My apologies for the long time it has taken for these posts to materialize; the problem is the long line of posts waiting for Digest publication. Having had too many Rocheforts myself, I'm not even sure which chapters have been posted and which haven't, and apologise if any of them appear twice. We'll make sure they all get out. I only hope it will have been worth the wait.
Oudenaard is known for its brown beers, particularly its oud bruins, which have a characteristic tartness. Local brown beer breweries include Liefmans, Roman, Claryisse and Cnudde. The first three are featured in an annual brown beer festival held in late June.
The Liefmans Brewery is located just outside Oudenaarde in a group of aged brick industrial buildings. Liefmans was purchased several years ago by the Riva brewing company, and has seven on-site employees.
A substantial part of the brewery is now being converted into a beer museum and reception center. The brewery is no longer mashing or boiling wort; instead, wort is prepared at the Riva Brewery in Dentergem and delivered, sterile, for fermentation at Liefmans. Liefmans' antiquated mash tuns and kettles are being retained as part of the museum.
Our initial expectation of lessening quality with industrial ownership appeared to be unfounded. Our guide, one of the brewers, said that during the 1980s Liefmans had substantial quality control problems, and that production had fallen from 30,000 hectoliters in 1980 to 8,000 hectoliters in 1990, which is approximately when the change of ownership took place. Production is now picking up (11,000 hectoliters annually) and quality appears to have stabilized. The tales we'd heard of Madame Rose, who lovingly looked after the brewery, sounded like myths as we heard stories of about what appeared to be a lack of proper attention to operations.
Other published information also appears to have been a bit mythologised. For instance, Liefmans boiled in room-size square kettles for an overnight simmer. These days the beer receives the standard 1.5-2 hour boil. This sounded like a concession to modern times until we saw the kettles, which contained heating elements so obviously inadequate that it quite likely took all night just to get the wort to the boiling point.
The one aspect where there has been a substantial change is in the cooling. Prior to Riva Liefmans used two large cool ships for initial cooling, and during cooling diluted its high-gravity wort with approximately 1 part water to three parts wort. From these cool ships the beer was then pumped over open-air cooling columns (beudelots?) and into the open fermenters. Nowadays the sterile wort goes straight to the fermenters. We thought that exposure to beneficial micro-organisms might be sacrificed by skipping these steps--affecting the trademark sourness of the beers--but our guide felt the Liefmans' yeast strain was sufficient to produced the desired flavor. Tasting was believing in this case and it appears that the new regime has not resulted in any major sacrifices.
The brewery makes two basic beers, one at 5% ABV and one at 6%, from which a variety of blended products are produced. Both worts are made entirely from pilsner and caramel malts, and each is fermented with the same yeast in swimming-pool-sized open fermenters. We were there during the first day of fermentation, and the quantities of foam and yeast running off were truly impressive. On day 3 yeast is skimmed and collected for reuse.
The basic beers then go into steel secondary tanks. The 5% beer is run into fermenters loaded by hand with cherries or raspberries--typically about 1 lb per gallon. The beer sits on the cherries for a year or more before being filtered, blended with about 40% of the 6% beer, pasteurized, sweetened and force carbonated for bottling.
The 6% beer itself becomes Goudenband, which receives much the same treatment but is not blended. Another beer, Odnar, is produced by diluting the 6% beer to about 4.5%. This is sold locally as a table beer, and presumably is sweetened also.
We had a chance to taste the unblended beers directly from the fermenters, and found the product at this stage to be rather lambic-like in its tartness, though much cleaner overall. Obviously there is a bacterial component to the yeast being used.
Another change in recent years is that the Goudenband is no longer aged before sale. This is unfortunate, as the brewer noted that at least six months of down time improves the product substantially. We asked why this would be, given that the beers contain no residual yeast. He said oxidation from exposure to air in the head space adds an essential element to the mature product. He also said local consumers were aware of the change, and laid their bottles down prior to consumption. A taste of fresh, on-tap Goudenband later on did seem to indicate that a certain bite was missing. The cellars shown on page 105 of Jackson's NEW WORLD GUIDE still have bottle in them, but it is a bad batch from 1987 that is being retained for purposes of the beer museum.
Throughout most of Europe Liefmans products are sold wrapped in tissue paper. We happened to be there on the day that a large number of bottles were being wrapped--by hand. The workers' speed was impressive--between 2,000 and 3,000 bottles a day--but frankly, between the wrapping work and the need to load and evacuate the fruit from the fermenters by hand, this did not seem to be a particularly attractive place to work.
Because the brewery is small it does cater to special orders and requests. Liefmans sells beer in bottles up to magnum-sized, but area residents can bring larger bottles and leave them to be custom filled. We saw a storage area with a fair number of jereboams and larger bottles, each one tagged with the name of the owner, awaiting pickup.
Liefmans has an indoor taproom and outdoor terrace fronting on a canal. A glass of Goudenband and each of the fruit beers is included in the tour price. Their fruit products, always formidable in my opinion, are truly divine when fresh on tap. This is particularly true of the framboise (raspberry). Tours of the brewery are available by appointment, and cost 100 francs. We were the only people on the tour. Our guide spoke English, and was obviously intimately familiar with the brewing process, having worked at Liefmans as a brewer for several years and also having received a degree in brewing studies in Gent. The telephone number is 055/31.13.91.
Other local brown beers include Felix (produced by the Claryisse brewery), which is similar to Goudenband, and brown ale from Roman, which is similar in color and body to its neighbors' products but is hoppier and not at all tart--rather a rich version of a standard brown ale.
Last Updated: 16 August, 1995
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