During the trip through Belgium, we stopped at a couple of nice breweries. The first one we took a tour of was Brouwerij De Glazen Toren. If you are a serious beer geek, you may have tried their Saison D’Erpe Mere. That is one of the best examples of my personal favorite beer style, so I wanted to check out where it was made.
We rolled up on a weekday and were a bit surprised to find they were closed. Turns out they are only consistently open two days per week, because two of the three gentlemen who run it have day jobs. Occasionally they’ll open an extra day when they are very behind on production, but you can’t count on that. So, we looked in the windows, took a couple pictures of the signs out side and grumbled our way sullenly back to our car. That’s when an older gentleman waved at us and pointed questioningly at the brewery to see if that’s what we were there to visit. We had the incredible good luck to show up when the third partner just happened to feel like he would come by the brewery to check on things briefly. I explained how I’d just graduated brewing school in Germany and was pleased to be visiting the land of Saisons and Tripels and he invited us in for a little tour of their facilities.
I must apologize now for no pictures of the inside of the brewery. We weren’t sure they would be appropriate, so just enjoyed what he had to say about his facilities.
I was really struck with how old-school simple their facilities and methods were. Their philosophy towards brewing was one of remaining faithful to the old methods and techniques that Belgian farmhouse breweries have been using for centuries. Although they use modern equipment of stainless steel with internal cleaning and automated systems, they do not use any steps or techniques that did not exist a hundred years ago. They also take the time to be sure everything is done the best it can and refuse to cut any corners.
As an example, they have no filtration systems, not even a whirlpool. That technology was not in use a century ago. So where most breweries will allow fermentation to run for about 7-10 days, and stop then because it is 98% done, they will let their beers ferment for three weeks or more. They want all fermentation to be completed, and then give the yeast and all sediments in the beer time to floculate out and sink to the bottom of the vessel to naturally clarify the beer as much as possible. Then they condition and age the beers in bottles. It was like home-brewing on an enlarged scale.
Their only nod to filtration they have is the “hop filtration” system the old gentleman giving us the tour had developed. They created a small stainless steel bucket with a mesh bottom and a steel wort spreader. They pack the bucket with whole hops, and then pump the finished wort over it. This strains out chunks from the wort and provides “extra-late hopping” as our friend called it.
They also have a single direct-fired vessel that they use for all liquid heating. This gets used to boil water that gets moved to a storage tank for holding. They use this to step up the mash temperatures for their infusion mash (yes, infusion mashing in a non-heated vessel) and mix it with cool water to sparge. They boil the wort in the direct-fired kettle for some nice caramelization. They use a layer of lava stone to prevent hot-spots on the bottom of the kettle and hold on to some excess heat.
The result of this fanatic devotion to traditional brewing methods is some truly outstanding beers. Unfortunately they were completely out of Saison when we arrived (sob!), but they did have several cases of their Tripel. We bought two bottles of that to enjoy later, and they were a truly excellent beer.
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