Belgium's Premium Beer Styles
(menu)OK, so you might not want to go there on holiday, but Belgium’s majestic premium beer styles are the perfect way to add character to your list. Melissa Cole braves flatness, bureaucrats, chips and mayonnaise to check out the wheats, lambics, abbeys and Trappists
Can you name three famous Belgians? No? Well just in case it ever comes up in a pub quiz I’ll give you some answers:
Jean-Claude van Damme, Herge, van Dyck, Rubens and, of course, Jean-Marc Bosman whose name is immortalised in the
annals of football history for creating the right to free transfer.
But, these little nuggets of random information aside, the problem with Belgium is that it suffers from a slightly bland reputation. This is good for people like me who don’t like visiting places overrun with Brits abroad, but if it means people are denying themselves the pleasure of Belgian beers well, then, that’s just wrong.
When you ask most people about Belgian beers these days they might mention Hoegaarden or Leffe – or that bottle with the pink elephant on (Delirium) – but it doesn’t get much further than that, despite there being a genuine interest in them, and that’s because they’re a little bit complicated.
Despite the complexity, Belgian beers offer an excellent margin for the on-trade as long as they are served correctly and in the premium manner that us newly cosmopolitan Brits have come to expect from our time on the Continent.
This means branded glassware, perfect pours, preferably the little paper napkins around the base of the glass, and sound product knowledge from your staff. Oh, and it also means NOT putting citrus fruit in my wheat beer because the next time you try it I will take the fruit tongs and insert them where the sun don’t shine. Sideways!
BRING ON THE BOTTLES
Nigel Stevenson of James Clay believes that Belgian beers need to be seen to be appreciated: ‘Blonde, fruit and wheat beers are doing the best sales, helped a lot by Duvel Moortgat, which has set up its own marketing company in this country.
‘The biggest challenge we face in the UK is that bottled beers are fighting against the draught culture, so they tend to work best in bars that don’t do draught or ones that attract interested customers.’
The good news is that the UK market is beginning to embrace Belgian beers in a mainstream way, at least if certain brands’ sales figures are anything to go by. Leffe, for example, saw an enormous upturn of 47% last year and Nick Short, UK general manager for Duvel Moortgat, reckons Duvel has seen great growth as well. But what’s driving it?
Short comments: ‘We’re seeing a change in the on-trade as it moves away from vertical drinking and the consumer shows more interest in quality over quantity. There are enormous opportunities for more quality products, as aspects such as the smoking ban take effect and the country continues towards a more continental café culture.’
Michael Cook, imported beer controller at Pierhead echoes this sentiment: ‘Things are opening up; there’s recognition that the consumer is going slightly upmarket and is prepared to pay for premium products.’
And Steve Kitching of InBev seconds the view that Belgian beers can command a premium price: ‘A speciality beer can command a margin of around 10% on premium lagers,’ he says.
CASHING IN
But how, as a licensee, do you make the most of Belgian beers? Aubrey Johnson, co-owner of the two incredibly successful Lowlander cafés in London, believes that easing people in is one simple way to do it.
‘It’s got to be premium. You have to have the right branded glassware and you have to make sure it’s poured correctly, with a decent head, and delivered with class, or you just can’t charge the right amount to make it profitable.
‘But there’s
also other ways to introduce people to the category. We’ve long offered tasting sticks because they allow customers to try different beers without being scared that they’re going to be stuck with a
pint that they don’t want. It goes down especially well with groups because they all invariably find something they like.’
Johnson, moreover, sees Belgian beers as being a good way to bring women drinkers into the category. ‘I often find that – actually – they don’t want something sweet, and that tarter beers such as Kriek will appeal to their palette,’ he says.
Richard Dinwoodie of Time Out Bar of the Year, the Rake, agrees with Johnson’s analysis. ‘The key to selling Belgian beers, or any beer really, is staff education and a willingness to engage with the customer to find out what they like to eat or drink normally and then trying to find a beer that matches that profile.
‘Obviously this is a non-starter on a rammed Friday night, when most people will go for what they know. But at quieter times you will make more money and see more repeat custom if your staff talk to your customers and, once they form that bond of trust, they will be willing to graduate to more premium products, and therefore improve your profit margin.’
