Beer: Belgium’s upstart innovators

Deb Lindsey/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

By Daniel Fromson,

Carlo Grootaert wanted to tell me a story, so shortly after 11 a.m., we drove to a cemetery near the coastal Belgian town of De Panne, where, not far from a giant crucifix, he knelt among the tombstones and uncapped a beer. “These fishermen were herring fishermen, and during winter days the women made beer,” he said. “We decided to remake a beer in the same style.”

He handed me a glass. The Pannepot, which Grootaert and his colleagues at tiny De Struise Brouwers created in 2004 after several years of less ambitious brewing, was about as typical as a graveside beer tasting. The syrupy liquid was 10 percent alcohol and combined the dried-fruit flavors of a quadrupel, a traditional Belgian abbey ale, with the roasted-coffee notes common in American stouts. I began to understand why the beer geeks who frequent the influential beer site RateBeer.com rank 13 Struise beers among the 50 best in Belgium — more than for any other brewery, and an astounding number in light of Belgium’s status as the foreign country that U.S. beer lovers seem to admire the most.

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(Deb Lindsey/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST) - Alvinne makes its Extra Belgian Ale with American hops.

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Along with the less prominent but perhaps equally innovative Picobrouwerij Alvinne, Struise has become famous among American beer fanatics for unusual brews that fuse Belgian conventions with influences from abroad. “We stick to tradition, but we give a crazy twist to it,” Grootaert, 46, told me. As Alvinne’s Glenn Castelein, 38, put it, “We could do just regular beers and try to sell it in the neighborhood, but that’s kind of dull. So we thought, ‘Okay, let’s take a risk.’”

That might mean brewing an India pale ale with both American and Belgian hops, transforming a thick American-style imperial stout into something fruitier

and drier by incorporating Belgian candi sugar and Belgian yeast, or putting a European spin on the U.S. barrel-aging trend by maturing beers in wine or Scotch casks. In a country where beers are often brewed by monks, Struise markets a series of barrel-aged stouts called Black Damnation, with labels that feature skulls.

Those eye-catching graphics aside, Belgium has lagged behind its neighbors in its acceptance of U.S. beer trends; elsewhere, American-influenced brewers such as Denmark’s Mikkeller and Scotland’s BrewDog have thrived. They also tend to collaborate with one another, and it is into this subculture of creativity and transparency that the Belgian innovators have emerged.

But these sorts of brewers, who often sustain themselves through exports to the United States, are distinctly un-Belgian. “Not letting people know exactly what you’re doing is the Belgian way,” says beer importer Wendy Littlefield, whose company, Vanberg & Dewulf, was one of the first to bring Belgian beers to America. “And also the tendency in Belgium is to be respectful of tradition.”

Littlefield worries that these “extreme” brewers, who represent only a small fraction of the Belgian beer market, are overshadowing the traditionalists — or worse. Struise and Alvinne, she says, “really, arguably, are hurting the very culture that they claim to be arising out of.”

 
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