This podcast is brought to you by Craft Beer and Bring magazine for those that love to make and drink great beer. To learn more, or to subscribe, visit beerinbring.com or find us on social media at Craft Beer Brew. For this episode of the Craft Beer and Bring podcast, we are again in Belgium. In fact, on the very far west end of Belgium, walking distance to the French border here on the west side of Belgium. And the occasion for this is a conversation with Witter D'Lis and Marco Passarelli. Witter is the head brewer for St. Bernardis and Marco is the head of international sales for St. Bernardis. Welcome to the podcast, Witter. Hello, thank you. And welcome Marco. Hi there. We've had a beautiful experience here at St. Bernardis, Joe Stang, our executive editor and I stayed in the guest house here last night. And here we are in a foggy morning here in the Flemish countryside enjoying a podcast here. And the beautiful experience they've built at the brewery. A pretty fantastic walking tour, a self-guided tour, audio tour, bar and restaurant on the rooftop. It's quite the destination out here in Wattu or the outskirts of Wattu in the countryside. Beautiful, beautiful place. And of course, beautiful beers. We're going to talk about the St. Bernardis approach to brewing those Abbey style beers, those Abbey style beers that are readers voted in 2022 in our reader survey. We're going to talk about their approach to brewing those beers. In fact, it's Witter's very first podcast, and we're very honored. Honored, yes, to talk about brewing with St. Bernardis this morning. Before we do that, at G&D Chillers, they always strive to build great chillers, partner with them as you build great beer. Kevin Toger from Beard at Iris Brewing says G&D Chillers have been a valuable partner throughout our growth. They build high quality equipment and know their machines extremely well. 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By partnering with some of the biggest names in the craft brewing landscape, old orchard has become a go-to source of fruit forward ingredients. To learn more and request your free samples head on over to oldorchard.com/brewer. Well, when do we start with a little bit of history? There's a lot of history here. There is, there is. A lot of history. You've been around Marco for quite a bit of it 20 years. I've been here 20 years now. That should give us the quick history in a nutshell, and then we can talk about some of the branches that that history has taken along the way. Our brewery was actually founded in 1946. 1946 just after the Second World War. And it was founded with just one purpose. To brew and commercialize the beers of a trappist monastery close by called West Flatrin. To do so, the brew master of West Flatrin became a partner in our brewery. So in 1946 he came over. His name was Matthieu Safrancki. And together with two brothers who previously owned a cheese factory, they started the brewery. And they did that here in Wattu about seven miles away from West Flatrin. The brew master brought along all the recipes and they know how some technical equipment as well. And most importantly, he brought along the yeast strain from St. Sixtus and we started brewing for them on the license. And the beers were called Trappist West Flatrin. A little bit later on, they were called St. Sixtus, which was the name or is the name of the Abbey. And for many years we brewed for them. In 1963, the license that we had to brew their beer, which was originally 30 years. So from 46 to 76 and 63, it was renewed because the daughter of one of the two brothers, Eva Restergrondings daughter Bernadette, married Geeklaus and they prolonged the license to sell their beer. So that license then came to an end in 1992. When we stopped making their beer, but we decided to just keep on brewing the same beer with the same recipe, but under a different brand name, which was St. Bernardus, that had always been the name of the brewery because it was also the name of the cheese factory. I told you that the two brothers, they had a cheese factory before. So that was the name of the brewery. Maybe interesting to know is that so that that cheese factory was founded in 1904 and actually also stemmed from another trappist monastery. Also seven miles away, but in the other direction, in the French direction, and on the mountain, well we call it mountain, but it's a little hill. It's called Monday Cuts. And there is the trappist monastery there in France. You can actually see it from here, from our rooftop. And they started the cheese factory and then they sold it to the two brothers who made it bigger and bigger and then were able to start a brewery as well after the Second World War. Sure, sure. Now over that time, the idea of what trappist or Abbey style beers is has also continued to evolve and the range has expanded as the market also asks for things and beers like Whitt have come back and come around and grown up. It is not exactly, there have been some changes in the kinds of beers or then of course a market looking for lower alcohol beers has found things like potter beer and smaller beers and so you all have grown even from what those original beers were. The originally in 1946, the trappist monks gave us four recipes, four beers, a four, a six, an eight, and a twelve. The four, we stopped brewing that in the 70s, but the six, the eight, and the twelve, we brew until today. They themselves stopped brewing the six so they don't do that anymore because the six also used to be a dark beer. But the eight and the twelve are two of the beers, well the six, the eight and the twelve are three of the four beers that we still brew with the same recipe. In the 70s, we stopped making the extra four, but we brought it back in 2014 I think about 10 years ago, but not under the same recipe, but with a blonde beer this time, but in the style of that, in that same single style, which is a low ABV, 4.8%, a very drinkable, what you guys would call session beer, I guess. So this is our beer that we think you can drink all day. Sure, sure. And then of course here at the brewery you also make some other brands now too. You have to know that I'm telling this story as though this was all very easy, but in 1992, of course we lost our name. We weren't called what we used to be, so we had to write revamped the brewery. And while we did that, we also decided that we were going to make a triple, which we launched in 1992. And that has become a very important beer for the brewery. I guess it's fair to say that over the years we've added a few other beers as well. Like I said, we added the extra four again in 2014. I guess around 2000, we also made started making a WIT, which is our wheat ale. And then we added a Tokyo, we added a Christmas sale. So we did add a lot of beers since then. In total, now we have nine beers. But the two most important and iconic or most soul beers of the brewery are still that. Seminar is up 12 and the triple that we launched in 1992. So it's interesting to think about that, especially as beer in America right now, in brewing businesses in America, face some