But, a word of caution has to be sounded here. Belgian beers tend towards the higher end of the abv scale, so it’s important that if you run a very vertical drinking establishment that you think very hard about what you stock.
And because the world of Belgian beer can be a somewhat confusing, and a very high alcohol place, Imbibe has put together this brief guide to what Belgian beers are all about.
BELGIAN BEER: A BRIEF GUIDE
Abbey Road
Abbey beers range from the InBev-brewed Leffe to the less mainstream Maredsous.
The word abbey, in terms of Belgian beers, normally means in the style of beers formerly brewed by monks, and they fall into two camps. The first, like Aflligem for example, are brewed under license from genuine monastic orders, which means some of the profits are returned to the monks. However, some merely take their name from defunct monasteries and are therefore just abbey ales in name, not in spirit.
Wonderful Witbier
Witbier is the identification for Belgian wheat or white beers which have to be brewed using at least 25% wheat grain.
Typically, as Hoegaarden trumpets loud and clear, these beers will also have spices such as coriander and citrus rind, in the brewing process which gives them their distinct and refreshing flavour. They are also cloudy as they aren’t filtered. This can make them challenging for some consumers but good staff education can easily overcome that problem.
Golden Age
Golden ale is perhaps the most popular of the Belgian beers with the category champion being Duvel, that gorgeous 8.5% abv beer, which needs to be treated with some serious respect. Perhaps no surprise that its name means ‘devil’ in Belgian!
Typically hoppy and slightly spicy, there are also other fine examples of golden ale to be found in Belgium which can be readily sourced over here – perhaps the most endearing of which are La Chouffe, an 8% bottle-fermented with an engaging garden gnome as its brand, and Taras Boulba (available exclusively from Utobeer), which satirises the constant bickering between the Flems and the Walloons on its label.
Lip Licking Lambic
Possibly the most unusual beer style available in Belgian is lambic and it is a truly acquired taste. The name is believed to have originated from a current and historic town called Lambeek, famous for its beer.
Lambic beer is created from between 35-40% unmalted barley and 60-65% malted barley and aged hops (to prevent their character becoming too prevalent).
The wort is then left open to the elements and spontaneous fermentation occurs, which is probably exactly the same way the Mesopotamians did it 5,000 years ago.
In
an interesting link to the fortified wine industry lambic beers are then aged in sherry or port barrels and develop a ‘flor’ – a layer of yeast on the top of the liquid – just as sherry does, which
helps prevent oxidisation. And in the same way sherry is made by blending so is lambic; it is nearly always a blend of two or more beers.
There are several different types of lambic beer – gauze, faro and fruit – but all of them have the same thing in common, they are all lip-puckeringly sour and offer the perfect contrast to many food dishes and cheese.
Another branch of the sour beers that Belgium produces so well are Oud Bruin and Flanders Red. There is much debate about whether they are in fact the same thing or whether they qualify separately.
In any case, the finest example of this style of beer is Rodenbach Grand Cru which is one of the most palate stimulating aperitifs around.
Tasty Trappists
There are seven Trappist breweries in the world, six in Belgium and one (Koningshoeven) in the Netherlands.
The Belgian breweries – Orval, Chimay, Rochefort, Westmalle, Westvleteren and Achel – between them produce roughly 20 different beers, all of which are top-fermented bottle-conditioned ales and are generally pretty strong at 6% plus.
The Trappists are part of the Cistercian Order of the Strict Observance, founded in 1098, and the name originates from the Abbey of Notre-Dame de la Trappe in France. To use the name Trappist and the authentic Trappist beer logo, these rules must be observed:
- The beer must be brewed within the walls of a Trappist abbey, by or under control of Trappist monks.
- The brewery, the choices of brewing, and the commercial orientations must clearly be made by and depend on the monastic community.
- The economic purpose of the brewery must be directed toward assistance and not financial profit.
Trappist beers are great with food and can really bring out the flavours of hearty and delicate dishes alike.
A1 BELGIAN STOCKISTS
James Clay & Sons 01422 377560, info@jamesclay.co.uk, www.beersolutions.co.uk
Pierhead Purchasing 020 8320 4467, info@pierheadwines.co.uk, www.pierheadwines.co.uk
Utobeer 020 7394 8601, sales@utobeer.co.uk, www.utobeer.co.uk
Editorial feature from Imbibe Magazine November/December 2007
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