Belgium is to beer what Cuba is to cigars and France is to wine. The Belgians, a tough prickly people with a sense of history that comes from Belgium’s position wedged between former rivals France, Germany, and the Netherlands for centuries, have held onto a greater range of their ancient brewing traditions than any other country in the world. As keepers of a certain cultural flame, Belgian beers have in recent decades provided inspiration to thousands of brewers the world over. The Belgian brewers, proud of their beers but vaguely bemused by foreign attentions, remain idiosyncratic and independent, not least of each other.
In 1579 Hainaut, Artois, and Douai, three Catholic provinces of the southern Netherlands, sought independence from the Protestant north and went in search of a protector. The Spanish king Phillip II stepped forward, offering them administrative freedom and a stringent defense of the faith. Now known as the Spanish Netherlands, the province plotted a difficult course between its neighbors, with constant warfare along its southern border with France. A battleground during the War of the Spanish Succession, the Spanish Netherlands was handed to the Austrian Habsburg dynasty in 1714. Such peace as this brought was not to last for long because the War of the Austrian Succession saw France invade the province in 1745, finally coughing it up in 1748. Instigated by the French revolution, an uprising drove the Austrians out in 1789, setting up 5 years of war in which the possession of the province shifted constantly. In 1795, fledgling Belgium became part of France and in 1815 was folded into the Kingdom of the Netherlands. This arrangement was not to last either. Tension was constant between the Dutch-speaking north and the French-speaking south, with southern Catholics in particular bristling under the rule of the Dutch Protestant King William I. In 1830 Belgium revolted and gained independence under the Saxe-Coburg king Leopold in 1831.
In the following years, the monasteries that had been sacked and burned during the French revolution reopened and built their breweries, although they were not to become famous for many years. Many breweries produced styles of beer based upon oats and wheat as well as barley malt. Some were very sweet, some dry, some intentionally sour, and others unintentionally so. Almost all remained top-fermented. English pale ales, and then Czech and German pilsners influenced the creation of new beers in the early 1900s, when cheap foreign imports flooded the Belgian market.
World War I brought the German army, who stripped out all the brewing equipment they could find for its valuable copper, and many breweries never reopened. But after the war, Belgian beer began to bounce back. In 1919, a new law banned the sale of distilled spirits in bars and cafes, a rule that was not rescinded until 1984. Brewers strengthened their beers to meet the demand for more robust drinks. While retaining relatively lighter beers for themselves, the Trappist monks began to produce stronger, more complex beers for public sale. As they met with success, they were widely copied, and Belgian beer as we know it started to emerge. World War II saw many breweries interrupted with the brewers burying their kettles out in nearby fields to save them from the German army. As soon as the war ended, the brewers started digging.
It is not surprising that the Belgian outlook on the world has a unique character. Belgium remains split along religious, linguistic, and political lines. Belgian beer combines French flair, German precision, and Dutch sturdiness into a unique range of beers that often defy the idea of beer style. It is important to point out that the majority of beer sold in Belgium, as almost everywhere in the world, is a variant of pilsner. When we speak, therefore, of “Belgian beer,” we refer to top-fermented beers showing uniquely Belgian character.
Tin photo of the De Koninck brewery team, based in Antwerp, Belgium, c. 1900. pike microbrewery museum, seattle, wa
If you ask three Belgian brewers what defines Belgian beers, it is likely that you will get three different answers. Surely, however, one answer is yeast. Throughout Europe, over centuries, brewers passed yeast from one brewery to another until certain areas began to express a terroir of fermentation, a regional character that links them. We see this in the weissbiers of Bavaria and it is equally evident in Belgium, where top-fermenting yeasts tend to produce spicy, fruity, complex flavors, often driven by strong worts and very warm fermentation temperatures. Most Belgian beers, even when they seem to express some sweetness, are well attenuated and have very little residual sugar. As a result, hop bitterness is usually kept low because there is little sugar to balance it.
Whereas most Belgian beers are based on pilsner malts, others use pale ale or Vienna malts. Wheat is used in witbiers and in Payottenland’s spontaneously fermented lambics, but finds its way into other beers as well, along with oats, spelt, and other grains. The hop sometimes has partners in the kettle. Orange peel, coriander, star anise, grains of paradise, black pepper, and other spices, sometimes announced by the brewery but often not, may give background flavors. Although Belgian brewers are often exasperated to hear that foreigners tend to think of Belgian beers as “spiced,” the fact remains that they are widely if subtly used. Also unique to Belgian beer is the use of very dark caramelized sugars. Invert sugar is used in England as well, but in darker Belgian beers it often replaces dark malts, providing most or all of the color. In doing so, dark candi sugar replaces coffee and chocolate malt flavors with flavors of crème brûlée and raisins. In other beers, pale candi sugar is used, often to lighten the character of strong beers and allow them to become dry, very drinkable, and sometimes almost spirituous. In general, these beers can be excellent peers for pairing with food.
The méthode Champenoise brings sparkle to wines, but it first brought bubbles to beer, and bottle conditioning of some sort is more common in Belgium than anywhere else in the world. Some beers are partially carbonated in tanks before being primed with yeast and sugar to achieve a minor refermentation, but the best beers are bottled flat and gain all their carbonation during conditioning. These often emerge with wonderfully complex aromatics, very high carbonation, attendant voluminous rocky foam, and a scintillating pinpoint mousse on the tongue. In Belgium, such beers are poured carefully to avoid disturbing the sediment of yeast at the bottom of the bottle.
Perhaps what defines Belgian beer more than anything else is a sense of stubborn individuality. Belgian brewing is a realm of non-conformists and garagistes, many of whom seem content to tirelessly tilt at the windmills of change, sometimes for decades. If this means keeping a day job and brewing at the weekends, so be it—the Belgian brewer defines himself and will not be fenced in. Many brewers seem to be radical and conservative at once, unwilling to try anything new, yet still creating beers that taste like no one else’s.
In many ways despite themselves, Belgium’s brewers have exerted a large influence on modern craft brewing, particularly in the United States. In the 1980s and 1990s most American craft brewed beers grew directly out of British brewing traditions, but once these seemed fully mined, attention turned to Belgium, aided greatly by the writings of the late beer writer Michael Jackson. Where once Belgian brewers may have seen imitation as a threat, they now see the intended flattery, and in turn the United States has become a key market for Belgium’s finest beers. Indeed, it is easier to find many of them in the shops, bars, and restaurants of Brooklyn, New York, than it is to find them in Brussels. American craft brewers now make dozens of tripels, dubbels, abbey ales, saisons, and witbiers. Some, fascinated by the bracing acidity of Belgium’s lambics and sour brown and red ales, have invented an entire new breed of sour and “wild” beers. Bottle conditioning is on the rise. Belgian-influenced beers are also now easily found in Canada, Italy, Scandinavia, Switzerland, Brazil, and beyond. Germany has been held back by its clinging to the Reinheitsgebot, but that is slowly changing.
Slowly, the influence has crept back in the other direction as well. Belgian brewers are experimenting with bold hop character, long the signature of the American craft brewing movement. Many of these beers are not yet wonderful, but they do show potential, and it will no doubt be interesting to see what develops as the Belgians delve deeper into the worldwide craft brewing community.