challenges of the overall marketplace that this is also the story of Belgian beer constant challenges in the marketplace, whether that's launching a beer brewing business in an immediate post-war period of 1946 amidst massive reconstruction throughout Europe of finding new ways of having to always think about reinvention and development and growing as well as experience, which is also the thing that you all are investing heavily in now to build not just great beer, but also a great experience for people that want to come see that beer here, but that process of having to constantly develop and innovate within a range that also makes sense for the overall brand is something you've been doing every decade or years and years and years and years. You know, you look at the market and you think what type of beer would be good for us to try and make in the future as well, because if you just do those recipes that you've had forever, then there's no fun in brewing as well. You have to have a little bit of fun and make sure that it's not always, what I mean to say, it's not always all about direct sales or it's not always about making the next locomotive of the brewery because we have a really good locomotive. It's called the app 12. There is actually another beer in the area of the brewery. We sell the best sold beer is St Bernadette's triple. We can find it in a lot of places on draft. Even a nice thing to know about that beer is that nobody here, well, nobody. Most people don't call it St Bernadette's triple, but they will go to the bar and order a Bernadette. That was the name of the previous owner of the brewery. Bernadette, she used to run the bad and breakfast actually, that you guys were staying in the brewer's house. She really liked that beer and that was her favorite. After a while, everybody started calling the beer after her, which we still honored today. We like to tell that story. Sure. What is your history background and brewing experience? Tell me about that. My brewing background, so I'm coming from Gens. I studied brewery and Gens. I did not do a real solicitation. I just was studying brewmaster and I got a call from the brewery to ask to come over to have a chat and to look if we could help each other. One day I went to here, got a small tour. After that, I said, "Maybe it's interesting to do. Can I join a brew?" At the early morning, at six thirty in the morning, I had to arrive in the dark, try to find the brewery here somewhere near the French border. But I succeeded. I had to brew the whole day with the old brewmaster. It was fun. It was a big fun. Before I didn't do any brews in a big brew house, it was just for trial purposes, small scale, five hectares or five hundred litres. I don't know. So here it was ten thousand litres, a lot more. So it was a fun day and I decided, yes, I can do this. I want to do this. So I signed my contract and I came to the brewery. It's quite simple. What happened two weeks after that? Two weeks later, so now I signed my contract and the guy who hired me said, "I have to tell you something." He was the brewmaster. The brewmaster said to me, "First sign your contract, you have to tell you something later." So I signed the contract. He came back and said, "So what did you need to tell me? I'm leaving in two weeks." So I just was thrown into the water. So you had to train fast? I had to train and learn fast, yes. I just jumped into the beer, I think. Jumped into a big pool of beer, I guess. How many years ago was that? This is already 17 years, it's almost 18, it's from 2006. So it's a very long, consistent history here at St. Bernardes. Indeed, indeed. Go, go. Well, I want to talk about how you all go about and what these, some of these recipes look like and what makes your approach to making these beers very distinctive. Obviously, you have yeast and recipes from the monks that have been handed down, but as all of us know in this world of brewing, a recipe is a great starting place and what really makes beers distinctive is the process and how you approach making those beers and caring all through the process for the way that you technically produce that. And so I want to explore some of the ways that you all achieve that distinction and that excellence in your beers. Before we do that, experience distinct transparency and juiciness with Omega Yeasts Daybreak 5, using their Luminate Technology Omega Genetically Eliminated Hayes in the popular British 5 strain, allowing you to preserve the fruit-boosting prowess while achieving crystal clarity. Perfect for modern West Coast IPAs, learn more at
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[email protected] to discuss your customized brewery needs. ABS commercial, we are brewers. I want to explore some of the basics of some of these recipes obviously for the iconic Abit 12, but potentially for some of these other beers that you all also make. Generally, where we start is talking about water, because water is such an important part of the brewing process. My experience of your water here is that it's excellent. A much softer water maybe than we had further eastern Belgium and maybe lower in minerals. It seems like it's a good platform to build up into beer, and maybe the water we have here is just being processed by you, and so it tastes so good. Tell me about the water here. Actually, the water is coming from very deep. We have, I don't know, meters. I don't know. It's 450 feet. So we have how it's called a well. We pump our brewing water from there. It's yeah, because it's from so deep, it's a soft water. It's very soft. It's got a lot of minerals. For example, chloride, salt, actually. So this gives also the taste of our beer, a fulliness of our beer. So it is what are the main ingredients, actually. Yeah. Every good brew starts with good water. So that's something I tell a lot on my trips to America. You know, it's important to have a good recipe, but then the ingredients and the quality of them are also very important. So I guess if you start with bad brewing water, then you're going to get a bad beer. And it's interesting that so many beer styles around the world are very well connected to the quality or the type of water in that place. And that specific area, whether you're talking about England, Germany or Belgium, the beers that get developed or beers that styles tend to work well with the water in that area. That water in that area. So it's interesting to see how that also impacts your approach to beer here. Let's maybe talk then about grain. You know, grain and barley is the next major component. How do you approach, you know, building a recipe for, say, a habit 12 from a grain perspective? One thing we don't talk, you know, obviously within this style, there's both grain and there's, you know, most likely sugar, candy sugar additions in this. But how do you build a foundation, you know, for a beer like habit 12? Actually, we didn't build the beer. So we got a heritage. Sure. It's it's the recipe we got from earlier. So but yes, how it is built, I can't tell you. Sure, sure. So actually, we, we, we use a pale malt and a burnt malt because we