Dubbel Vision
Dubbel Vision
Step-by-step recipes for recreating six legendary Belgian beers.
As I write this article, the summer air is cooling, the trees are beginning to show fall colors and the great annual event known as “Back to School” is upon us. My wife and I are high school teachers, so this time of year is of particular significance in our house. What more logical way to discuss Belgian beers and how to clone them, than from the perspective of a teacher?
Geography: good Grain, clean water and narrow valleys
Okay, easy subjects first. Look at a map and you will see that Belgium lies in northwestern Europe — due north of France, due west of Germany and south of the Netherlands. The country is located too far north to be a major player in the wine industry, but the spot is not bad for growing grain, particularly barley. Most of Belgium’s major cities (other than the capital, Brussels) are seaports, which is the reason behind Belgium’s long tradition of international trade and commerce. This easy access turned many “local” breweries into regional and international companies.
The topography of Belgium adds some elements to the country’s brewing profile as well, with deep, clean water supplies and mountain springs and many long, narrow valleys that maintain relatively cool and consistent temperatures year-round. Some of these valleys are “closed environments,” meaning they are so deep and narrow that airborne bacteria and yeast cannot escape. Case in point: The Senne River valley, around the village of Lembeek, has a unique combination of airborne fauna that has long been used to ferment the valley’s legendary “lambic” beers. In Belgium, the beer from one valley will not be like the beer made in the valley next door.
History: where the Melting pot meets the brew kettle
Belgium as a sovereign nation is a relatively new concept, dating to the beginning of the 19th century. Before that, what is now Belgium was overrun, conquered and divided among its neighbors. From Julius Caesar to Napoleon Bonaparte, everyone in Western Europe at one time or another set his sights on the territory that lies at the crossroads of critical east-west and north-south trade routes. Undoubtedly, the influence of Austrian, German and Dutch rulers and merchants favored the tradition of beer-making. In medieval times, the Brewers’ Guild was one of the most powerful political associations in Belgium.
Language: Where witbier also means biére blanche
Until very recently, one of the biggest obstacles to Belgian unity has been language. As close as they are, ethnically and philosophically, the Belgians have long been divided over their native tongue. To the north, most people speak Flemish, very much like the language of the Netherlands. To the south, close to the border of France, French is the more common language. You can see this in the names of beers and of beer styles: a “witbier” or “tarwebier” in the north is called a “biére blanche” in the south, for example. Realistically, there is very little difference between the brewing traditions of Flemish Flanders and French Wallonia. And in Brussels, the ultimate multi-lingual and multi-cultural city, beer is a shared universal language.
Religion: awe-inspiring beer from cistercian abbeys
Beer is practically a religion for most Belgians. It is a major part of every celebration — personal, local and national. Brewers in Belgium enjoy the cult status that we give to rock stars and movie stars.
Many of the great Belgian beers and beer styles originally were developed as an agricultural product of Catholic monasteries. Six Trappist monastery breweries in Belgium — and a seventh, in the Netherlands — still produce beers that are considered by connoisseurs to be among the best in the world. Many other formerly brewing monasteries have now licensed their name (and in some cases their old recipes) to commercial secular brewers, in exchange for a percentage of the revenue.
Math and Science: beer called Dubbel, tripel and XXX
My weak subjects, I’ll admit, but there are a few numbers and formulas that matter. Many Belgian breweries list their beer’s strength on the label not in an ABV (alcohol by volume) percentage, but in degrees. These degrees are based on a scale similar to, but not exactly like, the Plato scale.
The Westmalle and Rochefort Trappistenbiers, for example, are labeled 8, 10 and 12 degrees, based on their original gravities (8 is the “weak” one, at about 6.8 percent ABV, while the 12’s are the strongest, rating as high as 11 percent ABV). They also use the terms “dubbel,” “tripel” and even “quadrupel” to rank their beers by alcohol strength, but remember: A dubbel does not have twice the alcohol of a normal beer, nor do the tripel and quadrupel have three or four times the alcohol.
To make matters even more confusing, in some breweries these designations may reflect only how many X’s were marked on the vat during fermentation to distinguish one batch from the next. In others, the same grain was mashed a couple of times, so the first wort was marked XXX, the second XX and the third — the weakest — with a single X. Basic math, right?
Science-wise, one cannot discuss Belgian brewing without talking about yeast. Early Belgian brewers may have been among the first to harvest yeast and repitch it. They also may have been the first to scientifically plan out fermentation schedules rather than wait for happy accidents. Let us not leave out the role, though, of happy accidents: If not for serendipity, there would be no Belgian lambics.
