After a day off yesterday, we are back to some brewery tours and visits. I should say that yesterday was wonderful, with a visit to the Magritte Museum as the highlight and later a great Pizza dinner with the students. At this point, the students have completed all of the brewing activities except for one – designing their own brew. In addition to blogging, they also will write a reflective paper, which Gudrun and I hope will be very useful for future planning of the course.
Ok, so on to what we did today. We left the hotel at 8 am with Christa (our Flemish tour guide) and Dave (our Flemish bus driver), bound for Buggenhout and Brouwerij Bosteels. Bosteels brews three beers – Pauwel Kwak, Tripel Karmelite and Deus. At this point, we’ve toured several breweries, so we can probebly give people good recommendations about where to go if they decide to come to Germany or Belgium and tour on their own. Bosteels gets high marks. It is a family owned brewery, since the late 1700′s.
We felt very welcomed, especially with a US flag flying from the family’s house – we found out in honor of our visit! The tour began with a nice review of historical carriages, which is important with regards to the Pauwel Kwak beer. All Belgian beers pretty much have their own glass. The Kwak glass is really one of the different ones. It resembles a yard glass like you might find in an Irish pub, but not as large. It has a spherical round bottom, so it has to sit in a special holder. This is where the carriages come in – the story is that in the time of Napoleon, carriage drivers were not allowed to stop in at inns and have a drink. Kwak therefore built special holders on the sides of the carriages so the drivers could have a beer.
Tripel Karmelite is also a historical beer – brewed in the style that a Buggenhout-area abbey used to brew. The final beer is very special – Dues is fermented and treated like Champagne – the bottles are stored upside down and rotated to collect the sediment. It is like a cross between beer and Champagne (Golden Valley did this once – the IPA Brut, brewed back in 2006, which was very good).
Bosteels was right in the middle of brewing – we got to see them use the built in rakes to rake out the Lauter tun, and caught the beginning of the boil, where the brewers were adding hops. They were also about to add some calcium chloride – a good quiz opportunity for the students (who knew why it was added – do you?). We visited all the normal places – brew house, fermenters, conditioning tanks and the bottling line. After the tour, we got to taste (they generally pour full beers for tastings here and in Germany, so be aware) Kwak, Karmeleit and Deus. During the tasting, the patriarch of the Bosteels family came to welcome us – he was a very personable and friendly guy, who after the tasting took us to see his old family house, where he was born. Very cool.
Our next stop was in Ghent, for a quick city tour and a bite to eat. What we saw of Ghent wa beautiful – a medevil castle, canals, and many buildings from the 17th century. The highlight was the cathedral, built in the 12th century, on top of a church (which you can also visit) built in the 8th century. The cathedral is famous for it’s altar, the first artwork to use perspective in the middle ages, and a large painting by Reubens. Sadly, we really had to run through Ghent – Gudrun and I both would like to bring the class back here and maybe us it as our base of operations in Belgium next time. Oh, we also saw the building where the treaty of Ghent was signed and the building Wellington stayed in before Waterloo (which we drove by on our way to Pipaix the other day). So much history.
Our last stop was at Liefmansin Ourdnaande. Liefmans was on the syllabus because they brew Flemish brown ales – like Rodenbach and Duchesse de Bourgone – which are somewhat sour. Unlike the Lambics and Geueze at Cantillon, the Liefmans ales are balanced by a bit more sweetness. The tour was interesting, partially because the beer isn’t actually brewed there any longer. It is now brewed by Duvel, near Antwerp, and trucked to Liefmans so that it can be fermented with the “house” yeast – some of which are lactic acid producing bacteria (hence the sourness). Our guide gave a nice description of a triple decoction mash, which Liefmans uses to enhance starch solubility.
Most of the Liefmans beers are lower alcohol content – the Oud Bruin is about 5%, Goudenbrand, a provision beer (which means it can be laid down for 5 – 10 years) is 8%, and then their Kriek is 6% (very sweet, so they must add some kind of sweetner to it). We were surprised in Liefmans by a visit from their former brewer – a wonderful older Flemish woman! Our first female brewer of the course, which drew cheers from our mostly female class! As we left, we were all given bottles of Kriek!