need to make a brown beer. So we need some color burned. We also need some extracts because we want to have alcohol. So we have, we make a combination of pale malt and burnt malt. I don't know if it's the right word. Roasted. Roasted. Roasted. Roasted is maybe a better, a better, a terrible crystal malt or roasted. Roasted. Roasted. Roasted. Roasted. To be clear, we buy it from the malt. We don't make our own malt. Sure. There are a few breweries that do that still today. But in Belgium, it's regularly used. It's very common to buy it from a malt. Right. So we use, we use a malt from, from Belgium right now. But it's, but they don't source their barley from Belgium. And mainly, probably, the barley comes from France. And then how do you, you know, balance the base malt with that roasted malt? How does the recipe then balance those two things? The main part is the, is the regular malt, I guess. And then a smaller part depending on the type of beer is the roasted malt. Yes, it is, but I don't understand your question. How to make the balance. Yeah, it's just, you need to, you need to make, yeah, you have to decide which, which kind of roast you need. You need to look at the, at the malt, how it's tasting. Actually, we have our recipe. We know what we, what these are, let's say, the parameters that you need to have. And then you have to look up what's needed to, to receive it, to, to, to get to the result. So actually, it's, yeah, we, we use a main, yeah, the main part is actually the, the, the, the, the pylster malt. Do you know what, or can you share what, you know, what percentage is roasted malt? And what kind, what, like, what level of roasted malt you use for, rodenote? No, no, no. That's weird. You forgot you were in Belgium, right? Oh, well, we're going to keep, well, keep trying. Yeah, you're trying to keep trying. I guess it also depends on the type of beer. And, and actually, even if we gave you a percentage, like what the water said, it's also about, we always, always check the malt when they can, when they come in, expect to check the specifications and, and see what we, what, we know what we need to get out of it. And then we adapt, uh, in, in function of, of those parameters. So it's not, uh, it's not a written in stone, uh, for all, it's not the same for all the beers. That's an interesting point. And maybe we can talk about how you do that, uh, in, in, in any given year, because when a, if a recipe came to you in 1946, the, uh, the pale malt or the pilsner malt then, and the roasted malt then is certainly not the same as pilsner malt and roasted malt that you have now, um, barley varieties have changed the, you know, extract potential from those barley varieties has changed. The roasting methods have changed. And so the malt's now, you know, because barley is an aggregate cultural product and growers have to be efficient about it, but also focus on flavor. So how, in any given year, do you then evaluate the changes that come in the, those, uh, barley's as they, uh, are delivered to you and then think about tweaking, um, that recipe and approach and technical process. So actually besides all these things you, you're talking, there is also nature. So if you have a better, a better crop or a less good crop, more proteins and other things that change, you also have to work with that, maybe more than with the variation on the, on the longer scale, the longer scale. That's more the, for me, it's, yeah, I don't say the changes of race, race, no, a variety of varieties, yes, change of varieties is a, for me, is this a less problem than the changes that happen because of a better crop or a worse crop, because you have to, you have a dialect, a dialect, a, a result or not a result because of something happened. What is it fair to say that you, we, we, uh, we get, uh, analysis made for every batch that we receive so we know what we're going to get. Is that important or? Yes, we get from each batch analysis. That's not, that's not the problem, but you also have to work with the malt. You can see on, on, on, on the analysis, you can see a lot, but actually if you don't work with it, you don't feel it. If you do, for example, filtration and the, the, the analysis, it looks good, but if you look on the, in the, in the filtration lottering, actually, yeah, maybe it's lottering the better words. Yeah. Then you see differences with the same analysis, you see different lottering curves. So we have to adjust over there and actually this makes also you a brewer adapt with these different crops, different, different deliveries, for example, also make the same beer. You have this with, actually, with the malt, but also with later on the hops yeast, everything has his impact and that makes you a brewer. If you, I don't know if we, I can't say this. If you, if you compare with wine, wine is just, it's the, it's the year. It's a different year. Different, different wine, different wine, but the beer you want to have a same beer all the time. So you have to adapt. Sure. How, how do you adapt? You'll have that information about with the analysis and you can look at that and, you know, how do you then take that analysis and translate it into your recipe and process. So we work on the mashing scheme. So we, we go to a higher or lower temperature. For, yeah, this mostly, we also look at the enzyme activity. Yeah, that's maybe not so craft. Oh, no, that's right. If you, I mean, there was a diastatic power, the ability, you know, for those enzymes to convert. So somehow, you also have to add some enzymes if it's needed because, yeah, if you want to make a good beer, you also need to make everything in the brew hose goes well. But everything starts with the measurements that you take. So you have to, the laboratory has up and running and everything's working perfectly. So you can, you know what you're getting, you know what you're doing. You're making it, you're taking a lot of measurements all the time. Samples, I guess. Samples, yes, but not from the real beginning. From the raw materials, we don't go, we don't do a lot of analysis. You only start the analysis in the brew hose. Talk to me a little bit about using sugars in the brewing process. Obviously, this is a long Belgian tradition, something that is very common here. In America, sugars are generally used maybe in a double IPA to add more alcohol while still, you know, maintaining a light beer. But it's there in Belgium, those sugars, and that is generally flavorless sugar, just dextrose meant to have a, that effect on alcohol here. Sugars are an integral part of also adding flavor and color into the Abbey style beers. Talk to me about how you employ those within the dark beers that you make. And so besides Maltz, who also provides sugar? Sure, sugar. We also add some sugar for our beers. So we use a beat sugar? Beat sugar? Yes. Because we are in best flounders. We have flounders, actually. We have a lot of beats. And we are actually using brown sugar because we make a brown beer. Why we are using it? Because to make the beer drinkable, if you would make a 10% of alcohol beer with full malt, it will be more