Belgium and, more importantly, Cantillon Brewery

The entrance to my favorite pub in Brussels. 

A litte while ago I went to Brussels and drank beer. No, this will not be a tirade about how wonderful the Trappists ales and the Abbey ales and all the other tripples, doubles and what have you were. They were excellent, of course, but everybody already knows that. What people don't know about are Lambics. In my opinion, Lambics are one of the least appreciated and least understood styles of beer on the planet. I, for one, didn't even appreciate them properly until I visited the Cantillon Brewery in Brussels. Although it is the only Lambic brewery I have ever visited, I can say with confidence that it is one of the premier Lambic producers in the world. I will tell you why soon, but first, a brief (and incomplete) introduction on what makes a Lambic a Lambic.

Among other things, the most prominent difference between Lambics and almost all the other beer consumed in the world today is the way they are fermented. Lambics are made by spontaneous fermentation. In a nut shell, what this means is that the wort is left to cool for an extended period, and during that time, whatever organisms are in the atmosphere (be that yeast, bacteria or other) inoculate the brew. This makes for an extremely complicated flavor profile that is unique to the brewery in which the beer was made. Also, the mix of microorganisms is constantly changing and is not necessarily the same even day after day, and there will certainly be drifts in flavor profiles over longer periods. This is why one of the main tasks for Lambic brewers is to blend different batches to achieve the desired flavor in the final product.

In many ways, what you are tasting when you drink a proper Lambic is probably as close as you will get to tasting the way beers might have tasted several hundred years ago. Long before the discovery of the importance of microorganisms in beer, both spoiling agents and yeasts. What this means is that Lambic producers go against virtually everything you learn from your first day as a brewer, which is to keep everything as clean as possible. Lambic brewers let microorganisms grow freely in their breweries, and rarely disturb them intentionally. This is not a result of laziness, but rather a way of preserving the natural cocktail of microorganisms that make their beers possible.

Now on to the actual reason why I'm writing this article: Cantillon Brewery. It was founded in 1900 in Brussels by a man named Paul Cantillon, himself the son of a brewer. One of the many things that makes the brewery special is that the equipment and brewing methods used have barely, if at all, changed in over 100 years. I happened to be lucky enough to have one of the members of the board of directors for the brewery museum foundation at Cantillon giving me my tour. He was one of the most passionate and knowledgable people with regards to beer I have met in some time. As we walked through the brewery (which as expected looks and feels over a century old) I started to truly understand where the flavor of the beer comes from. It is in the rafters, it is on the floor, it is in the dust that covers the bottles in storage. I am sure that every part of the facility contributes in some way besides its obvious functional capacity. You can smell it as well. There is a very interesting and pleasant odor that permeates the building.

As far as the actual brewing equipment is concerned, except for one piece it was very similar to what I am already familiar with. The mash tun and boil kettle were rustic and still work in the same way they did before my grandmother was born. But by far the most interesting piece of equipment was the cool ship. This is a wide, shallow copper basin where hot wort is pumped to be cooled overnight and inocculated as I explained before. It is still hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that although no sterilization techniques are used, a drinkable (in fact very drinkable) beverage is produced in this way. My tour guide informed me that they have identified well in excess of 100 different kinds of yeasts and around 50 different kinds of bacteria in their beer. My understanding is that it is pretty much a free for all during fermentation between all these different microorganisms. Some are stronger on different days, or opportunistically inocculate the brew while others aren't looking. There is also a process that goes on once fermentation starts in the barrel where some organisms are more active at different times and others take over once the others become lazy. This is why the outcome of the brews are so variable even on a day to day basis.

The old copper boil kettle. 

Not a terribly good photo, but this is the cool ship on the top floor of the brewery.

