In Belgium, It’s Not Just Beer. It’s ‘Liquid Communication.’

When it comes to beer, I like to think of myself as an Equal Opportunity Enjoyer. I have done keg stands fueled by cheap swill, and I have sipped barley wine out of a snifter. I have thrown back liters of pilsener in Munich, pints of stout in Dublin, and bottles of lager in Japanese sushi restaurants. Somewhere in there I vaguely remember drinking something that had twigs (yes, twigs!) floating in it at a beer festival in England.

I don’t tell you this to brag, or to sound like a beer snob. I’m no beer expert, not by a long shot. I only know enough to be dangerous, as the saying goes. But I’ll tell you one thing: when I heard I was moving to Belgium, I knew I was going to have to step up my game. For a beer lover, coming to Belgium is like giving a starving man a menu.

Needless to say, I don’t really cover beer stories full time for The World. But, I have managed to do a couple of pieces involving Belgian beer since I’ve been here (like this one for example). The latest one is on the expansion of “The Belgian Beer Cafe” into the US market. “The Belgian Beer Cafe” has the backing of AB InBev, the world’s largest brewer. You doubtless know of some of their brands: Stella Artois, Hoegaarden, Leffe, not to mention Beck’s and Budweiser. There are now dozens of these cafes across the globe, and now ten are planned for the US in the coming years.

The Belgian Beer Cafe idea invokes strong reactions from Belgian beer aficionados. Joe Stange, co-author of Around Brussels in 80 Beers, wrote on his blog, The Thirsty Pilgrim: “My fear is that clumsly AB InBev is going to capitalize on Belgian beer’s reputation and flush it rapidly down the toilet.”

Well, as the joke goes, “you don’t own beer, you rent it.”

The Fight for Taste

Yvan De Baets is Stange’s co-author, and also runs Brasserie de la Senne in Brussels. De Baets is serious…very serious about Belgian beer. For example, he doesn’t think of himself as a brewer, but as someone making “liquid communication.” If you think that’s being snobbish, then I suggest you try one of Brasserie de la Senne’s beers.

The first thing he tells me is that he doesn’t want our interview to about bashing InBev, or The Belgian Beer Cafe. In fact, he wishes them luck. But, he emphasizes that for him and for Brasserie de la Senne “it’s important for me to put some values in your beer. Beer should have something to say, especially about the fight for taste.”

He tells me that he thinks The Belgian Beer Cafe’s menu features beers that are only an image of what people think Belgian brewing is all about, that it’s full of beers where “all the angles have been rounded off.” Stella Artois, Hoegaarden, and Leffe (all InBev heavy hitters) are on the menu.

“Those beers are an important part of our beer heritage,” De Baets tells me, “but I think they could do better.”

OK, but if I was stuck in Newark Airport (the future site of the first Belgian Beer Cafe) and had the choice between a Westmalle and a generic American lager, I know which one I’d pick.

Still, as a beer enjoyer with a bit of knowledge, it’s hard not to be sympathetic with Stange and De Baets.

All in the Family

The Belgian brewing tradition is awesome, in the old sense of the word. This is, after all, a small country that by some counts had more than 1,400 breweries before the start of the First World War. There are still more than 100 brewers operating, which isn’t bad when you consider how global brands now dominate the world beer market.

The brewing kettles at Brasserie de Brunehaut (Photo: Clark Boyd)

When I met brewer Marc-Antoine De Mees at the Brunehaut Brewery not far from Tournai, his passion for his beers was clearly evident. As he tells me about the brewing process, he opens up one of the huge copper mash kettles. “It’s hard to find ones this old,” he tells me, his voice echoing off the inside of the 1,300 gallon kettle. “The Germans took most of the copper for munitions during World War II.”

Right next to the kettles is a filtration system that dates back to 1912. The trappist monks who brew Chimay used it for decades. “It is an antique, but it still works perfectly,” De Mees tells me.

Brunehaut brews a variety of beers in various styles and potencies. One is St. Martin’s Ale, whose recipe dates back to 1096. Brunehaut is even required to give ten percent of the money earned on St. Martin’s back to the order of monks who originally brewed it, to be used for charitable works.

Despite all this history, De Mees is constantly looking to keep his beers, and his business practices, fresh. He’s slowly going organic, growing his own barley so that he can control the product from field to bottle.

He’s also using recyclable plastic kegs for export, instead of stainless steel, in order to keep the carbon footprint down. He also says the plastic kegs keep his costs down, as they don’t have to be transported back to Belgium like the stainless steel ones.

Brunehaut is also now brewing a gluten-free beer for those who are gluten intolerant.

Marc-Antione De Mees pours a beer at Brasserie Brunehaut (Photo:Clark Boyd)

De Mees told me that 20 percent of his business is done in the United States. He finds it hard, though, to compete with medium-sized and large brewers in Belgium. Each restaurant or pub tends to have specific contracts with those larger breweries, he says, and that keeps Brunehaut beers off many a menu.

He says that if The Belgian Beer Cafe ends up excluding smaller Belgian brewers from its menu, “that’s just a disaster for us. For the moment, the United States and other countries are a chance to have an open market.”

For De Mees, there is some irony in the fact that InBev is the company ultimately behind The Belgian Beer Cafe. De Mees, who had a background in selling brewing equipment, saved Brunehaut from bankruptcy in 2006. He quickly called a family meeting to discuss his plans for the brewery.

“An uncle said to me, ‘Glad to see you’re back in the family business,’” De Mees tells me. He had no idea what his relative was talking about. “My uncle then told me that my great-great-grandfather owned a brewery in Brussels. That brewery is now the Bellevue brewery.”

“And it’s now owned by AB InBev.”