difficult to drink. It's the drinkability will drop. And what sense would drinkability drop? It would become or it will be full-bodied beer. But to be a nice beer, but if you drink one, you don't want to drink another one because it's your full of, full of the. Your stomach will be full. Yeah, it's the mouthfeel. So but actually the reason that we are using the sugar and the brew is because that's what the recipe said in the past, you know? It's not like we invented, we're not the inventors of using sugar and an Abbey style beer in Belgium. So I guess it's a long tradition and we're upholding it. But we do see the advantages of it for us. I always think that it also has to do with the kind of sugar that we are using. It comes from beats. So it's a beat sugar. It's the sugar that we also use in day-to-day environment. I don't know if you guys like crepes? Do you know, do you like pancakes? Crepes, sure. Yeah, so we use pancakes and I eat my pancakes with stirre butter and that's a butter that you let melt on your pancake and you add the brown sugar, castanade sugar to it, you mix it and then it becomes like a bull's butter stirre butter. And that's very good for your health and you can go work on the field and be a good cowboy, I guess. Sure, sure. Well, let's talk about fermentation next and see if we can explore. Obviously yeast is very important to Abbey style beers as a major flavor component and the primary actor in the style in general, the yeast that you have came with the monks and now is the same yeast that you maintain today. And so I want to talk about some of the ways that you all maintain healthy fermentations but also fermentations with character and flavor that also, because it's a balance to maintain character and flavor but not too much flavor and character to keep it, as you say, in that very realm of drinkability where it's just enough and not too much. I'd like to talk about how you all do that but before we do that, this episode is brought to you by Yakima Chief Hopps, the seventh annual veterans blend from Yakima Chief Hopps will be available for pre-order June 24th. Three dollars from every pound sold of veterans blend will be donated to this year's non-profit stop soldier suicide. The veterans blend is dedicated to providing financial support to nonprofits who provide assistance to our military veterans and their families. Plan ahead for your 2024 and 2025 veterans day, memorial day, and independence day beer releases and place your veterans blend pre-order on June 24th. 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This podcast explores the technical and creative processes behind great spirits through conversations with some of the leading distillers working today. It's everything you love about the craft beer and bring podcast but focused on distilling click on the link in the show notes to give it a listen. So let's let's talk about yeast and fermentation. There's a story behind this yeast, right? Obviously the history from the monks and and you've now inherited this yeast, but that also means that you know this yeast is a very important thing to maintain and to keep healthy and you know to make sure that you never lose this. Tell me tell me the story the story of the yeast. Well maybe maybe first we can talk about the fact how do how do we work? How do we make sure that we don't lose it? Sure. And then maybe secondly we can talk about what we do to work with it. So how do we not lose it? So our yeast is in the University of Leuven into the fridge very cold temperature to stay over there to be the backup or the startup for a new generation, new, right? You can always get a new pitch. A new pitch, that's the word, yeah. So for this new pitch, for this new pitch we can go back to the University of Leuven where they prepare the yeast for us so we can start new fermentations. We keep this yeast using for several generations and after several, we have to change again to make sure the yeast doesn't mutate, doesn't change the aroma, doesn't change the flavor. How do we pitch the yeast on the several words? So actually we use it in the brewery, we use the Daroflossin, Daroflossin principle. Daroflossin. Yes. So do you know this? I know Daroflossin. So you're brewing over two days and you're then pitching an initial pitch of yeast. We have talked about Daroflossin on the podcast before. Okay. So actually this makes the yeast taste vital, gives it's more advantage, more power to ferment, to make the beer good. And actually it's a proven principle we are using since ever I think. So we always start with half fermentation tank, but we separate on two. And then the next day we add the second brew on it with fresh words, fresh oxygen so the yeast can again multiply and has. And you oxygenate again on the second day? Yeah, we oxygenate on the second one, yes. And you pitch on the first day enough yeast to ferment that first half and then count on that growth and multiplication to. You pitch more yeast on the second day or. No, we just oxygenating that word. Yes. So the first day we add yeast for the first brew to start this fermentation. The first part of the fermentation is the eye-rope phase. So the the eye-rope phase, the yeast is multiplying, not producing alcohol, but multiplying. So make more young yeast. Sure. So and the second then after that it goes over to the anaerobic phase. So it starts producing alcohol. But the second day we add words again, again with oxygen, oxygenated. And then the yeast is multiplying again. So it gives let's say a restart, making the yeast extra vital because it's young yeast from young yeast. It's giving more power to to to give a fluent and consistent fermentation till the end till all the fermentable sugars are gone. Yes, transformed. That was the word. Yeah, yeah. So actually you have to to make sure your fermentation goes well, you have to you have to do good work, a good job in the brew house also because you you need fermentable sugars. But you don't. If you if you like we talked before before about the sugars, if you if you add some sugar, it's sugar, it's fully fermentable sugar. So 100% fermentable, this means this goes really really this sugar goes all the way, but the sugar comes coming from the malt. It's it's also more complex sugars, not all of them are fermentable or fermentable. So if you do your job good in the brew house, you have a part non fermentable and the fermentable, you want to have all these fermentable sugars fermented. Sure, sure. And so what I'm hearing you say is is you have a very a stepmash process in order to make sure that you have exactly the amount of fermentable, easily fermentable and harder fermentable sugars from from from that barley. Yes, indeed. We we we do in step matches. And besides that, we also make sure the other conditions are also well controlled, because yeast can behave different under conditions. So temperature is kept on the control pressure, top pressure is kept on the control. Also the time of like we like we do that over last and we also need to keep track on when we are adding the the second batch. If you do it earlier or later, you