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Spécial Belge Taproom

Tasting Beers – Special Event

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How to Taste Beers

Ginger Beer
A Blissful Bavik Super Pils

On March 12th I ran a beer-tasting event for the Jewish community in Antwerp. My good friends at the Special Belge Taproom hosted the evening and supplied a broad variety of beers on tap.

One of the challenges of arranging a beer tasting is to line up a suitable variety of beers which are good representatives of the different styles. As this was an introduction to beer tasting, the selection had to be more main-stream. While I would have loved to present some sours and lambics, this was not the appropriate forum.

The wonderful pictures are courtesy of a beer loving photographer, Moshe Yonatan.

The Selection on Tap

For a beer tasting where you are explaining to people how to enjoy and savour beers, you have to ensure that the beers are from the best available. When they hear the word beer, a lot of people think of the cheap lagers they see in the supermarkets. They are often unaware of the wide variety of styles and the skill that goes into brewing a beautiful pint. Here was our selection:

  1. Bavik Super Pils 5.2% – Belgium’s only unpasteurized Pilsner beer on tap from de Brabandere
  2. Lupulus Hibernatus 9% – a strong dark beer with an extra flavour
  3. Lachouffe Houblon 9% – a classic American style IPA
  4. Franc Belge 5.2% – a strongly hopped Belgian Amber, a joint venture with De Ranke and Spécial Belge
  5. De Nest SchuppenBoer 8% – A full bodied strong Belgian blonde
  6. Hof ten Dormal Gin Barrel Aged Blonde 12% – A special blonde to finish off the evening.
Jeremy Sulzbacher explaining a Lupulus

Content

As it is difficult to taste 6 beers one after the other without any breaks, we arranged some content for discussion.

Although each beer had an introduction, we looked at some other issues:

  • Judaism and alcohol and its association with life events
  • How beer with hops in the Babylonian Talmud predate hops in Europe by about 500 years
  • Beer in Jewish law and custom
  • Beer’s major contributions to civilisation

The Next Tasting

Quite a few people missed the beer tasting because they had prior commitments, and we hope to arrange more beer tastings in the future.

High Impakt

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Last week I was invited to the launch of a new beer at the Special Belge Taproom in De Pakt, Antwerp. The four guys running the bar also intend to open a brewery on the premises, which I understand will take quite a few more months,

De Ranke

In preparation for this, they have been honing their brewing skills by collaborating with one of Belgium’s best craft breweries, De Ranke. Located just over the border in Dottignies, Walonia, De Ranke beers are easily identified by their extra strong hoppy bitterness from brewing with whole hops. They are also specific about brewing natural beers at higher temperatures while using solar energy to reduce their carbon footprint. They use whole hopes instead of pellets and have specially designed fermentation tanks to increase the hop flavor during fermentation.

Franc Belge

The Special Belge team worked together with De Ranke to develop a strong amber, a style which they were not producing.

The result is a great amber beer with a particular hoppy flavour which can only mean one thing – De Ranke. Unfortunately, it was served on the cold side, but when you let it warm up a few degrees, you really are in for a pleasure as you savour the underlying ale and then the fuggle hops.

The aftertaste lingers for over an hour – depending on how much you drink. This is not surprising as they hop the Franc Belge with serious quantities of whole hops. If this is their first beer, then we can seriously look forward to when they actually start brewing at the Special Belge Taproom.

Ginger Kriek

Another reason for attending the launch was that they just started selling the 2018 Ginger Kriek. There are four different batches from this vintage and the Special Belge are selling the one which is least gingery with only a touch of sourness. Catch one while you can, the stock is limited.

Not Modest at the Modeste

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Ginger Beer

Successful Festival

A few months ago, I received an invitation from the Antwerp Beer College (ABC) inviting me to have a stand at the annual Modeste Beer Festival held at De Koninck’s brewery. Last year I was offered a stand outside with the T-shirts and the jewelery, as Ginger Tipple is not a proper beer. This year I was offered a stand together with the regular beers, “I am part of Antwerp brewing” was the official explanation.

Named after one of De Koninck’s previous owners, the Modeste is Antwerp’s main beer festival featuring local beers. This year there was also a Polish brewery, Nepomucen.

Tipple on Tap

Ginger BeerAlthough I had produced a few kegs for a customer in Jamaica, this was the first time I was serving Ginger Tipple on tap. I had no idea how to connect the keg to the draft equipment. Furthermore, as I had second-fermented in the keg, which is always a risky business, I was not sure how the tipples would pull.

One of the ABC’s experts connected the two beer kegs, and behold, the Tipples were producing a beautiful head, a light foam which lasted a respectable 90 seconds. You could taste that the head was natural and without the additives used by a lot of commercial beers.

Ginger BeerTap Labels

As a real newbie to kegs, I had not thought of the decal, the label to clip on to the beer tap, so I improvised with using bottle labels. I could not have manned the stand alone and my wife and two sons were there to help. My sons enjoyed tasting the excellent beers on offer from the other breweries.

Tipple Hop & Ginger Quad

Ginger BeerThe Modeste was also the first major event at which we were selling the 7% Tipple Hop and the 11% Ginger Quad. The Tipple Hop was our best seller. At 5pm with 2 hours still to go, we finished our 1st 30 liter keg and debated whether to open the second. In 2 hours we sold another 15 liters, which is a lot when you are serving tasters of 150ml!

Some visitors remembered Ginger Tipple from 2017 and were happy to see that we had expanded our range and were offering some of beers on tap.

Best Compliment

The best compliment came from the brewer and owner of one of Antwerp’s best breweries, ‘t Pakhuis, Ed Van Den Ouweland, who commented to a few people “De Tipple Hop is het lekkerste bier van het festival” the Tipple Hop is the most delicious beer of the festival.