild ale gets more of its character from yeast than a saison, and that’s what makes them such fun to brew. Because they have no benchmarks for strength, color, mash regime, or hop schedule (spices may be in the mix, too), this chapter differs from the rest. We’ll look at the style generally and discuss some of the different approaches, but it’s impossible to offer a “typical” recipe.
Any discussion of saison must begin with the small farmhouse brewery in Tourpes, near the French border, 45 miles southwest of Brussels. Time seems to move more slowly in the countryside here, where the only thing to tell you it’s the twenty-first century and not the nineteenth are the cars. The buildings, the irregular fields — they appear timeless. Brasserie Dupont is cut from this cloth, changing only when required by the march of time.
Founded in 1844, the brewery made few upgrades in equipment or process for over a century (though the German army did seize the kettle in World War I to make munitions, forcing Dupont to replace it in 1920). As recently as the 1980s they were still malting their own barley and working with a mash tun that predated the brewery. A fire in the malt house caused them to discontinue that activity, and in 2008 the old mash tun finally gave out. But the brewery still uses its own well water, still fires the kettle with an open flame, still manages a very old yeast strain (one of the most famous in the world, and still makes many of the same beers it has for decades.
What’s interesting is that while everyone agrees Saison Dupont is the classic example, almost no one makes a beer like it. Dupont has a strongly mineral quality, and the yeast tends toward phenols. It is hugely effervescent and builds piles of snowy head. The herbal hopping joins with the phenolic yeast strain to create one layer of savory flavors, but these are offset by the vibrant esters that send the beer in a complementary, spritzy citrus direction. It is one of the most layered, complex beers in the world, but it’s also very Belgian.
When Americans make these beers now, they tend to veer away from the minerality, the effervescence, and the herbal notes, accentuating esters and attenuation instead. This points to the conundrum of the saison: the classic example is not much imitated yet stands so tall that it can peer over the shoulder of every brewer making his own version of the style.
There are 10 members of the fourth generation at Dupont, but Olivier Dedeycker is the heart of the operation. “My parents lived 500 meters from here, and my grandfather lived here, so we were always in the brewery. All of my holidays were spent here at the brewery.” He didn’t plan to take up the family business when he went off to college, but it drew him back early on. After graduation in 1990 he started as brewing engineer, working with his famed predecessor and uncle, Marc Rosier, and took over duties as master brewer in 2002.
Beginning in the 1980s, Rosier started adding to the line, and together with Dedeycker expanded it substantially in the 1990s and 2000s. Under Dedeycker the brewery has added a stout and a much-lauded dry-hopped version of Dupont’s saison and gone through a major expansion in brewing operations.
It really stretches the term to call saisons a “style.” They’re more like a state of mind. Originally, they were made where the ingredients were produced — on farms, generally on primitive equipment. Even then they weren’t really a style. Olivier Dedeycker gave me an overview when I visited Brasserie Dupont. “It was what we call in Belgium bière de saison, saison beer, brewed in the winter and drunk in the summer by the people who worked in the fields. So we speak of a beer with a low alcohol content, high bitterness, no residual sugar, so a refreshing beer. At this time they would have beer that was totally different from another one from the next year due to microbiological intervention.” Dedeycker doesn’t mention it, but the truth is that most of these beers were probably close to undrinkable. Farmers made them rarely, on bad equipment, from ingredients that may not have made the food-grade cut.
What’s especially ironic is that now saisons are considered among the most accomplished, sophisticated beers in the world. They are definitely made with certain “rustic” elements (we’ll come to those in a moment), but they are also complex, balanced, and bubbling with flavors that make them a favored beer at the dinner table. Because modern brewers have control of brewhouse specifications, they can take those qualities from the farm and turn them into the pinnacle of the brewer’s art.
If you survey saisons now, there’s huge variation. Jolly Pumpkin makes Bam Noire, a 4.5% dark beer with wild yeast. Ommegang’s Hennepin is 7.7%, blond, made with standard Saccharomyces yeast (though an eclectic strain), and spiced with coriander, orange peel, grains of paradise, and ginger. Saison Dupont is 6.5%, golden, and made with its own strange (but not wild) yeast, 100 percent pilsner malt, fairly noticeable hopping, and very hard water. Boulevard Tank 7 is a booming 8%, also fairly hoppy (using American varieties) but quite pale, made with wheat and corn but a less exotic yeast strain. So to recap: 4.5 to 8%; straw to chestnut; spices or not; wild yeast or not; wheat, corn, or just plain pilsner malt; and hard or soft water. And those are just the ingredients: we haven’t even begun to consider brewing methods.