also can have a difference in profile. Really? How does that change the profile if if it's not a full 24 hours, if it's less or if it's more? No, I don't know if you want to tell that. Well, actually, we see we see if we go further than 24 hours, it's it's worse. Because it's too far and into the yeast is already too far in another book phase and then doesn't get good. So actually you do want to add the the the the dr'l flas and you want to do it in the aerobic phase, not in the anaerobic. We want to be into into the anaerobic phase. That's not that's not a thing. But if the fermentation is already too far and and you can then we see it's yeah, for the aroma it's it's it's not what I don't say it's worse. Well, I don't say it's bad, but it's not better. But actually when you have to, let's say, save fermentation, when the problem with sometimes yeast is also an organism. I don't know if it has feelings, but sometimes it doesn't well want to work. Of not always want to work, you have to nice to to be nice to it. So, so if you have to save a fermentation, then you can actually even if it's 48 hours, if you see he doesn't want to work, you can you also can add extra words with oxygen. But then at least you save the the brew or the fermentation, but yeah, that's maybe difficult to say. Yeah, sure, sure. And as you were saying earlier, it's a delicate balance because you have such fermentable candy, you know, candy sugar versus harder to ferment malt sugar. And you if you don't want that yeast to get lazy after eating the easy sugars and not continuing there. But one other thing I'm interested in you, I mean with ester production and that ester production from the yeast is also a major component of what people associate with, you know, with Belgian and Abbey beers, both the, you know, the kind of fruity esters and also the, you know, lightly phenolic, you know, element of that. And, you know, for many brewers, managing yeast stress and that stress process is also a way to achieve some of that expression and some of those esters. But of course, too much stress can either cause the fermentation to stall or to fail or, you know, even create unpleasant, you know, flavors. How do you manage that, you know, through a temperature, you mentioned controlling head pressure, you know, tell me about how you control some of the temperature and pressure in order and, you know, pitch rate in order to achieve just the right amount of stress for that yeast. Actually, we have the, the word who is coming out of the brew house, the cool downward with this temperature is cooler than the temperature you want to have in the fermentation. So we let the yeast ramping up the temperature. So actually, we are working around 75 degrees Fahrenheit. It's difficult to recalculate it. Let's say you can always say it in Celsius. We want you to be comfortable with that. No, it's maybe it's easier to say. So out of the brew house, we come out of with 20 degrees. So we cool down the word to 20 degrees. We add the yeast, put in fermentation tank, we let the yeast ramp up till the 25 degrees. So it has, it does a free rise. Yeah, that's the thing. And then when we are getting to the 25 degrees, we have to cool down. Otherwise, it still is ramping up and then the yeast destroys itself. So then we start cooling down, but we don't cool down with cold glycol. We try to cool down with the temperature close to the fermentation temperature. For that, the yeast doesn't get any stress of the cooling. That's for example, that's for example, something that changed. It's not in the recipe before I came in the brew house. In the brewery, the temperature difference was high. So the yeast got more stress. So we tried to adapt that we have a closer temperature difference between the fermentation and the cooling liquid, the glycol. And so this makes the yeast less stressed. It gives more subtile, more aromas. Sure, sure. That's really interesting. So instead of keeping glycol in -4. Yeah, -4 Celsius, you keep it at a warmer temperature so that it will still cool down that, but it just creates less of a stratification necessarily between that word, fermenting word that's close to the jacket and that that's further inside. That's interesting. Now we would have to, of course, take longer to cool if your glycol is at a warmer temperature. Yeah, but this is during fermentation. Of the fermentation, when you have to cool down, we use cold as cold as possible to just drop down the yeast. Right. So we can get rid of it. So we have a regulation on each fermenter, which temperature or which temperature of glycol we have we want. That's awesome. So it's not on the recipe, it's just process. And that's the thing I think I've done the most, adapting, making things better. So yeah, is there a way that you could describe the difference in doing it? That, you know, is there what is, because you did it the other way before and now you do it this way. And that's a much more expensive and complex way to do it. And so it has to have a little bit of flavor impact that's worth that. Can I ask you something? So maybe in the middle, somewhere in the middle. I guess glycol is also something that's not, we didn't use that 50 years ago. We were using different kind of cooling methods for the jackets. So I guess this is maybe newer and we try to adapt it. Maybe this is like the part you have to cut out. I don't know. Yeah, the thing is before I came in in the brewery, we just cooled down with ice water. We changed over to a, because ice water, we didn't add enough. We had to find something better. So we changed to glycol, glycol was colder, has more capacity to take out, take up the cooling capacity. So this step, we saw we had problems, troubles with fermentation because we went to the cool, but troubles. Now I can cool too much. Then we can cool too much and the shock of it is too high. And so then we changed, try to find a better solution. This method is almost using glycol to do it more like it might have been done before with ice water, where it couldn't hold as much of that cool power. But that's interesting and I don't know that I have heard of another brewery maintaining different glycol temperatures in order to cool fermentations like that. It's fascinating. How about in terms of head pressure? You mentioned that that's something that you're also very careful about. Yeah, that's true. So before when I came in here, we didn't have any cylinder conical fermenters. It was all, we only had two fermentation tanks. One big horizontal and one smaller vertical. The height of the beer was maximum three meters. So it gives you a lot of esters. So during time because of space, actually, we had to change to cylinder conical tanks. This makes we have to lots of reasons. Space yeast harvesting. There's lots of good reasons to use a solid radical tech. Yeah, indeed. So we had to find a good way to keep the top pressure as low as possible without overforming fermenters. So I guess it's also fair to say that our brewery has grown a lot since we arrived here. When we got here, let's say 20 years ago, water, I heard brewery was brewing