Traditionally, these beers are fermented “spontaneously” after cooling in vessels open to the night air; they depend on wild yeasts and bacteria for their unique sourness and other flavors. These bacteria and wild yeasts are now often added as cultures at specific, controlled times in the brewing process, but originally they were just there — in the air, in the oak fermenting vessels, in the brewery’s atmosphere and equipment. These days, even the Trappist monasteries have modern, white-tile-and-stainless brewhouses, proving religion can co-exist with science.
Art: beer in its highest form, served with a flourish
Belgian beers are works of art in themselves, and they are improved by the way they are packaged and served. Many Belgian beers have uniquely shaped bottles, some screen-printed, some with logos or names embossed in the glass itself, most identifiable even when empty and de-labeled. The labels are often very creative, with reproductions of famous Belgian and Dutch paintings or pictures of monasteries, villages, monuments and landscapes. The names can be quite clever as well, from Mannekin Pis (The Peeing Little Boy) to Forbidden Fruit to a whole series of strong ales in imitation of Duvel, with names like Satan and Lucifer.
There’s also the glass that each beer should be served in. Each beer has its own shape, artistically and scientifically designed to emphasize certain characteristics of the beer. I am always impressed when I find a pub that serves Belgian beers, either on tap or in bottles, and has the appropriate glass for each one. The best I’ve ever seen is the Saint Alexander in Old Quebec City — I have never stumped them yet! (For more on Belgian glassware, see page 48.)
Home Economics: cloning six legendary belgian beers
First lesson: The right ingredients make better beer. I haven’t specified brand names, but I can make some recommendations on grains and extracts.
Belgian beers are generally brewed with grain grown and malted in Belgium, or nearby in France and Germany, and you should try to do so at home as well. There are two excellent brands of Belgian malted grains available in the United States and Canada, DeWolf-Cosyns and Malteries Franco-Belges. They both make most of the same basic malts (pale, pilsner, different caramels, amber, dark grains and more) but have slightly different specialty malts. Ask your retailer what they have and what they can get; your Belgian-style homebrew will be better for having used the best and most authentic ingredients you can find.
As far as extracts go, there are currently no Belgian extracts marketed in North America (that we know of) except those made by Brewferm, which are prehopped and preflavored kits. They are very high-quality kits, but they don’t work in these recipes (For tips on making Belgian beers from prehopped kits, see page 37.) My advice on malt extracts for these recipes is to go with Scottish (Telford’s) or Dutch (Laaglander) extracts, which generally ferment out and finish a bit more full-bodied and full-flavored than their English and German counterparts. Yeast is, of course, the make-or-break choice for Belgian beers.
When cloning a bottle-conditioned beer, it is worthwhile to try to reuse that brewery’s yeast. Unfortunately, many commercial breweries filter out their main yeasts and repitch an ordinary yeast for bottling. For the recipes here, I have avoided this question and suggested a commercial yeast slurry that will work. You can, of course, use an alternative yeast. All six of the beers below are bottle-conditioned, and all are reported to contain their main yeast.
To reculture yeast from a bottle, gently pour out the beer, leaving the sediment at the bottom. Boil a
starter with dried malt extract and water; while it’s cooling to 78° F, carefully sanitize the mouth of the bottle, a stopper and an airlock. Then pour the starter into the bottle. Keep it at room temperature and give it a few days to get going.
A large number of respected Belgian beers contain brown sugar, molasses, corn sugar and, especially, the crystallized beet sugar called “candi” sugar. I have tried to simplify the issue and have only used candi sugar in my recipes. (For more on candi sugar, see page 43.)
Fruits and spices have a more prominent place in Belgian beers than in any other country’s brewing traditions. Two of the recipes given, the Lindemans and the Hoegaarden, rely on them for their uniqueness. Rarely will a Belgian brewer use an extract — if a beer is a fruit beer, it is made with real fruit; spiced beers have very carefully measured amounts of characteristic (and sometimes secret) spices.
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DE KONINCK clone
Brouwerij De Koninck, Antwerp
A family brewery founded in 1833, De Koninck really produces only one beer (a second brew, Cuvée De Koninck, was launched in 1993 but hasn’t caught on).
A typical Belgian pale ale, it is a smooth copper beer with a flavor profile that lies somewhere between a Düsseldorfer Alt and a British pale ale. Soft and dry, creamy smooth, De Koninck has a balanced flavor with some mild floral hop notes in the aroma.
The De Koninck bottle is unique — tall and narrow, it swells to a bubble just below the crown. Its signature glass is a “bolleke,” which resembles a bowl-shaped, tall-stemmed wine glass.