In terms of brewing there are different considerations in both the hot and cold side. Since it is an old farmhouse style, single-infusion mashing is certainly defensible, but step mashes are more common in Belgium now. Many Belgian breweries give their beer a ferulic acid rest to boost phenols. Some breweries mash at low temperatures to increase attenuation, but some want a thicker mouthfeel, so they mash higher (also a consideration if wild yeast is in the mix). On the cold side, breweries follow the lead of their yeast, fermenting at merely warm temperatures — or sometimes letting the mercury rise beyond what any commercial brewery would normally consider reasonable. In the United States, breweries tend to skip the ferulic acid rest and keep fermentation temperatures comparatively low, producing light esters and downplaying phenols.
So what are the parameters of style? In The Beer Bible I described five qualities that were often associated with saisons, listed here by an increasing likelihood of being present in any given example:
Interesting grain character, which could mean a wheat softness, a silkiness from oats, or the nuttiness of spelt. At one time these beers were made with rougher grain grown for food and not optimized for beer brewing. These beers shouldn’t taste perfectly smooth and refined, like factory white bread; rather, they should have some flavor and texture, like a handmade whole-grain loaf.
A spiciness that may derive from actual spices or come from hops and fermentation. If spices are used, they shouldn’t dominate the beer. Rustic ales should be refreshing, not sweet, herbal stews.
A hazy appearance that might come from a variety of causes — grains or starches, hop matter, or yeast. When breweries began to be able to make perfectly clear (“bright”) beers, it signalled to the customer that there were no infections or quality problems. A bit of haze suggests handmade ales of the prefiltering age.
A crisp, refreshing dryness. Rustic ales were originally used to sate thirsts on hot days, so they couldn’t be very sweet or heavy. Effervescence, minerality, hops, and yeast character may figure into the equation. Most saisons have a thin, vinous character that comes from their highly attenuative yeasts.
A pronounced yeast character, the most important quality in a rustic ale. This one is really nonnegotiable. “Rustic” can almost be read as code for untamed yeasts and the wild, fruity, or spicy compounds they produce. The yeasts need not be wild, but they must be interesting.
One outstanding question: whither the dark saison? As the style was making its ascent, dark saisons were fairly common brewery experiments but are seen less often now. For any beer that emphasizes yeast character, dark malts are a challenge. Roastiness and yeast don’t harmonize well; roastiness blots out esters and often clashes with phenolic notes. Where darker saisons work, it’s when they use malts such as dehusked Carafa malts that contribute a nutty note and very little roastiness. Think of how dunkelweizens manage to taste chocolaty and nutty — flavors that work well with banana and clove.
Given the broad variability in this range of beers, there are few hard guidelines to offer and no recipe given here. Below are a few notes for each stage of the process.
Water. Belgian water is typically hard and can provide an interesting flavor element to the beer. Dupont gets its “very hard” water (Dedeycker’s description) from a 65-foot well and uses it untreated. It is not a crucial element.
Grain bill. Pale malts are the most typical here. Breweries seem to split between pilsner and Belgian pale malts, and adding a color malt is also common. Never use caramel malt; the flavor and body are not appropriate for this style. It’s very common for breweries to use other grains, just as farmers would have done. Any character pickup from wheat, oats, spelt, or even rye malt is perfectly in keeping with this rustic style. To suggest American rusticity, Boulevard’s Steven Pauwels uses corn in Tank 7, a practice that seems increasingly common in American saisons.
Mash schedule. Select a mash schedule appropriate to the type of saison you’re crafting. Use a ferulic acid rest (around 113°F [45°C]) for phenol formation. Mash lower for greater fermentability, possibly using a two-step mash of around 145°F (63°C) and 155°F (68°C), or even use a single-infusion mash of 149°F (65°C). Most of these beers are brewed for a thin body and high attenuation, but there’s nothing that says they must have that profile. At Kerkom Marc Limet makes a wonderful saisony beer called Bink Blond that has a satisfying cakiness to it, along with a hint of wild yeast. Also keep in mind that if you plan to use wild yeast, it will thin and dry out, so make sure you ferment warm (153 to 155°F [67–68°C]) to give the Brett something to munch on.
