It’s been a little bit since we offered an update as we’ve been hard at work on our historic 25th anniversary Altbier Collaboration Ale. The great news is it’s actually here!

This picture shows the beautiful cans coming off the line a couple weeks ago:

And here’s one of the proud ladies on the line as they watched their hard work make the rounds:

Visitors to the brewery, the Beer Academy in Toronto, and the Toronto Festival of Beer a couple weekends back, were the first to sample our first ale. Now, Ontario, we’ve started shipping to the LCBO and a few select venues throughout town. Make sure you track it down because once it’s gone it’s gone! And make sure to drop by Facebook and let us know what you think!

Despite everything I said about our plans for today, it turned out to be much more adventuresome that was previously believed. We were up at a good hour to make our way to Timmermans. What an interesting tour. Our guide was an 80-year Scottish fellow named Bertie who had worked many years in sales for Timmermans and now runs tours in his spare time. Very knowledgeable fellow. The brewing equipment there was very similar to what we had seen at the other Lambic breweries. century old mash tun, large copper cool ship, and wooden barrels everywhere.

After Timmermans, despite our original plan of enjoying a quiet afternoon, we made a nice drive through some country villages to visit Lindemans. As our arrival was unannounced, there was no one around to show us through, but at least we got to say we’ve been there. A similar visit followed that to another Lambic brewery called Boon’s. There we couldn’t get in because the whole building was under construction. In the picture below you can see the shell of the expansion on the top left. As we walked around the building on the surrounding road we came across a newly installed brewhouse that had the vessels in place, although there were no piping connections made as of yet.

We decided at that point that we were thirsty so we stopped in at one of the small cafes that we passed on the way to Boons, in the town centre of Lembeek. There we were able to sample some Oude Geuze as well as Marriage Parfait Kriek, both from Boons. The bartender was also kind enough to give us the name of a small shop in the next town that carried a wide selection of Lambic products. We were hoping to pick up a couple of bottles to bring back to Creemore and share with some of the brewers. It turned out to be quite difficult to make a selection. I can’t wait for the day when the LCBO in Ontario can offer a selection like this in a single style that isn’t pale lager.

That’s it from Belgium. We leave here tomorrow at 9AM to arrive in Toronto at 3PM. Add 6 hours for time difference, and I think we’ll both be ready for bed long before we actually get back to Creemore.

We’ll keep everyone updated as our work progresses in Creemore in the development of our own Altbier and look for it late this summer as we prepare to celebrate the Creemore Springs 25th Anniversary this August. It should make for a Copper Kettle Festival to remember.

Cheers,

Bryan and Gord

Nothing says dedication to learning your craft like earning a badge for having more than 5 beers before noon.

It was an early morning today to get back to Zum Schlüssel in time to watch them skimming the yeast from the beer we helped brew on Monday. We arrived at the brewery at 6AM to find that they had already skimmed, transferred, and cleaned the first fermenting tub, which was to be re-filled later that day, and they were already collecting yeast from the second. I didn’t even want to ask what time they had to start this morning.

We then said our good-byes and hit the road to begin our return trip to Brussels. First stop on the way back was the Sint Jozef brewery in Bree-Opitter. Our visit there was unannounced, so our host ended up being a sales representative (we later found out he was their only sales rep). Although we didn’t get to tour the brewery itself we had an interesting discussion about the local beer market. Quite a revelation for us that they can sell as much beer in a 20km radius around the brewery as we sell across 3 provinces.

We left there and headed to the De Troch brewery in Wambeek. This is another Lambic brewery with a centuries old tradition, and the equipment to match. While the equipment was reminiscent of our visit to Cantillon, the layout was much more scenic. A gate led to a small court closed in on 3 sides by buildings, and the fourth by a wall. One building housed offices, one the brewery, and the last the packaging equipment. The brewer, Pauwel, was busy with the bottling line when we arrived, so his father, Jozef, took us on a quick tour. The brewing equipment I could only describe as archaic. It was no surprise when Pauwel told us a typical brew day would run from 6AM until 8PM, but there’s something about a 4 hour boil in two kettles that are heated with coal that indicates they don’t do anything the easy way.

After the tour we sat down and tasted some Gueuze with Jozef and Pauwel. In the tasting room, we noticed something on the wall that brought a smile to Jozef’s face. It was a picture of Jozef and famed beer writer Michael Jackson, at the De Troch brewery. There really was no stone Mr. Jackson left unturned in his lifelong search for great beers.

We decided that after a long few days in Düsseldorf and a very early morning today, that we were taking a vacation from our trip. Tomorrow is an early morning at our last brewery visit of the trip, Timmerman’s in Genval. This is another Lambic brewery, but one with slightly more financial backing, so it will be interesting to see what we find there in comparison to De Troch and Cantillon.