something like 8,000, 20 years ago, maybe 11, 12,000 hecto liters, 18 years ago, and right now we do 50,000. So our brewery has grown a lot and we had to add a lot of cylinder conical tanks to be able to do that. So brewery has gotten a lot bigger. Sure, sure. For American listeners listening, you just do that hecto liter to American brewery barrels. Actually, there's about 0.8 brewery barrels. So about 40,000 barrels? I guess that's something like we're doing right now. So we're not a really, really big brewery. Actually, I think there's a lot of breweries in America who do that with a much smaller installation or footprint than what we do. But of course, we do the things a little bit different. We're going to get to our bottle conditioning later, for example. Sure. We should probably get to that soon. Having said that, yeah. Can I say something? Sure. Maybe there is not. There is an ingredient we didn't mention yet. We also have the ingredient time. This makes. This is also a reason why we have a lot of fermenters because the beer stays a long time in moderation. Tell me about that. So you fermentation takes roughly how long? 7 to 10 days. So we don't want to make the fermentation run very fast because then we don't make enough esters. If you do a fast fermentation, then you have a lot of higher alcohols. Higher alcohols. It's also alcohol. But less pleasant. That's the thing we are pointing to making. There are several. I can't tell. There are older views that do. You have more higher alcohols. Sure. So then it goes through that initial fermentation process and then do you use the same tank? Do you move into another tank? We are using another tank for the moderation. So 7 to 10 days first for fermentation. Then we cool down in one day, maximum two days depending on how big the fermenter is. We go and then drop the yeast from that. Then we drop the yeast. We collect if we want to re-use or not. Sure. Then we collect the yeast, put over to the maturation tank actually. Then it stays there for four, maybe six weeks depending on taste, on turbidity. So if the last yeast that was. it's also settled down. On the type of beer? Depending on the type of beer. A wheat beer. Seminar is with. It's not kept so long. Right. The fermentation goes also faster because of lower alcohol, less stress. The turbidity is a good thing and that beer. The turbidity is also wanted over there. And then we ferment for a mature for four to six weeks, let's say, and then it's ready to be bottled or caked. But you allow that long maturation process so that the beer also becomes more clear. But what do you think that that process of loggering even your Abbeyales allows the beer to pull together flavor wise too? Yes. It all comes together in the maturization, I guess. You give the beer time to become a beer with a capital B and the full mouthedness comes also from there. How does the young beer finish just finished with fermentation? How does that compare and taste in sensory to that mature beer after that maturation process? It's difficult to describe. It's just sensory opinion. Sensory, it's an opinion. We keep you a certain time for sure. But it's also tasty. I guess I've been talking to Walter a lot of times about this because I like to tell this story when I travel to the US and it's great to hear that actually everything starts from the old recipe and that was the way that it was done and that's the way we still do it today and we see the advantages in that. But there are some Abbeyales that don't have this long maturization process. So we know about them as well that they don't do it like that. But we do and why? Because we've always been doing it this way. I guess we change a winning team or something like that. How does it change over time? It evolves. A young fresh beer that's not matured or a beer that comes out of the fermenter the day before you bottle it. It's not exactly the same, but it's difficult to explain. I think that speaks to the question that I posed at the very start about how to take these beers that everyone knows how they're how to make them. But how do you make it distinctive and special? That's a technique and a way to go do that. But let's then talk about the next part of the process. After that conditioning conditioning and it's you keep it cold that entire time that it's conditioning. Yes, we keep it always cold and the fermentation we keep it cold still the beer goes into the bottle. But then at this point, you know, because bottle conditioning is another important part of this than the temperature changes again. But talk to me about the bottle conditioning process. How do you all bottle conditioning spears? So first of all, you need to make sure your fermentation goes well. That's the first thing that there are no fermentables you could left. Otherwise, if you start none zero, none fermentable. Otherwise, you've got. You're going to get in trouble, right? You can make bombs. So this you need to make sure your main fermentation goes well. You have your reached your end. Final gravity. Final gravity, yes. So what I want to explain is actually bottle conditioning, if your main fermentation goes well, then you don't have troubles in your bottle conditioning. Then you can plan. Then you can plan. Actually, it's just chemistry. If you use one kilo sugar, then you know how of this is going to CO2. And how of it is going to alcohol. If you're looking into the main fermentation, there is your purpose to make alcohol. So you also add sugar from the malt, from the recipe. If you add 100, how of it? 50 goes to alcohol, 50 goes to CO2. And the main fermentation, we keep the alcohol in bottle conditioning. We do the difference. Over you want the difference. It's the same, actually. The yeast gives half alcohol, but and half CO2. There we want CO2. If you want to know, if you want to have in our. In our specs is we're going to seven and a half grams per liter CO2. So we know how many sugar we want to use. We need to use, and if your main fermentation goes well, we do the math and then you know, so many sugar, we need to know, we know how many sugar we need to add and that it's done. What kind of sugar do you then use for bottle conditioning? For bottle conditioning, we use, yeah, and how it's called dextrose. It's a 100 percent fermentable sugar to make sure this goes as good, smooth, as possible. We don't want to make any difficulties for the yeast. It's not going to make any strange flavors either as a bottle conditions. The difference is when you do a bottle conditioning, you also, so like I said, we have make half of the sugar is changing into CO2. The other half is going into alcohol. So actually in one, you're getting some more alcohol and these bottle conditions bottles. Sure, sure, sure. And this also gives some extra flavor. If you sometimes, so our cakes are not conditions, so these beers are a little less alcohol in the caked version. Yes, we add CO2 and then this makes force carbonated. If you compare a beer from draft or a beer from the bottle, you're getting faster drunk from beer and bottle. Compared to a beer from draft, but also you have