Boil. At Dupont Olivier Dedeycker boils his saison for 90 minutes over an open flame, which deepens the pilsner malts to a golden color. There’s really no reason to extend it beyond 60 minutes, though, especially if you add a touch of color malt to the grist.
Hopping. Uncharacteristically, Americans have resisted making hoppy saisons, but there’s no reason to. It is a yeast-forward style, but a note of bitterness is not out of place. Even more possibilities are presented by late-boil, postboil, and even dry-hop additions. We have one outstanding example of this type of saison in IV, a saison by the newer brewery Jandrain-Jandrenouille. Stéphane Meulemans and Alexandre Dumont got their start importing hops for Yakima Chief, and when they started their own brewery, they made wonderfully lush saisons rich with American flavor. The harmony between yeast and hop gives a wonderful lychee flavor to IV.
Spicing. For some reason American brewers have gotten it into their heads that saisons can use a bit of touch-up with spicing. This is an issue of preference, but the essence of a saison is yeast character, which is itself spicy (and fruity). Those are the flavors you want to encourage, and spicing should be unnecessary (and in many cases can create clashing flavors or flavors that mask the fermentation flavors).
When I asked Olivier Dedeycker about adding spices, he offered a very diplomatic reply: “I’m not convinced they are necessary,” he said, emphasizing that his saison never uses them.
Fermentation. This is, of course, the biggie. It’s the only nonnegotiable dimension of the saison. There are a few solid workhorse yeast strains out there, including a version of Dupont’s (White Labs WLP565, Wyeast 3724), Brasserie D’Achouffe’s (WLP550, Wyeast 3522), as well as the French saison strain from Thiriez (Wyeast 3711). All these yeasts are sensitive to temperature and will produce markedly different compounds depending on how warm you ferment. Dupont’s strain doesn’t do well at low temperatures and is famous for stalling out at around 1.020. You need to make sure it is well aerated. If it does stall out, it may start again, or you may have to pitch another yeast to finish it out (it will have produced many of the flavors you want already).
Another good choice is the strain from Westmalle (WLP530, Wyeast 3787), which is tolerant to temperatures in the low 80s F (27–28°C) and which, at those higher temperatures, can produce wonderfully saisony character. Saisons are another great beer to use with open fermentation, a process that helps develop yeast-derived flavor compounds (see chapter 8).
Dupont begins with very hard water, which Dedeycker does not treat. For Saison Dupont the brewery uses 100 percent pilsner malt in the grist, mashing in at 113°F (45°C). They use an unorthodox method of raising the temperature slowly over the next hour and three-quarters until it reaches 162°F (72°C). They conduct a boil of 90 minutes over open flame, which does deepen the color to gold. Saison Dupont is a comparatively hoppy saison, but Dedeycker deflected my questions about hop variety. He generally hops the beer with Belgian-grown Goldings but does sometimes alter the varieties depending on that year’s crop. He uses only two additions, one at the start of boil and one in the last minute of the boil. He has recently begun dry-hopping a version of his saison and uses different varieties each year.
Dupont’s fermentation is the most unusual in the world. Dupont has peculiar, squat, square fermenters, and Dedeycker pitches the yeast (a mixture of multiple strains) at 77°F (25°C). I had heard rumors that it derives from a red wine strain (Dedeycker: “maybe”), but it is in any case very old (“from my grandfather’s time”). His wife, who holds a doctorate in microbiology, manages the yeast now, and Dupont can reuse it for 100 to 150 generations — remarkable for a mixed strain.
The strain not only likes warm temperatures, it won’t finish out properly unless it reaches them. How warm? Dedeycker took me to the control panel so I could see for myself. One read 34°C (93°F), one 35°C (95°F). They will let the yeast get as hot as 39°C (102°F) before intervening to keep it from rising higher. Primary fermentation lasts one to two weeks, depending on the conditions. (It seems that even Dupont finds it finicky.)