The most astonishing piece of information I heard the entire day, however, related to the extreme dryness of the beers. Previously, my understanding of the way yeast works in beer was that there are certain types of sugars, mainly larger sugar molecules, that are unfermentable and will always be left behind in finished beer. Apparently, the conditions in the barrels at Cantillon ferments virtually all the sugars out of the wort. I am not the only one that thinks this is special. Cantillon has sent samples of their beers to universities that wish to find out how this is happening. They have not had much luck as the process of fermentation with 100+ different yeasts and 50+ bacteria is extremely complicated. The lack of sugar also means that even people with sensitivities to sugar can drink Cantillon brews. You can definately taste it as well. The dryness cleanses your palate in such a way that the beer should be used to replace sorbet at fancy dinners.

At the end of the tour I sampled three different brews; a Kriek brewed with cherries, a Framboise brewed with rasberries, and a limited edition brew called Zwanze 2011 made with a rarely used grape called pineau d'aunis. All of them were good, but the Zwanze was particularly excellent. Before I left, I also bought three different other bottles and enjoyed them greatly as well.

For anyone who wants to open their minds to a very unique style of beer, head to Cantillon Brewery if you have the chance. You will not be disappointed.

The Zwanze 2011. It has a very unique reddish orange color from the pineau d'aunis.

My First Solo Brew at The Bull

So Dan at The Bull recently gave me the opportunity to brew, on my own, a beer of my choosing. This has been the chance I have been waiting for. I have been a homebrewer for years, but I have up until now never been able to brew a beer that is served in a bar. Naturally I was nervous, as I didn't know the brew kit terribly well, and I felt as if my entire reputation as a brewer rested on this one brew. Obviously, was being a bit dramatic, but I take my beer very seriously.

The beer recipe that I settled on was a Scottish ale with a target alcohol content somewhere between 4.0% to 4.5% alcohol. Usually, I would be able to be a bit more precise in my predictions but not knowing what brewhouse efficiency I would have, I decided it was better to make a recipe that could handle some variability. I decided to make the color relatively dark and the bitterness levels very low, similar to what a historical Scottish ale would be. The reason why Scottish ales traditionally have low amounts of hops is that, first of all, the English were very late to adopt hops relative to the rest of Europe. In addition, once the English discovered how wonderful hops were, they were reluctant to export them to the Scots because, apparently, English and Scottish people don't get on very well. As a result, Scottish ales had very low levels of hops and often even used other ingredients such as heather as bittering or flavoring agents for their beers. Therefore, in order to stay historically accurate, my hop schedule would be to use a very modest amount of English Whitbread Golding hops for bittering and an equal amount of the same hops after the end of the boil for aroma. Historical Scottish ales probably would not have had much aroma hops, so I went back and forth on deciding if I should add them at all. In the end, I decided it would be a more balanced beer with them included.

Overall, I think the brew day went smoothly. Nothing disasterous happened (even though I had recently been having bad dreams about everything that could go wrong with this beer). The worst thing that happened was a small overflow on the hot liquor tank, but a little mopping fixed that. One thing that did go very much according to plan was the color of the beer. It is a deep red mahogony color that I think will be very beautiful once the beer is done. The gravity was also in the range I wanted, and if the fermentation goes as I expect the beer will be about 4.3%. Now all I have to do is wait. After all, the most important part of the beer making process is happening right now as I write.

As a final thought, just the fact that Dan has enough confidence in me to let me use his system to make a beer that he will actually serve to customers is something I am very proud of. If this beer turns out well, the day I try the first pint will certainly be one of the best days of my life.

Mashing Enzymes Part 1: Starches

The entire brewing process involves enzymes. From before barley becomes malt, until after the beer is put into packaging, enzymes are constantly changing the chemical composition of beer. Even yeast, from a purely functional perspective can be thought of simply as bags of enzymes. What I want to focus on in this series are the main mashing enzymes of interest to brewers: alpha amylase and beta amylase. Why I believe this is so important is that many brewers (homebrewers and professional brewers alike) don't really understand how they work and why this gives them the blend of fermentable sugars and unfermentable dextrins that we call wort. The concept most brewers understand is the general rule that lower mashing temperatures lead to more fermentable wort, while higher tempuratures lead to a more dextrinous (less fermentable) wort. In a broad sense this is true, but it doesn't give brewers much of a base to trouble shoot what has gone right or wrong with their mash. There are, of course, other enzymes that play a roll in mash composition (proteases, beta-glucanase, limit dextrinase, etc.), but they are much less important. I will circle back on those later.