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DUVEL clone
Brouwerij Moortgat, Breendonk
“Devil” is the archetypal Belgian Strong Golden ale. In fact, most of Duvel’s imitators make some reference to the devil in their name or label. Strong, pale amber in color, Duvel’s flavor is a unique balance of alcohol, hops and sweet malt.
Founded in 1871, Moortgat is still owned by the same family. The present-day version of Duvel has only existed since 1970, replacing a darker version developed after World War I by Belgian brewing scientist Jean De Clerck using McEwan’s Scotch Ale yeast. Moortgat malts its own barley; its brewers were unable to brew as pale a beer as they liked by using commercial malt.
Duvel’s unique flavor is due, in part, to a cycle of cool-cold-cool-warm fermentation temperatures. Duvel is often served chilled as an aperitif, in its own wide, distinctive, tulip-shaped glass.
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WESTMALLE TRIPEL clone
Brouwerij Westmalle, Malle
Our Lady of the Beloved Sacred Heart at Westmalle was founded in the wake of the French Revolution, in 1794, by Royalist monks fleeing the guillotine. They began brewing in the 1830s and the brewery became more commercial in the early years of the 20th century.
The quintessential Trappist tripel, Westmalle is very pale, very strong and wonderfully smooth. One of the brewhouse techniques that makes the Westmalle beers unique is the use of direct gas flames on the copper kettles. This creates hot spots that may caramelize the wort slightly, giving a faint burnt-sugar taste to the beers. The beers are also brewed with very hard water, which certainly contributes to the character of the tripel.
The Westmalle beers are bottled in a custom-designed, raised-letter brown bottle. They’re served at
cellar temperatures in a typical stemmed, wide-mouthed goblet, with a row of dimples around the base of the bowl.
RECIPE LINK HERE
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CORSENDONK MONK’S BROWN ALE
Brouwerij Bios, Ertvelde
A reddish-brown beer with a fruity, caramel nose and a lingering bitter-chocolate aftertaste, Corsendonk Brown is a recent entry into the Belgian market, dating only back to the 1980s. The Corsendonk beers are a rarity in Belgium because they’re brewed in compliance with the “Reinheitsgebot,” the strict German beer code that allows only barley, hops, yeast and water to be used in the making of beer.
Corsendonk is an Abbey beer, not a Trappist beer. This designation means the beer is brewed not at an abbey, but under license from — or at least in the style of — a Trappist monastery. In the case of Corsendonk, the name is taken from an Augustine priory that produced beer from the 1600s until the 1780s. Whether the Augustine brothers brewed anything remotely resembling modern Corsendonk is debatable, but they have licensed their name to the beer since 1982.
Corsendonk has a unique screen-printed bottle, white on brown, giving the effect of stained glass or medieval manuscript illuminations. The preferred serving glass is a stemmed narrow tulip shape, sometimes with a large hexagonal “bead” halfway up the stem.
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HOEGAARDEN WIT
OG = 1.048 FG = 1.011 IBU = 16
Brouwerij De Kluis, Hoegaarden
This is the standard by which all witbiers are measured. Hoegaarden Wit is cloudy and very pale golden in color, with a restrained white head and aromas of coriander and wheat that are impossible to ignore.
Brouwerij De Kluis was founded in the mid-1960s by Pierre Celis, who went on to promote the witbier style internationally and then moved to the United States to found his own brewery in Austin, Texas. At the time of its revival, the witbier style was all but forgotten. Now, it is brewed in several countries by dozens of different breweries.
Traditionally, the grain bill is half malted barley, half unmalted raw wheat and up to ten percent rolled or flaked oats. In addition to the orange peel and coriander, some people speculate there may be a third spice, such as cumin seed.
The bottle is custom-made, with the Hoegaarden name in raised letters. The glass is a heavy, thick tumbler like those used for pastis drinks in Provence.
Ingredients:
- 2 lbs. pale malt
- 2 lbs. malted wheat
- 1 lb. flaked wheat
- 1 lb. flaked oats
- 2 lbs. unhopped wheat dry malt extract (DME)
- 3 AAU East Kent Goldings hops (0.75 oz. at 4% alpha acid)
- 2 AAU Saaz hops (0.5 oz. at 4% alpha acid)
- 1/8 oz. lightly crushed coriander seed
- 1/4 oz. dried Curacao orange peel, shredded Belgian witbier yeast slurry (White Labs WLP400 or Wyeast 3944)
- 1 cup unhopped light dry malt extract to prime
Step by Step:
Heat 9 quarts water to 163° F. Crush whole grains and add, with flaked grains as well, to liquor. Hold mash at 152° F for 90 minutes. Runoff and sparge with 12 quarts water at 170° F. Add DME, stir well, bring to a boil. Add East Kent Goldings hops, boil 45 minutes. Add Saaz hops, boil 15 minutes. Remove from heat, remove hops if possible. Add coriander and orange peel, steep 30 minutes.