more taste from a bottle than from draft. And then you see people who are talking about a beer, they drink this one rather like this one more from draft, the other one they rather like more from the bottle. So it's interesting. Do they like the lower ABV styles from draft for that lower ABV or is it not always, I guess, some people are changing. Like for example, I really like our Christmas sale on draft, but I love the app 12 in a bottle. So it's kind of, sure. Do you bottle condition with the same yeast that you your initial fermentation that it takes place with? I know there's a lot of home brewers over there who might want to harvest our yeast from a bottle or something. But they can't. They can't. It's not the same. That's understandable. But I don't know if that was your answer as well. Sorry, I'm nodding over here. Not that yeast especially in a high alcohol environment in a bottle would be in very good shape after it gets to the United States in order to properly make some beer. So yeah. So the last part of this bottle conditioning, then you've now kept this beer cold and conditioning in a tank. You then add dextrose, some sugar. You add your bottling yeast. You mix, but you also need to heat up. Heat bring that beer, that to a temperature where that yeast can work at a much warmer temperature again. Talk to me about that process. So we're going to the off for filling the beer, we're going to 17, 17 degrees. So at that level, we can, that's the temperature level we can fill. So we're filling the beer at 17 degrees, going to the, to the ferment, the hot room. I don't know warm room. There we keep even a higher temperature. We're going to 24 degrees. It's a one big warm room where all the batches are going in before we did smaller rooms, but we saw it was too much fluctuation on the temperature. So now we are doing one big warm room. So when the batch comes in or another one goes out, it's, it doesn't impact that much on the temperature. Temperature doesn't fluctuate as much as in the past, I guess. How much of the carbonation is then produced in that re fermentation? How does, I mean, obviously that yeast through the fermentation process is creating carbonation. Do you maintain at some point some head pressure on that and some carbonation in the beer that you then increase with bottle conditioning? Or do you allow that to, you know, all that carbon dioxide from fermentation to release and then fully carbonate through bottle conditioning? We, as we are also a new brewery or a modern brewery, it's maybe a better word. We keep pressure on the fermentation. After fermentation, we keep pressure on from maturation tanks, also on the bright beer tanks just to make sure if there is to keep the CO2 into the beer. But this will be around three, three points to ground per liter CO2 that's inside the beer. It's not that much. So about half as much as what you really need. Then and for the rest, we add sugar to, to do bottle conditioning. Yeah, but it's still enough to keep the beer safe from too much oxygen in that process. Always interesting when we look at bottling or canning conditioned beer like that, so many American brewers are canning fully carbonated beer and it's interesting to see the bottling beer with much less carbonation which changes that whole packaging process for brewers. Nonetheless, let's zoom out here as we finish and talk about big picture. St. Bernardis is now thinking again as a modern brewery around new projects, even thinking about collaborations. Now you have some new things in the works that are a little different and maybe a little more open and a little more working together than it all may have been in decades of the past. Talk to me about taking on and approaching some of these collaborative projects and some of the exciting things that you all are now starting to work more on. Well, I know maybe in a moment we can talk a little bit about the collapse that we have set up right now. Collabs, it's such a fun modern work. I guess, yeah. But I do want to talk about something else first if it's okay with you. I want you to know that we, or maybe you know this already, but maybe the listeners don't. We also have a small brewery in Iper's. It's called Cosomotten. It's a brewery that is half owned by the owners of our brewery and is half owned by Rudy Gekire. He is the guy behind Roddenbach. He actually retired last week or two weeks ago. So he's been working there for 42 years. He's with had Rudy on the podcast years ago. The authority on Flam's brain, I guess. He knows a lot about a lot of beers and it was awesome to work with him in the past decade because it's 10 years that we've had the brewery together and to create smaller new beers with him. I think a voter has been working with him as well. So he could learn from that. I guess that this was our, I know it doesn't sound like that, but this was our first collab. Our first collaboration that didn't come into the fruit wasn't a beer that we made that we brewed together, but at least it was not a beer that we brewed together that is worldwide distributed, but this was really awesome to see such a small brewery and to have these small batches where we could do really nice things together. Well let's talk about some of the other collaborations that you have on the horizon. So yeah, I guess also about 10 years ago, me and Marcus from Wyand Stefan, Marcus Englet, he has my job at Wyand Stefan and we have a lot of common importers all over the world and we became friends and we ran into each other here and there and it was always nice to be on the road together, for example, in Spain or in Holland and we were talking about where we could export our beers and he tried to help me a little bit and I tried to help him and he said, "Well, we don't have an importer in Belgium yet. Can you can you can you help me can you tell me who I couldn't who I could convince to buy my beers in Belgium. I started looking for it, I couldn't find anybody and in the end I told them, you know what, we'll do it. We'll be your importer. So we had never imported a beer, but we import theirs since a decade now and we distributed it together with our beers here in Belgium and it's it's working well for us, it's not a huge sales but it's really nice that a lot of a lot of our customers can can find Wyand Stefan in Belgium as well now." And from the very early start we were like winking to each other, "Hey, we should make a beer together and that would be great." But it kind of took us about a decade to finally make one and last year we finally decided that we're gonna make it happen and and we got together and we we we we made a beer so it's called BroPakt 2024 and it's Wyand Stefan, a blonde ale brood at their facility, but we helped design the beer and also water was a huge part in that. We had to gather with Tobias, the brew master of Wyand Stefan, we got some yeah some discussions, how we want to make a beer, they had some ideas, we had some ideas, so we had to put things together. Yeah, actually we yeah, but I wanted to say so like I said before the yeast is something that you also have the conditioning. The