There will be four short segments in this series, starting with starches. By the end, I hope that anyone with interest will understand more about why mashing enzymes work as beautifully as they do. After all, without them beer would not be possible.  

Starches

In order to begin understanding how alpha and beta amylases work, it is imperative to first understand the substrates they work on. Just like there are two main mashing enzymes, there are also two starches in barley: amylose and amylopectin. These represent the energy reserves of the barley grain, and it is this energy that brewers ultimately need to harness to make beer. In a very basic sense, both amylose and amylopectin are just big bunches of glucose molecules linked together. Brewers want to pry apart those links of glucose molecules using enzymes, making them small enough for yeast to digest.

The simpler of the two main starches is amylose. Amylose is just a straight chain of glucose residues linked together and makes up 20-25% of the starch mass native to barley. Given enough beta amylase action (more on this later), amylose can almost completely be reduced to maltose, the main fermentable sugar in beer wort (also more on this later).

In this diagram of amylose, each of the circles represents a glucose molecule. In reality, amylose is a much longer chain of bonded glucose molecules, but this is sufficient to understand the general structure. Also, don't worry all that much about what the reducing end means just now, but take note that it is there. Later on it will become important in determining which direction enzyme action takes place.  

The much more complex and larger of the two native starches is amylopectin. This is a similar molecule to amylose making up about 75-80% of native starch. What makes amylopectin different from amylose is that it has many branches of glucose-linked chains. Amylopectin is, therefore, much larger and heavier than amylose. More or less, you can think of amylopectin as a big tree of amylose molecules. All of the glucose bonds on the branches are the same as amylose. Yet, because of the more complex structure of amylopectin near the branch points, it is the main contributor of dextrins (unfermentable sugars) in wort. It also relies more on the combined action of alpha and beta amylases to break it down into fermentable sugars than does amylose.

As with my representation of amylose, this one of amylopectin is very simplified and actual amylopectin molecules in barley are massive. 

Why Germany Brews Lager

It has always fascinated me why different parts of the world have developed their own unique brews. The UK has Real Ale, Belgium has Trappist beers, Latin America has Chicha, and Germany has lagers. I recently came across some information in an article written by Horst Dornbusch in The Oxford Companion to Beer that shed some light on why Germany in particular has such a tradition of lager brewing. Today, lager (mostly of the light pilsner type unfortunately) dominates the world market, and it was with German influence that this lager trend took root. Before I begin, I would like to say that if you talk to me personally, you would get the impression that I am not a big fan of lagers. This is for the most part true, only because the vast majority of lagers produced today are mass market, watery, flavorless rubbish. Some lagers produced in Germany, however, are amongst the best beers in the world, displaying other ingredients (malt and to a lesser extent with most German beers, hops) instead of a yeasty ester profile. Give Paulaner's Salvator Doppelbock a try and you will understand what I mean.

Surprisingly, the tradition of lager brewing grew out of a long period of bad beer in Bavaria, particularly in the summer months. Warmer temperatures promoted the growth of a host of different spoilage organisms that were largely dormant in the brews of the colder months of the year. Summer beers were often so bad that brewers would resort to using a number of products to mask the flavor including oxen bile, chicken blood, soot, tree bark, or even poisonous mushrooms (it really is a testament to how bad the beer was that oxen bile was preferable to the unadulterated beer). Of course, this was long before the discovery by Louis Pasture in the late 1800's that living organisms caused beer spoilage, so the powers that were did what they could to try and mitigate the issue. 

