ABOUT BELGIAN BEER
CULINARY CLUB BELGIAN BEER TASTING
April 20, 2006
What is beer? Four principal ingredients:
1. Grain (mostly barley, but often wheat, also oats, rye, corn, rice)
2. Water
3. Yeast
4. Hops (the flower of a vine in the nettle family)
Other ingredients used in varying quantities include sugars, fruits and other fermentables, and herbs and spices.
How is beer made?
1. Malt the grain, i.e. wet the grains and allow them to germinate. Then dry and/or roast them (called “kilning”).
2. Crack the malt in a mill.
3. Steep the malt with hot water for 1–2 hours.
4. Drain the liquid, called the wort, into the kettle.
5. Boil the wort for 2 hours. Add hops at various times while boiling.
6. Run the beer into a cask or tank for fermentation. Add yeast.
7. Ferment at the right temperature for the right length of time. This is the primary fermentation.
8. Remove the yeast (by skimming or centrifuge).
9. Condition in a cask or tank, perhaps adding more yeast or sugars for a secondary fermentation.
10. Bottle. Sometimes yeast and fermentable sugars are added to the bottle, resulting in another fermentation, termed bottle-conditioning. Or pasteurize.
Ales vs. Lagers
To oversimplify: ales are fruity and cloudy; lagers are clean, clear, and crisp. The difference largely results from differing yeasts. All the Belgian beers we’re tasting tonight are ales. Lager vastly dominate the beer market (even in Belgium). Virtually all mass-market American beers are lagers.
Distinctive Features of Belgian Beers
· Traditional Belgian beers are all ales.
· One class of beers, lambics, is spontaneously fermented by wild yeasts and bacteria borne on the air, lending funky and interesting flavors to the beer.
· When wheat is used, it is always unmalted, imparting a lemony tartness.
· Several Belgian beers owe their distinctive flavors to spices. For example, Belgian Wheat Beers are flavored with coriander, Curaçao orange peel, and sometimes “secret” spices.
· Sugars — glucose, beet sugar, and especially candy sugar — are frequent additions to Belgian beers, responsible for high alcohol percentages and rummy flavors.
· Some Belgian beers use fruit, particularly cherries and raspberries, to great effect.
· Monks brew beer! There are six Trappist monasteries that brew in Belgium: Achel, Chimay, Orval, Westmalle, Westvleteren, and Rochefort.
RESOURCES
Bars
· The Hopleaf in Andersonville (5148 N. Clark St) is an outstanding Belgian-focused beer bar. They have several excellent Belgian beers on tap and a daunting selection of bottles. Their food is supposed to be good (especially if you’re into mussels steamed in beer).
· In principle, The Pub has a decent selection of bottled Belgian beers, but they are often getting beers in “next week”.
Shops
· Sam’s Wine and Spirits (1720 N. Marcey St) has a phenomenal selection of beer and wine. Their website, www.samswine.com, is excellent; you can place orders for pickup at the store.
· Hyde Park’s liquor stores carry some good stuff.
Information
· www.beeradvocate.com is a good, if dorky, beer site. It’s great for getting a sense of what beers to try.
· www.ratebeer.com is another.
· www.beermapping.com is a beer-oriented google maps mashup.
· Michael Jackson (no kidding) is a beer expert who writes great books.
· Petit Futé has a small book on Belgian beers that would be good for a beer-oriented trip to Belgium.
· Saveur has a good article on lambics, available for free on their web site, www.saveur.com.
Belgianish
· Allagash Brewery (in Portland, Maine) and Brewery Ommegang (in Cooperstown, NY) brew great Belgian-style beers.
· Three Floyds has a brewpub in Munster, Indiana, within a half hour drive from here. Three Floyds is really not Belgian, though they did recently have a “sextuple” on tap — meatheads.