Here’s the ongoing gallery of Gord and Bryan’s journey to Zum Schlüssel in Düsseldorf, via Belgium.

We got in to Zum Schlüssel a little later this morning, and headed straight down to the cellar to check out the beer we helped brew yesterday. We were greeted by the fabulous sight of the beer in high krausen—thick foam with rocky meringue-like peaks.  The yeast was fermenting so vigorously that the foam was literally overflowing the tub, and the aroma it produced was intoxicating in itself.

We were then given a quick overview of the filtration and cask filling operations (with the obligatory quality control sampling). It’s amazing how the guys can move those 100 litre casks, each one weighing in around 140kg. Hard to believe they can go through one of those in 17 minutes on a busy night. And they say 17 because that’s as fast as they will empty with the tap wide open, literally filling glass after glass.

We then enjoyed a nice lunch with Karl-Heinz Gatzweiler, owner of the Zum Schlüssel, and the third generation of the Gatzweiler family to control the brewery. Mr Gatzweiler, as well as Dirk Rouenhoff, the brewmaster, were full of questions about Canada. It sounds like they are pretty excited to visit us in Creemore this coming August to help celebrate our 25^th anniversary.

After lunch Dirk and Gord went over some of the fine print for this collaborative effort and were able to seal the deal as only brewers could—with a beer and a handshake.

We’re looking forward to a nice dinner out tonight with Dirk, who has promised to show us to one of the hidden gems of the Altstadt. Sure to be a wonderful experience.

Bright and early back at the brewery tomorrow to see yeast being cropped off the top of the open fermenter, and then back to Belgium in the afternoon. 

What an early morning. After a long adventure in Köln yesterday, we were asked to arrive at Zum Schlüssel for 7AM this morning (first brew mashed in at 5AM, so they were being kind).

We spent a good portion of the morning with Dirk, the brewmaster at Zum Schlüssel, who explained a great deal to us about the Altbier market place in Düsseldorf, Altbier in general, as well as his brewery.

Eventually Dirk’s other work commitments required some of his attention, and that’s when the real fun started. That’s when he left us in the good hands of the two working brewers of the day.

These guys were fantastic in that they were able to show us the practicality of everything Dirk explained in theory. Every brewer knows there is theoretical knowledge that can take you so far, but at some point you are required to get in to the nitty-gritty and work with things like steam pressures, yeast brinks, spent grains, and malt cleaners to really understand how beer is made. That’s what these guys provided us in a well-worn, undateable, lopsided brew kit. Tomorrow I hope to get a little bit closer and be the one inside the lauter tun cleaning it between brews.  

The fermenting ritual at Zum Schlüssel is like nothing Gord or I have ever seen or read about at any point in our long and storied careers [34 years combined (mostly Gord because I’m much younger, but not wiser)]. They brew 2 brews in one day, let them ferment overnight, then split them the next morning and top both up. It goes against all good reason in my brewing education that they wait 1 day (~16 hours) to add fresh wort to an already fermenting brew, with fresh oxygen, but that’s what they do, and without question it works, as far as our taste buds are concerned.

We came to Düsseldorf on a quest for the key (schlüssel, by the way, is German for key) to a perfect Alt, and we got a lot more than we bargained for.

We got up early this morning for a hearty breakfast before a quick train ride to Koln (Cologne). There we met up with Heinz, a Koln native, and veteran of the beer market research industry in Germany. He was our guide today for a tour of the many different Kölsch offerings available.

Interesting side note: Some time in the 1960’s all of the Kölsch breweries in Koln signed the Kölsch Konvention. This made Kölsch the official beer of Koln, and decreed that no one outside of the city limits of Koln, and no one who didn’t sign the initial Konvention, could brew a beer in that style and call it Kölsch. Of the 24 who signed the original convention, a few have since closed down, and the rest maintain the Kölsch brewing tradition. Kölsch is also known as the youngest beer style in Germany.

In short, this was a long day of tasting. In the order we tried them, we were able to sample Früh, Sion, Malz Muhlen, Päffgen, Gilden, Pfaffen, Gaffel, and Peter’s. We were also able to sneak in a bottle of Pfaffen Bock to share between the group.

Horst and Heinz are good friends and some times collaborators on different projects and convention presentations, so to watch the two of them re-live memories and make new ones was a lot of fun. I think we planned at least six new brewing ventures of different sorts over the course of the day. It’s amazing what a little bit of liquid inspiration can do for some brewers and some marketing geniuses. I’m sure if we had one more day we would have solved world hunger and put a colony on Mars. Unfortunately we only had aout 7 hours together, so we stuck to what we all knew best.

