De La Senne At The Festival

Interview with Yvan De Baets of De La Senne podcast

While at The Festival in Portland, Maine, we spoke with Yvan De Baets, co-owner and brewer of De La Senne brewery in Brussels. Yvan explained he and his partner, Bernard Leboucq, have a very simple brewing concept: they brew beers that they themselves want to drink, and then share them with the world. One beer that he highlighted in our brief conversation was Taras Boulba. With Taras Boulba, a 4.5% hoppy, aromatic light blonde ale, they wanted to buck the stereotype that Belgian beers must be huge in alcohol, sweet and estery. Taras Boulba, he noted, is a beer that you have when you're having more than one. (well... not exactly his words!)

Yvan also mentioned the other well known brewery in Brussels, Cantillon. He said that the two breweries are close friends and that they don't really compete with one another. Cantillon's beers are sour and dry as opposed to De La Senne's, which are bitter and dry -- if anything, they compliment each other.

While in Portland, Yvan got together with Allagash to collaborate, for the second time, in creating Very Special Belge, a tribute to the 'special Belgian', a style of beer rarely seen today. Hopefully, we'll see that beer make its way to the shelves and taps soon!

Yvan is 2nd from the right, with Jason and Rob from Allagash 2nd & 3rd from the left.

  [link to podcast page]

Cantillon Amphoras

Our 8 day trip to northern France and Brussels began auspiciously with a visit to the Cantillon Brewery, where brewer Jean Van Roy showed us an exciting brewing experiment that he's undertaken. He's fermenting and conditioning about 2,400 liters of lambic in custom made amphoras.

Amphora of lambic.

Jean got the idea from a wine maker friend of his in Sicily. He said that the wine he experienced which had been aged in the ceramic vessels was dramatically different from wine aged in wood barrels, and that he instantly wondered what his beer would be like if aged the same way.

While beer used to be fermented and stored in such vessels a few thousand years ago, we've not heard of any brewery using such ancient vessels in modern times. For Jean, it's a pure experiment, with no idea about what the end result will be. Hear the whole story of Cantillon's bold exBEERiment in this week's podcast. There are lots more great photos of the amphoras on Cantillon's Facebook page.

B.R. and Jean Van Roy.

Gueuze.