condition where the yeast is working and if you use more top pressure or if you're not the temperature you get another beer, so that's what we try to do, we we we use the Wyand Stefan yeast, but yeast is diseased on other conditions to have another flavor. To get a more Belgian flavor from it. Yeah, so we went a little bit more to the phenolic site instead of the more ester site. We went a little bit more to the phenolic site and actually it's worked well. Hey Walter, it's a fantastic beer, you can say it. I know you're very proud of it, so thank you. That's fun, that's fun. So the fun part about that collab that we did this year is that we're also in the middle of making a new one that will be brewed at our facility and that will be on the market next year. So it's very very exciting to see to to to be involved in that and knowing that it's going to be on the market next year. So very very very excited about that. Will that use your yeast in order to make it taste more like a wine Stefan yeast or this is not yet so working on it's still working on it's trying to find some some some some some ideas yeah actually it's using ingredients from the other brewery and putting some things together other conditions that's making we don't know if it's if we we yeah it's still in into research. Yeah we're still investigating what we're going to do and but but it will be it's just awesome to do that kind of thing to to to try and create something new it's not something that we get to do every day here we don't make no beer every year we don't make 126 no beers a year you know there's breweries who do that and for us it's we're it's it's it's it's just a great project so very very excited about it but fun to you're right there are breweries many places that make two new beers every week or something crazy like that and yeah this is a it's a different rhythm here but at the same time it's a different for both breweries both old storied you know well respected brands in order to then come together the expectations become very high for for whatever you all make and that needs to it needs to reflect on both of those brands in such in in a great way but it's fun to see that even now even for both of those these brands that that creating new experiences and staying up to date but also sharing and learning with each other is is just as important to you as it is for for many smaller breweries and that I think might be a good place to bring this to a close choose G&D chillers on your next expansion or brewery start up and receive one free year of remote control and monitoring take your operations to the next level with the experts pro brew old orchard is the go-to source for fruit forward ingredients for some of the biggest names in the craft brewing landscape omega yeasts daybreak five gives you juicy modern hop flavors without the haze ABS commercial or proud offer brew houses tanks keg washers and preventative maintenance parts to burrs across the country get your order and now for the seventh annual veterans blend from Yakima chief hops Berkeley yeast strains are designed to improve flavor quality and consistency and if you're a distiller or curious about it check out the craft spirits and distilling podcast if you've enjoyed this podcast many others go to beer and bring dot com click on that subscribe button and let us know that the content that we produce for you matters to you your subscription goes a long way for helping us continue to bring you these great conversations with phenomenal brewers all across the world mark of people want to learn more about st. Bernardis the beer itself to taste the beer to experience the brewery here in what to to maybe even come and stay at the guest house the brewer brewery house like Joe and I did last night which is a beautiful place beautiful rooms just a spectacular experience of course net right next door to the brewery how how can they learn more find more come experience more of st. Bernardis I always explain it this way if you want to to come and stay here you just go out to a store by a case of beer take out a bottle and scan the QR code that's on the back when you get home drink that whole crate of beer and then poke yourself a stay to make the best decision after drinking that beer those beers and come and do a pilgrimage to the to the to the to the region we talked about us we talked about the area as well there's some really nice breweries in the neighborhood as well we're right on the border here it's the hop growing region it's the hop growing region we have a own hop field right next door you can see it from the rooftop we have a really nice rooftop bar with panoramic 360 views the old brew house the brewer's house the old cheese factory became a brewer's house and now is a bad and breakfast the guesthouse that you can stay in really really nice rooms and awesome breakfast excellent so I guess we also have bikes for rent e-bikes to to be clear so you can write to the other breweries in our area because it's up and down a little bit here and there so a definition of up and down is different from mine where I live in Colorado in the age of the mountains so this is but I know I hear what you say well the thing is also if you come and stay here you know you don't want to use a car and you want to be relaxed and not everybody is a cyclist you know so you don't want to be all sweaty when you get to us flat run and have a drink at the end of the year you you you you want to do it relaxed you know and then you can you don't have to drive a car you just take your bike and you come back and visit our brewery which is really awesome and you can do it on your own temple yeah we we try to create a nice experience for everybody who wants to come in experience our peers in in house and don't tell anybody but you guys know there's a fridge in the bed and breakfast and the honesty bar honesty bar so we took advantage of that last night that's that's nice too so you you always have a really good night camp for you guys did a good you slept well right we slept well last night it's beautiful and refined in the countryside here so the foggy today but it adds a nice moody calmness you know to everything but it's a beautiful experience out here and I can't wait to come back some time and bring my own bike with me and spend some time riding the small country roads around here there's actually a classic race that that is every year held here it's called Gantweevil Gantweevil and it passes by the brewery every year so you can come and check it out and you it does bond they gots as well so yeah it's it's really nice area to come and cycle sounds like a great reason to come back and I can't wait to do it but in the meantime uh uh Wooder and Marco thanks for joining me for the podcast it's been wonderful talking with you about Brewing Beer cheers cheers thank you this podcast has been brought to you by craft beer and brewing magazine for those who love to make and drink great beer to learn more or to subscribe visit beer and brewing.com or find us on social media @CraftBeerBroom
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