They use a different culture for secondary fermentation in the bottle, letting the beer condition in a warm room for six to eight weeks. Re-fermentation is so important to the character of Dupont that they must lay the bottles on their sides during bottle conditioning; otherwise, the beer doesn’t taste right. “If we start the secondary fermentation like so” — here he made the gesture of an upright bottle — “we have a totally different beer. The yeast multiplies very differently. We do all the multiplication of the yeast in the bottle; we don’t pitch the beer with massive quantities of yeast. We pitch, but just a little bit. It seems to be only a small thing, but the impact on the taste is really big.” Underpitching yeast is a good way to stress the yeast and develop esters, and it appears this happens during re-fermentation as well.
If the story of Dupont tells us anything, it’s that in the case of saison yeast is king. The practice of nurturing a yeast strain that can tolerate such extreme temperatures (15°F [8°C] warmer than in any other brewery I’ve ever encountered), giving it a specific environment (shallow, square fermenters), and then finishing off the beer with another round of very specific conditions for re-fermentation — all these things make Dupont taste like Dupont.
Homebrewers who treat their saisons the way they treat their IPAs are probably going to find them lacking that certain something that makes the style sing. Saisons challenge you to break rules: using open fermentation, fermenting warm, using mixed yeast strains. If you’re willing to try things at risk of spoiling a batch of beer, you may be rewarded with a truly unusual and spectacular saison.
Beyond regular practices there is the question of wild yeast. Historic saisons were all affected by what Dedeycker called “microbiological intervention” — they were rustic beers made on the farm, and all were inoculated with wild yeasts and bacteria. (In many cases breweries probably spontaneously fermented them.) So it is certainly appropriate to consider adding a bit of funk to your saison.
I don’t think there’s any right or wrong approach, but consider the nature of saison. They are not principally a wild style; they get their wonderful yeast character from the esters and phenols created by Saccharomyces. Those flavor elements are pronounced, but they’re not impervious to other flavors. Spice and excessive hopping can occlude them — and so can wild yeasts. One of the best examples of a well-struck balance is the tiny brewery Blaugies, which uses a mixed yeast strain that produces all the lovely florid Saccharomyces characteristics you want from a saison strain but is also blended with something wild that, over time, inflects the beer with a drying rusticity.
I have had great success pitching a standard saison strain and running it as dry as possible. My favorite farmhouse strain is Wyeast’s French Saison (3711), which goes very dry — 1.004 to 1.006. I then pitch Brettanomyces (I’ve had luck with different strains), which adds a wonderful tropical note but, because the beer is already so dry, doesn’t overtake the original strain. You can adopt your own approach (kettle souring, blended cultures of wild yeast with regular yeast, and so on) — which is of course the essence of making saison.
For most of beer’s long history, it was a spiced beverage. The palate was sweet, lightly alcoholic, and often heavy and under-attenuated. The stuff we think of as beer is the historical newbie, made possible only because one particular spice — Humulus lupulus — won out over all the rest. In fact, when hops first came along, it took centuries to become the standard because the bitter flavor was unfamiliar and unpleasant to drinkers used to sweet, spiced beverages.
Bitterness did win out, though, and the tradition of spicing mostly died out, but not in Belgium. What’s more, it hasn’t been isolated to a particular style. Most any beer might have a bit of spice tucked in, either clandestinely, to accentuate native flavors in the beer, or stridently, to take center stage. And once a year Belgium celebrates the winter holiday season with an outpouring of bières d’hiver (or bières de Noël) that are more or less expected to be spiced. The Belgian use of spice, whether overt or covert, has continued since the prehop era, and there are lots of clues about how to use them. Spicing is not easy, and as more and more Americans dabble in the practice, they could benefit from some tips from the masters.
Though St. Feuillien is named for a saint (and later an abbey) and makes a line of abbey-style beers, it is not and has never been an abbey brewery. In some ways its story is more interesting. Founded in 1873 by a woman, Stephanie Friart, it has remained in family hands since — and is still owned and run by a woman, Stephanie’s great-great-niece, Dominique Friart. She left to study literature at the Sorbonne and was living in Paris during a period when the brewery was shuttered from 1977 to 1988. Friart returned to help run the business and has spent the past 15 years building it into one of the most vibrant of the small, family-owned breweries in Belgium.
St. Feuillien’s bread-and-butter beers are classically Belgian — strong, bottle-conditioned ales brimming with fermentation flavors. But it is their seasonal Cuvée de Noël that is the most interesting and perhaps most Belgian of all. I typically bring a bottle or two when I visit holiday parties, and the reactions to this ale are never subdued. It’s something like rum cake — strong, dark, chocolaty, full of decadent fruit and spice flavors. At least half the people at these parties say they’ve never tasted anything like it.
