Click on each beer for the translation of Lacambre's text, plus a discussion of the methods discussed therein. More beers will be added periodically.
This is a relatively normal beer to ease us into it.
A barley malt-based beer of moderate strength, though most brewers add a little unmalted wheat and oats. It’s boiled for up to four hours, with lime often added for colour.
The beer keeps well in the barrel for one to two years, and is usually drunk at at least four to six months, cut with a little fresh beer.
All barley malt with a preference for winter barley, though occasionally utilising some unmalted wheat or oats.
They make a double and ordinary uyztet, with a long boil and high hop rates.
Bizarrely, they used to throw out the first mash, likely because it tasted too much of wheat hulls. Lacambre finds this as unbelievable as we would today.
Lacambre likes the double uytzet, but the ordinary “leaves much to be desired”.
Commonly all-malt, sometimes with a bit of wheat or oats.
Produced in a similar manner to uytzet, but boiled for up to 20 hours, often with lime, which yields a taste which is “far from being very pleasant indeed”.
I presume these are precursors to Rodenbach, Verhaeghe and Liefmans type beers.
Lacambre brewed in
There are quite a few interesting nuggets here. He describes boiling under pressure in hermetically sealed vessels, which explains the insanely long boil times. He also mentions that they have stopped the “English method of fermentation” (i.e. dropping) because it was too much work.
His description of blending in the final paragraph is excellent – it is “a special art entrusted to special men who should have a truly exceptional palate”.
Largely a barley beer, but some brewers use significant proportions of malted spelt.
Boiled for ten to twelve hours, and quite dark. Unusually, he specifies the depth of the wort in the coolship for this beer.
All-malt beers, though occasionally utilising oats or spelt. The malt used is relatively dark, boil length (and thus colour) varies.
OG 1.036-1.043, 450 grams of hops per hectolitre.
Generally drunk fresh, but the best examples improve with up to six months in the barrel.
Leuven white beer (part one)
If you're only going to read one description, make it this one. It is so long I've split it into two (quite self-contained) halves.
There are six different vessels used in the brewing of this beer. Knowing what each of them are is probably the best basis for figuring out what's going on here. But it's no guarantee.
Leuven white beer (part two)
This is the description of how Lacambre himself brewed
Lacambre mashes the wheat and malt entirely separately, insteading of using a small proportion of the other in each mash as was usually done. He also doesn’t use oats.
The beer is often shipped as soon as the yeast is pitched, with ears of rye in the bunghole.
An attempt at Leuven white beer by an American homebrewer
Peetermann
Perhaps the most famous old Belgian style, this is a stronger, darker version of
He explains the reason for local breweries using ten percent malt in the wheat mash, but it gets really good when he talks about the ways in which he has improved the local beer styles.
A wheat beer made from wheat, malted barley and oats. Especially good for wet nurses!
They make a strong beer at 1.066-1.082 and a weaker beer at 1.047-1.049. They both seem to use around 300 grams of hops per hectolitre, despite the fact that he says the weak beer uses less hops.
There are some similarities to beers like Rodenbach here. A long boil to develop colour, and then blending a small proportion of aged beer with the fresh stuff. Of course Mechelen isn't all that close to Roeselare so who knows.
I believe Het Anker (or one of its previous incarnations) was brewing in Mechelen at this time, but somehow I doubt Gouden Carolus would taste much like the beer below.
I have a feeling that this isn’t all that close to what AB-InBev is doing these days. Interestingly, wheat only makes up about 20% of the grist.
Considering this is the only one of these beers which still exists, it’s quite ironic that he describes this beer as “not of great importance”.
The first two mashes are run off and boiled, then returned to the mash tun to filter before going straight to the coolships. Lacambre describes it as quite similar to
I’m sure I’ve heard of a present day beer called cavesse de lierre but Google seems determined to prove otherwise. Frustrating.
He makes an interesting differentiation between ‘white’ and ‘yellow’ beer. Despite coming from the same very same mash tun, the ‘white’ beer includes later worts and is served very fresh and the ‘yellow’ beer is just from the first wort and keeps well for months.
If you’ve been reading you’ll have noticed that he is a lover of run-on sentences. This part contains some of his best work.
One of the beers described here is saison, though interesting it is always referred to “bière de saison” rather than straight saison.
Interesting, recipes are dominated by malted spelt. They also generally contain wheat, malted barley and oats.
Saison is the stronger, aged beer, with an OG of 1.043-1.051 and relatively highly-hopped. The bière jeune is a lower gravity and drunk fresh.
Worts here are boiled uncovered, and they see as much as 25% evaporation over the course of a boil.
Oddly, the original text spells it Liége, not Liège.
A quick note: obviously recreating the exact conditions of a 19th century Belgian brewery are impossible. Our intention isn't necessarily to insist that you slavishly follow the directions given by Lacambre (trust us, it's basically impossible anyway) but that you play around with some of the techniques described. The mashing techniques are very different to modern practice, and seem the obvious place to start. Malting your own barley and fermenting in wooden casks is probably a step too far for most. And then there's the insane boil times...
This is all part of the challenge. Everyone is free to interpret what we're putting out there as they wish. We're just hoping that along the way we'll come to some interesting conclusions (and get to taste some unique beers!).
Want to know more about Lacambre? Click here.
And a bit of housekeeping:
- We hope to see a fair bit of discussion of the beers and techniques described, and Randy will be checking in to answer questions and join the discusssion. If you have registered for this website you should have a username and password which will enable you to post a comment. You can post anonymously too, but these posts need to be checked by an admin before going up, so there is a slight advantage to signing up.
- If there are any fluent French-speaking brewers out there, please feel free to cast a critical eye over our translations. We certainly don't consider them definitive.
Greetings, fellow homebrewers,