Over the course of a few centuries, there were multiple attempts to regulate the quality of beer. In 1156, the city of Augsburg issued the first decree on spoiled beer insisting that all the city's bad beer "shall be destroyed or distributed amongst the poor at no charge." This held citizens off for another two hundred years when in 1363 twelve members of the Munich city counsel were appointed to inspect the quality of the city's beer. Further, in 1420 Munich decreed that beer had to be aged for a minimum of eight days. In 1447, the precursor to the famous Reinheitsgebot was laid out saying that Bavarian beer would only consist of barley, water and hops (remember, the existence of yeast in beer was not yet discovered). And finally, in 1516 the Bavarian Duke Wilhelm IV extended the 1447 decree to cover his entire kingdom.

Those attempts at quality were all well and good, but they didn't have the intended effect, and summer beer often continued to be putrid. Although far less famous than the Reinheitsgebot, the legislation laid out by the Bavarian Duke Albrecht V in 1553 had far more significant ramifications for the beer world. Duke Albrecht V simply forbade the production of beer altogether between the Feast of Saint George (April 23) and Michaelmas (September 29). This did succeed in stemming the production of bad beer but, more importantly, it unintentionally led to the development of lager brewing. As production was halted in the warmer months of the year, ale yeasts were phased out and only the yeasts capable of fermenting at colder temperatures survived, eventually hybridizing to create a new species of yeast. Stronger beers brewed towards the end of the brewing months became known as March beers or Märzenbiers in German and were stored in cellars or caves for consumption until brewing could recommence. The actual term "lager" is derived from this practice and comes from the German lagern, which means, "to lay" or "to store". 

Duke Albrecht's prohibition on brewing during the summer was finally rescinded in 1850. By that time lager brewing had taken over in Germany and was beginning to spread to other parts of the globe, most notably Bohemia with the birth of Pilsner by Josef Groll in 1842. Of course, lagers are not the only type of traditional beers brewed in Germany. Weissbier and hefeweizen are brewed using top fermented yeast at warm temperatures and their history is quite interesting (although I will save that for a later time so this doesn't turn preposterously long).   

An Aside on the Colloquial Meaning of Ale in the UK

This is an addendum to my previous two posts on the etymology of ale. In that text, what I mentioned as the modern definition of ale is something differentiated from lager based on fermentation conditions. After I finished writing I realized that I've had many conversations with people in the UK about ale and lager, and the colloquial meaning of ale is actually something quite different.

From my experience (which I admit is relatively limited), almost all beer drinkers in the UK understand that beer served on cask is an ale while beer served pressurized out of a keg is lager. This understanding pervades publicans, barmen, and casual drinkers alike. I've recently made a point of asking such people what they think the difference is between ale and lager and I almost invariably get an answer along the lines of, "ale comes from a cask, while lager comes from a keg". They may also add something about the flavor differences but, by and large, I do not get answers relating to the differing fermentation conditions that create ales and lagers.

At first I was inclined to frustration that nobody understood what the technical differences are between ale and lager, but then Dan Fox from The Bull very much put me in my place. I asked the same question of him and we talked it over for a bit (mind Dan has a much more extensive understanding of beer styles than I do). He eventually said to me something along the lines of, "Who really cares what the different fermentation conditions are between ale and lager? Behind the bar if somebody asks about a beer, you won't describe the technical bullshit, you will tell them how it tastes and how it will be served." (this is not an exact quote, but you get the picture) He was absolutely right. If you are describing an ale in the UK, you will say that it comes from a cask at cellar temperature with lower carbonation levels than something coming out of a keg. Unless you are talking to somebody with a keen interest in beer beyond just drinking it, top/bottom fermentation probably should not come into the conversation.

Yet, I still believe this understanding of ale may be contributing to the lack of kegged ale in the UK. I have found that there are two distinct kinds of drinkers; those who prefer ale (since this is the UK we are talking almost exclusively Cask Ale) and those who prefer lager, with relatively little overlap. It is my notion that the flavors of kegged ales probably would not appeal to lager drinkers and ale drinkers would not drink kegged ales because they perceive them as being lagers. As a result, there is a distinct dichodomy between Real Ale and lager with not a whole lot in between.