In fact, there is something like it: the rest of the St. Feuillien beers. Although the brewery is coy about which beers are spiced, there’s no doubt that all their beers are spicy (and fruity). Tasting notes for Grand Cru sound like booths at a farmers’ market: banana, black pepper, lemon, apricot, apple. The Triple has pear and peach. Speciale tends more toward culinary flavors such as chocolate and dates. And . . . is that clove in the Grand Cru, coriander in the Triple, and cinnamon in the Speciale? You can’t quite tell whether it’s overt spicing or the effects of fermentation. If you try these beers first and then sample the Cuvée de Noël, it all begins to make sense. Spice is a native element in almost every Belgian beer, whether it was added or is a function of the yeast.
A big part of St. Feuillien’s success goes to longtime brewer Alexis Briol. Even before heading off to the famed Université Catholique de Louvain, he apprenticed at Cantillon. Upon receiving his brewing engineer degree, he spent a short time at De Koninck before joining St. Feuillien in 1996. In the 20 years since his arrival, he has overseen the expansion and modernization of the brewery and developed a host of the brewery’s core beers, including Triple, Saison, and Grand Cru. In recent years, he has even collaborated with international breweries and begun to experiment with American-style beers — most notably an IPA with Green Flash Brewing.
Belgians spice their beers in a couple of different ways, and both are instructive. In one case the spicing is so delicate you don’t notice it. Here the spices act as extremely understated flavor notes and are generally mistaken for fermentation characteristics. In a country where the flavors of fruitiness and spice are expected anyway — because of the yeast — it’s easy enough to sneak in actual spices to achieve similar kinds of flavors. It’s not even easy to discover which of the beers have spices and which don’t, because for Belgian brewers that’s the point: You’re not supposed to taste the spice. The beer should present itself holistically. The late writer Michael Jackson wrote about a meeting he once had with a spice dealer in Belgium who showed him invoices of breweries not known for spices that were nevertheless buying them, “to demonstrate that he has sold a wide variety of exotica to an equally disparate range of his nation’s brewers.” So lesson one is: don’t let ’em know you’re spicing your spiced beers.
In the second case brewers make beers to display spice flavors, and the best examples are the annual Christmas beers that start appearing at the end of November. These are so popular that nearly every brewery makes one — I counted over 100 of them a few years back, and Belgium had around 150 breweries at the time. Among these, St. Feuillien’s Cuvée de Noël is one of the best known and a great example of how to make overt use of spices wonderfully palatable while retaining an essential beeriness.
Cuvée is a dark beer, which is a good place to start (many bières de Noël are dark). It has a rich, chocolaty base on which rests a platter of dark fruits — cherry, fig, baked apple, and raisin. The spices are tucked into the spaces between these malt notes, with hints of ginger and cinnamon, as well as flavors that are harder to identify. Clove? Coconut? Or is it vanilla? Even in a spice-forward beer such as Cuvée de Noël, the flavors don’t smack you across the face and say, “I am coriander, dammit!” Subtlety is always at play.
Spiced beers divide people, but done properly, they don’t need to. In beer terms spices taste like interlopers: they add a sensory dimension that competes with everything else going on in the beer. To work — whether the spices are barely perceptible accents or the stars of the show — they must relate to the other flavors in the beer. Think of them by analogy. In a musical composition each instrument must communicate with the others in key, rhythm, and harmony. The problem with many spiced beers is that the spices clash with the other flavors like an out-of-key flügelhorn.
On a deeper level, I think everyone who wants to spice a beer should ask the question: am I adding this spice to enhance the flavors of the beer or to cover them up? The spices must work for the beer, not the other way around. This is absolutely critical when you approach your recipe. I speak from experience here. I once became enchanted with the idea of lavender and decided to make a saison. As I created the recipe, I wasn’t thinking about how the lavender would enhance the beer but how the beer would be a dais for all that lavendery goodness. The predictable result was a lavender tincture that completely blotted out the flavor of beer. I’ve encountered this same problem in countless examples of commercial beers — I pretty much hide when I see a spiced ale at an American brewpub.