Pour into fermenter along with enough pre-boiled and chilled water to make up 5.25 gallons. Cool to 70° F, pitch yeast. Ferment at 65° F for two weeks, rack to secondary and condition cooler (45° F) for three to four weeks. Prime with DME, bottle and age three to four weeks at 45° to 50° F. Serve at 40° F in a heavy glass tumbler.
All-grain option:
Replace the dried malt extract with another 1.5 lbs. each of pale malt and malted wheat. Increase mash water to 12 quarts and sparge water to 15 quarts. Mash time and temperatures will be the same. Proceed as above from boiling.
All-extract option:
Omit pale and wheat malts. Steep flaked wheat and oats in 3 gallons at 150° F for 30 minutes. Remove grains. Increase DME to 5 lbs., proceed as above from boiling.
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LINDEMANS LAMBIC
OG = 1.050 FG = 1.012 IBU = 18
Brouwerij Lindemans, Vlezenbeek
Lindemans was founded in 1869 and has a solid reputation as a blender and brewer of traditional, authentic lambics. The brewery produces four fruit lambics: kriek (cherry), cassis (black current), peche (peach) and framboise (raspberry). This same basic recipe also can be used to emulate other fruit lambics, from fraise (strawberry) to druiven (muscat grape).
As lambics go, Lindemans’ products tend to be less sour, more sweet, more mainstream (compared with Boon or Cantillon, for example) and thus more approachable for the amateur homebrewer.
Not all lambics are made with fruit, of course — if you sweeten the finished product with candi sugar, you have faro; if you blend old and new lambics, you have gueuze (pronounced “geuz” with a hard “g”). All are based on a wheat beer that has been allowed to ferment more or less spontaneously, with naturally occurring local yeasts. Like Champagne, lambic is a geographic designation: Beers made in this style outside of the Senne valley should not be called lambics. Many American homebrewers have taken to calling their own versions “pLambic,” with the lower-case “p” standing for “pseudo.”
The alcohol content will not necessarily correlate to the gravity readings on this beer, because the addition of fruit in the secondary fermenter will increase the sugar content and restart fermentation. Lindemans and many other lambic brewers bottle their products in small champagne-style bottles, with a cork-and-wire top. Lindemans’ labels and glassware exhibit ornate art-deco lettering, and they prefer a tall, footed flute glass.
Ingredients:
- 3 lbs. pilsner malt
- 2 lbs. malted wheat
- 1 lb. flaked wheat
- 2 lbs. unhopped light dry malt extract (DME)
- 4 AAU well-aged aroma hops: such as Saaz, East Kent Goldings or Tettnang (1 oz. at 4% alpha acid)
- Belgian ale yeast slurry (White Labs WLP550 or Wyeast 1762)
- Lambic yeast or bacteria culture (recultured yeast from a commercial lambic, Wyeast 3278 or both)
- 6 to 9 lbs. cherries, raspberries, peaches or other fruit (picked fresh, washed, cut up and frozen until ready to use)
- 1 cup unhopped light dry malt extract (DME) to prime
Step by Step:
Heat 9 quarts water to 163° F. Crush whole grains and add, with flaked wheat, to liquor. Hold mash at 152° F for 75 minutes. Runoff and sparge with 12 quarts water at 170° F. Add DME, stir well, bring to a boil. Add hops, boil 60 minutes. Remove from heat. Add to fermenter along with enough pre-boiled and chilled water to make up 5.25 gallons.
Cool to 70° F, pitch ale yeast. Ferment at 68° F for two weeks, rack onto fruit in your secondary and add lambic culture. Condition cool (50° F) for three to four weeks. Rack into third vessel to clarify at 50° F for two weeks. Prime with DME, bottle and age at least three to four weeks at 45° to 50° F. Serve at 40° F in either a heavy glass tumbler or a champagne-style flute.
All-grain option: Replace the DME with another 1.5 lbs. each pilsner and wheat malt. Increase mash water to 13 quarts and sparge water to 16 quarts. Mash time and temperatures will be the same. Proceed as above from boiling.
All-extract option: Omit pilsner and wheat malts. Steep flaked wheat in 3 gallons at 150° F for 30 minutes. Remove grains. Increase DME to 5.5 lbs., proceed as above from boiling.