Two things to note in the picture above: The trays are made to hold the traditional 200ml glasses that Kölsch is served in, without exception in our experience. The booth on the left of the picture is called “the confessional”. In times past these were used by patrons who had endured a particularly bad day and wanted some privacy to drown there sorrows. They would use this area to sit, undisturbed, while they relieved some stress.

Upon returning to Düsseldorf, Gord, Horst and myself were able to enjoy a quick, traditional German meal that will hopefully provide strength for tomorrow. That is when we finally make our way in to the Zum Schlüssel brewhouse to finally begin the practical portion of our schooling adventure. We’ve got lots of ideas of how the day may go, but I think we’re both very excited to see how things actually unfold when we get to learn from one of the masters of Altbier and hteir 150+ years of experience.

We made our way today from Brussels to Dusseldorf, with a couple of stops along the way. The first stop was at the 3 Fonteinen brewery in Beersel to meet with the brewmaster, Armand. We missed out on the blending that they had done the day before. Armand was quite proud of what he has accomplished however, and had many great stories to tell. The best of which was about the catastrophe that his brewery succumbed to in 2008, and the way that the other Lambic breweries chipped in to help him over come it so that he didn’t lose his brewery.

This is a picture of Armand pouring from one of the 1 year old Lambic barrels that he used for blending the previous day. For those of you that know the story, no, Gord did not help him tap the keg. The bandage on his finger was come by honestly in an accident with some broken glass and too many samples of Lambic for the purposes of Geuze blending.

I can honestly say now that I have a new appreciation for what age can do for a Geuze. Armand was kind enough to open a bottle from his personal collection of a Geuze that he blended and bottled in 2004. What an experience. It brought new meaning to the reason that Geuze blenders often compare Geuze to wine. The changes in the beer were unmistakeable from some of the younger samples that we’ve had previously on this trip.

I can’t wait to open the bottle of Armand 4, Armand’s proudest creation. That will be saved for a very special occasion.

The next stop was at the Ter Dolen brewery in Helchteren. A beautiful little brewery built in to a centuries old castle. The brew kit itself was remarkable considering the infrastructure that such an old building offers. We were able to sample a couple of their offerings, including another beer called Armand, named after the founder of the brewery. A wonderful Belgian Blonde with a kick of American hops for added aroma (we’re guessing Amarillo).

After Ter Dolen we made our way to our hotel in Dusseldorf where we were finally able to meet up with our guide for this portion of our trip. Horst Dornbusch is a native of Dusseldorf and somewhat of an Altbier expert. He wrote the book on it (literally).

He brought us in to the Altstadt, where we visited the four Altbier brewpubs, as well as two others just on the other side of the Rhein. For such a small sampling that comprised a large majority of the traditional Altbier’s being made, we were all impressed with the diversity of the products available. Horst was also able to give us a quick history lesson, including “facts” like the reason that the Altstadt was the only area of Dusseldorf left standing after the second world war. Legend has it that an English soldier of some stature had tried an Altbier at some point in his youth and enjoyed it so much that maps were distributed to all of the bomber pilots with instructions to avoid the area that is now the Alstadt.  

Tomorrow we are off to Koln to meet up with an old friend of Horst’s who is a Koln native and beer enthusiast. We have been told that the range of Kolsch style beers we trial will equal or exceed our experience this evening.

Today we made a road trip to the Bosteels brewery in Buggenhout. Three wonderful beers there in the name of Pauwel Kwak, Karmeliet Triple and Deus.

Deus was the most interesting in that it was fermented with champagne yeast and quite well spiced. The spicing regime was a secret, but we tasted a combination of orange, coriander, and possibly ginger and/or rosemary.

The Kwak was the preferred beer of the visit. Nicely balanced and hid the alcohol well for a Belgian brew.

Cafe delirium was an experience all it’s own. Without going in to too much detail about the many beers sampled, I can honestly say that no one should go there without trying the Rulles Estivale. The Rulles beers as a whole were quite good (I think we tried all of them), but the Estivale was the best in our humble opinion. Nice bitterness, with a tremendous hop flavour, without being overly bitter, and some incredible notes of citrus and spice, without being evident that it actually had spices added (which is true according to the ingredient labeling on the bottle).

Tomorrow we head to 3 Fonteinen in the morning, followed by a yet to be determined and unannounced brewery visit, and then on to Dusseldorf for an Altbier pub-crawl of the “5 big Altbiers” in the altstadt (old town).

Cheers from Brussels, and see you tomorrow.

Bryan and Gord’s Alt Skul adventure to be continued…

And it will actually include Alt Bier this time.

Bryan and Gord