Beyond the platitudes, there are some basic practices to keep in mind. The active ingredient in spice comes from essential oils, which degrade over time. Buy only fresh spices. There are good online resources, but since you’re going to be buying such small amounts, look for a store that specializes in spice and has a fresh stock on hand. Some sources suggest making an alcohol tincture of spices, but I would caution against this. Spices have dozens of compounds, and if you use them fresh, you’ll get a fuller, more complex sense; tinctures intensify but simplify flavors and aromas. The addition of grain alcohol is also detectable in the beer, and to my tongue it reads as hot and often a bit harsh.
Instead, add spices postboil. Alexis Briol calls it “warm infusion,” and the idea is “simply to avoid the aroma’s evaporation.” Those essential oils will volatilize in the warmth, but they won’t vent off as they would during the full boil. They also won’t extract tannins from the fiber of the plant material, which adds unpleasant harshness to the beer. (If you taste a spiced beer that has a bitter note like black tea and muddy, indistinct spice flavors, you can be sure the brewer boiled the spices good and long.) Whether you’re crushing or grating, prepare the spice immediately before you add it — again, to preserve those volatile essential oils.
Briol suggests approaching spices with respect. “Spices are very powerful (much more than hops in some cases). As a newcomer, avoid high quantities; go gradually, and use simple mixes (two or three maximum) at the same time.” This is good advice; a single spice already contains many compounds, and they react with heat and fermentation to produce flavors you may not anticipate. Once you start adding other spices, they interact with each other, and then you’re dealing with an unpredictable mélange of chemical compounds and organic reactions. Of course, once you find combinations that work, you can begin adding in other spices. There’s no limit to the number you can use, but build up as you go.
(It would be absolutely wonderful if someone had spent a decade or two studying the way spices work in beer, but no one has. While brewers can give general advice, there’s no manual for how to use spice — you have to chart that landscape yourself.)
Finally, and counterintuitively, Briol says that when using spices, “you need a yeast that produces not a lot of aromas.” This may be a surprise to many brewers, but while I’d add a caveat, it’s a good place to start. When using characterful yeasts and spices, you may have an “uncanny valley” effect — spice flavors that taste close to, but not exactly like, fermentation flavors and vice versa. They are near enough to seem like a good idea but far enough to compete. You see this quite often in spiced saisons, which are very often much less than the sum of their parts.
The yeast is already so characterful that the addition of spices only muddies the flavor; too many pieces in the orchestra, to go back to our metaphor. Think of characterful yeasts as additional spicing — you can use them, but make sure you have your base spices down, go cautiously (that is, ferment on the cool side to inhibit ester and phenol formation), and be prepared to find flavors that don’t quite harmonize in the end.
Alexis Briol
St. Feuillien
Ferment at 68° to 72°F (20–22°C) until 4° P (1.016) with Wyeast 3787 or White Labs WLP530, then rack and condition for 2 weeks at around 44°F (7°C).
Bottle-condition only.
Notes: Three of the malts Briol suggests are specific to Dingemans. These choices are not critical, but he is attempting to build color, body, and aromatics into the recipe. Burnt sugar is a specific type of sugar that differs from other dark sugars; if you can’t find it at your homebrew store, look for a substitute at specialty stores that sell Caribbean ingredients. I searched high and low for licorice juice (or liquorice juice) and never found it. Substitute a half teaspoon of dry licorice.
A few notes on the above recipe. Briol actually offered a couple of variations, the other a simpler version of the one detailed here. The grain bill was composed of pilsner and 100 EBC aroma malts in a 4:1 ratio. The mash and hop schedules were identical. In place of the four spices, he suggested just a half teaspoon (2 grams) of coriander. Both recipes are fairly typical of the kind of base beer you’d find in a bière de Noël.
Whether you’re making the simplified or more elaborate version, the thing that really leaps out is the spicing: Briol calls for tiny amounts. Looking around at standard homebrew recipes offered by other writers, you’ll find recipes with an order of magnitude more spicing. I think you could safely double these amounts without worrying about overdoing it (or even more than that). But don’t. Start here, and pay attention to the results. You learn a lot more about spice when you can barely taste it than you do when it dominates the palate. In these minidoses your beer won’t taste spiced — but it will have tastes added by spice. In small amounts the spices inflect other flavors more than offering their own unmistakable flavors. It’s the reason the “spicy” flavors in St. Feuillien’s beers hint at spice without offering definite evidence of their presence.