Of course there are exceptions to the rule. Sierra Nevada Pale Ale has made some headway here and more and more bottled ales from the States are showing up in the UK in bars and on market shelves. There are even some UK breweries making kegged ale, notably Meantime Brewing (however, the last time I asked a barman about a Meantime ale he thought it was a lager...)

Either way, I have clearly found out that ale means something different to the average person, and only the worst of beer snobs would have a problem with that. All I can hope is that eventually kegged ales will catch on and add even more creativity to an already thriving craft beer landscape.

Etymology of Ale Part 2

This is the continuation of my previous post on the etymology of ale. I had to break it into two parts because many of my friends can't read very well and told me to make my entries shorter. Anyway, if you don't know what I'm talking about here, read the other post first.


Throughout the rest of the 18^th century and through most of the first half of the 19^th century, ale was still distinguishable from beer almost exclusively on the amount of hops used in the brew. The Complete Dictionary of Arts and Science of 1773 defined the word ale as "a fermented liquor obtained from an infusion of malt and differing from beer in having less proportion of hops". On top of that, porter became distinctive in that it was darker and often more bitter than beer. This is echoed by several definitions of the age (I will not bore you with them) up until the 1830's with the development of a new type of pale ale produced with large amounts of hops. We now know this as the birth of the India Pale Ale. The distinction was now between ale and porter (or porter beer), as porter became the almost ubiquitous dark beverage in London during the time period. The Engineer's and Mechanic's Encyclopedia published in 1836 describes the two:

In England two distinct sorts of beer are known, called ale, and porter, or beer, and of each sort there are numerous varieties. Although the difference in the flavor of ale and of porter is sufficiently marked, it is difficult to say in what way it is produced: that it is not altogether owing to pale malt being used for brewing ale, as some assert, is clear from the fact that in many parts of the country, ale is brewed from brown malt: neither is it owing to a larger quantity of hops being used in making porter, for the pale ale which is exported in large quantities from country to India contains a larger proportion of hops than the porter exported to the same place; neither will a difference in the proportions of the malt to the water account for it, since some ales are stronger and others weaker than porter. 

It appears that the distinction between ales and beers was becoming more dubious, with ale no longer a universal term for unhopped or lightly hopped beverages. In fact, by the middle of the 19^th century "pale ale" and "bitter beer" were effectively synonyms. Yet, somewhat puzzlingly, the distinction of ale from beer persisted, but instead of being based on hop usage, it was now based on color. By the later parts of the 19^th century, beer had become the umbrella term to describe all kinds of fermented malt beverages, and ale was simply a subdivision of beer. The Oxford English Dictionary agreed with this definition in 1884 saying under the topic of ale, "At present 'beer' is in the trade the generic name for all malt liquors, 'ale' being specifically applied to the paler coloured kinds, the malt for which has not been roasted or burnt". Further on, the colloquial usages of ale and beer gradually grew closer and closer to each other until roughly the early 1950's. If you had walked into a pub in London and asked for an ale at that time, what you would have likely received was a mild, relatively sweet, relatively low hopped malt liquor.

It was in the second half of the 20^th century when ale finally started to take on the definition it has today. With the growth of lagers, both within England and around the world, lager became the beverage that most beer drinkers were familiar with. Lager would need to be distinguished from other types of beers, namely ales, and this was done on the basis of differing fermentation conditions. Lagers were defined as beers fermented at lower temperatures where the yeast tends to stay closer to the bottom of the fermentation vessel, while ales were fermented at higher temperatures with the yeast rising to the top of the fermentation vessel. By 1993, the famous beer writer Michael Jackson would declare: 

In modern usage, ale indicates a brew that has a warm fermentation, traditionally with strains of yeast that rise to the top of the vessel. These 'top-fermenting' yeasts distinguish ales from lagers...

