Fruit of the Belgian Countryside:
Farm Raised Beer
If you happened onto this site then you probably love beer enough to have been on a brewery tour or two in your day. I've been on many and now, for the most part, when the opportunity arises I decline. At some point I have found you get the same story in a somewhat different setting. There are, of course, exceptions. Of these, one kind of brewery in particular has always sparked my imagination; the farm house brewery.
The allure for me is the unusual beers that farmhouse breweries produce. I associate saison with this kind of establishment - a style that in my opinion captures the feeling of artisnal brewery like no other. The character of these treasures - for me - goes beyond the types of grain and strains of hop employed. I have heard my good friend Richie Stolarz say "you can taste the farmhouse in it!" I think he's right, although articulating what that actually means is no easy task! The kind of place that could make such an intangably different beer was something I needed to see.
Prior to my most recent trip to Belgium, Don Feinburg of VanBerg & DeWulf was kind enough to arrange a private tour of the Brasserie DuPont in Tourpes. I have always thought of this as a classic farmhouse brewery, and amoung those I have yearned to visit. The brewer, Olivier Dedeyker, took me around himself. He was an ideal tour guide with a great perspective - when he was a tot his job was to crawl inside and clean out the brewing vessels!
The place itself is not what you typically see in a brewery - it had once been part of a working farm. It no longer was, but it had not been razed to make the brewery. I found the cobblestone courtyard and brick structures very charming, and totally in keeping with the surrounding countryside setting. The actual brewing process that was described on the tour was not really anything new. I was surprized to hear they keep their yeast going from batch to batch for an entire year, but there was no time-honored secret or technique revealed that had eluded the rest of the brewing world. Somehow the character of the setting just finds it's way into the beer.
Perhaps it is in part a matter of attitude. The brewery also makes cheese (that is washed in their beer) and bread. The baking only happens on Friday, and whatever is not pre-purchased by locals does not last long. They could make more, or bake on additional days out of the week. Why don't they? Cause they make bread on Friday. They have what they have and consumer demand does not change that. They partake in commercializm without knucking under to it's demands. What a wonderful way to run a business!
Fortunately my schedule landed me in Tourpes on Friday so bread buying was an option. After I had seen the old copper vessels, the explosively active fermentation airlocks, the bottling line and had a complete beer sampling I picked up some cheese and a baquette. It made me wonder what would be lost if they ever did succum to consumer demands for greater output - and what other places that had sucummed compromised in the process.
While enjoying Moinette, Oliver showed me a sign for a beer that had been produced around the turn of the century but was lost when the brewery changed hands. It was for a long forgotten honey ale. The person who offered them this relic did more than provide an antique - he was the first step in the rebirth of the beer! Soon we will be seeing Biere de Miel on US shelves, the product of a brewery whose fiscal future takes a back seat to their traditional past.