Once you discover the power of suggesting spice, then you can begin to use a heavier hand and let them come out of the shadows. In terms of ingredients spices are the most elusive to work with; you’ll be many batches in before you begin to feel confident you understand spicing amounts and resultant flavors. That’s another reason to start out at the low end and use rich, flavorful styles of beer that stand on their own.
The first spice question that leaps to mind is, how much? And it’s not a terrible one. But a couple of other questions should be asked first: what kind? and when? As a category, “spice” is broad, and it includes flowers, herbs, barks, seeds and pods, roots, fruits, and buds — and each one is more or less susceptible to the effects of heat. As a related corollary, think about whether the spice is fresh or dried. Where a spice may come in either form, you have to decide whether you want the greener, brighter flavors from the fresh version or the deeper dried versions. Also keep in mind that fresh herbs contain water, so are heavier than their dried counterparts. Add 1.5 to 2 times as much of them as you would dried herbs.
The answer to the type question will give you a sense of how to approach the next question, when to add the spice. Flowers, herbs, and fruits contain delicate volatile oils that will be destroyed by prolonged heat. Barks and seeds (cinnamon, nutmeg, peppercorns, and so on), conversely, may require heat to pull flavor out of their woody wrapper. Heat puts compounds in solution more quickly (boiling water makes coffee in minutes; cold water takes hours) but also does violence to them.
This is intuitive to the homebrewer, because it’s the same process that happens with hops. This is the reason Briol only conducts warm infusions. In most cases it’s safer to do warm infusions or add the spice in the last 1 to 5 minutes of active boil. But even this may be too much if what you’re really after are the most delicate, aromatic elements from a spice. You don’t make tea by boiling the herbs. You steep them. There’s a lesson there.
The decision about quantity is tough because the strength of each spice differs. The brewer Doug Odell once gave advice I’ve found indispensable: make a tea and assess the potency of the spice you plan to use. Do it the way you would any tea; bring water to a boil, and then do an infusion, steeping for 5 minutes. This will at least give you a sense of the relative strength of the spices and give you a starting place. You can also blend your teas to see how the flavors work together. From there follow Briol’s advice and use tiny amounts to begin with, steadily increasing them as you go along.
Finally, for fresh spices rich in essential oils, consider “dry-hopping” them. The same principle is at work. Adding hops during conditioning preserves the essential oils and produces the most vivid aromas. The delicate oils in flowers and herbs are consumed in the heat of the kettle, muting their expressiveness. After primary fermentation, dose your beer with herbs and flowers for a day or two, and then taste the beer. If you begin with a small infusion, you can always add more before packaging.
All brewers know a few go-to spices: coriander, orange peel, cinnamon, and vanilla. In the meantime, here is a (very) incomplete tip sheet.
Elderflower, hibiscus, jasmine, orange blossoms, rose petals. Flowers are delicate and subtle, but they can really add a lot to a beer. While floral scents sometimes remind people of soap, hops also sometimes remind people of flowers — so using blossoms can add an interesting, relatively familiar flavor to the mix. Definitely don’t add these to the boil. Steep them briefly for 1 to 3 minutes or add to the conditioning tank.
Cardamom, grains of paradise, pink peppercorn. When people say they don’t like spiced beers, they usually mean overspiced beers. Using cardamom and grains of paradise (which are in the same family) is a great way to overspice a beer. They’re both extremely potent and also quite specific in their flavor. It’s hard to use them as nuance, and their flavors are so particular, they usually distract. Pink peppercorns, which aren’t related to true pepper, aren’t as strong but have a very particular flavor that dominates beer. We’re purely in the realm of the subjective here, so your mileage may vary, but be careful when using these spices.
Sagebrush, spruce, juniper. Most of the spices typical in beer come from Europe or Asia (dating to the period of European colonialism). But North America has a few great offerings as well. A program called “Beers Made by Walking” in Oregon and Colorado has uncovered some wonderful foraged ingredients. In particular, western sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata), spruce (Picea sitchensis), and juniper (Juniperus communis) have been used to great success. Sagebrush gives beer a tangy, savory flavor; spruce a sweet, tart, honeylike character; and juniper something like culinary (not soapy) lavender. We’ve only scratched the surface, but these hits suggest there may be many more out there.