Among beer enthusiasts, beer writers and brewers there is still some debate about the technical definition of ale, but the distinction is almost always between ales and lagers as opposed to hops or color as it has been in the past. Certainly there is some overlap between ales and lager, particularly with the craft brewing scene blossoming around the world. But for the most part, the definition by Michael Jackson is accepted by people with an interest in brewing as well as people within the brewing profession. 

Etymology of Ale Part 1

This is the first entry of two that I will make on the evolving meaning of the term ale from the advent of hops in England to the modern day. The first entry will cover the period from approximately the start of the 15^th century to the beginnings of porter brewing in the first half of the 18^th century.

Today when we think of the word ale, the most accepted definition is one that distinguishes ale from lager based on the fermentation conditions and yeasts that make the two beers. Ales are made with top fermenting yeasts at higher temperatures, and lagers are made with bottom fermenting yeasts at lower temperatures. Both lagers and ales can be described as beers. Yet in England, from the advent of hops in beer in the early part of the 15^th century until perhaps the first half of the 20^th century, ale was distinguished from beer based on the amount of hops used, color, or alcohol content. This is in slight contention with the conventional understanding that once hops became universally used a couple centuries after their first arrival in England, the words ale and beer became effectively synonyms. This is not the case. Even after hops were used in almost all fermented malt beverages, the term ale was understood to be a beverage that was less hopped than the closely related, but more bitter, beer.

The earliest word for ale was introduced to the English-speaking world by the Danes, who called their beverage øl. This became ealu in Old English before finally settling on the now familiar ale. Beer, on the other hand, first showed up in England around the beginning of the 15^th century, when German-speaking settlers brought their hopped brews from continental Europe. The German word bier eventually became beer, which distinguished it from the unhopped ale.

Hops were very late in arriving to England. The first known use of hops in brewing was from 822 AD when the Benedictine monk Abbot Adalhard recorded that his monastery in northeastern France used hops. By the 11^th century hopped beer was the norm in France, with King Louis IX going so far as mandating in 1268 that only malt and hops be used in the making of beer. As hops became prevalent throughout Europe, England remained ignorant to its use. Once introduced to hops, however, the English were reticent to use the flower in their native brews. For the most part, the English viewed hops as an unwholesome plant to be devoutly ignored. Two English kings, King Henry VI and King Henry VIII, in the 16^th century went as far as to ban the use of the plant outright. Henry VIII justified his stance in the 1530's by proclaiming that hops were an aphrodisiac prone to drive his subjects to sinful behavior.

Such sentiment against the hop was likely a significant factor in keeping the terms ale and beer separate. Eventually, the benefits of hops as a preservative and a flavoring agent persuaded the English to adopt it in almost all of their brews by the first half of the 18^th century. Even so, ale was still distinguishable from beer. The first edition of the London and Country Brewer in the 1730's described the difference between ale and beer based on their recipes, particularly with regards to the amount of hops used:

For strong brown ale brewed in any of the winter months and boiled an hour, one pound is but barely sufficient for a hogshead [54 gallons], if it be tapped in three weeks or a month. If for pale ale brewed at that time, and for that age, one pound and a quarter of hops; but if these ales are brewed in any of the summer months there should be more hops allowed. For October or March brown beer, a hogshead made from eleven bushels of malt boiled an hour and a quarter, to be kept nine months, three pounds and a half ought to be boiled in such a drink at the least. For October or March pale beer, a hogshead made from fourteen bushels, boiled an hour and a quarter and kept twelve months, six pounds ought to be allowed to a hogshead of such drink.

It was about the same time that a new type of beverage was gaining popularity that would become known as porter. Together with ale and beer, porter would become the third leg of the fermented beverages in England, with many pubs of the day (and even sometimes in England today) displaying that they serve "Ales, Beers and Porters".

Up next, the evolution of the meaning of ale through the rest of the 18^th century through to today. We will see that ale eventually became less distinguishable from beer based on hop character and more so on color through to the first half of the 20^th century. In the second half of the 20^th century, ale would finally take on the definition that we know today.