In a Belgian Mood (February-March 2022)

Somewhere between hefty doppelbock and pale heller bock, the traditional dunkles bock is like the family’s middle child—it doesn’t get as much attention, but you’ll want it in your fridge year-round.

From our Love Handles files for great beer bars: This spacious palace of hospitality trades in well-regarded comfort food and tall krugs of lager and ale.

Courtesy of Jeff Stuffings, founder of Austin’s Jester King Brewery, this homebrew-scale recipe for their highly regarded rustic table beer uses funky bottle dregs combined with a blend of saison yeasts to approximate their unique house culture.

Opening your fermentations to a wider array of yeasts and bacteria can add great complexity to your beers. It can also add complexity to your brewing process—but the challenge is both surmountable and rewarding.

From our Love Handles files on beer bars we love: This homey Irish pub in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood specializes in conviviality, local beers, and the occasional homemade burrito.

Regula Ysewijn’s recently revised book, “Belgian Café Culture,” is a striking look at a country’s traditional third spaces as well as a compelling plea to support and preserve them while we can.

Brewers are dumping their blow-off buckets and reusing precious carbon dioxide rather than releasing it into the atmosphere. The benefits include cost savings, reducing greenhouse emissions—and, some say, better beer.

With thanks to Forager’s cofounder and head brewer Austin Jevne, this homebrew-scale recipe combines the Forager approach to barrel-aged stout with the earthy, nutty, toasty flavor contribution of Mexican flying ants.

Known as chicatanas, these crunchy leafcutter ants are a delicacy of regional Mexican cooking—and they have a flavor profile that may be oddly compatible with your darker, richer beers.

This recipe is for a raw ale—no boiling—fermented with a distinctive kveik and later steeped with lots of sour cherries. Eik & Tid cofounder and brewer Amund Polden Arnesen calls it “a beer to capture the experience of eating fresh berries off the vine.”

“We had the idea that what’s lacking somehow today is this stubbornness, to stick to something—and to create something distinct in that way,” says Tom Jacobs. “For us, we want to do something that lasts.”

The diversity and creativity of the beers that come out of this small country are justifiably famous, yet often it’s the wilder side that draws all the attention. Let’s renew our friendship with the foundational ales that first put Belgium on the beer map.

John Carruthers, the man behind Chicago pop-up Crust Fund Pizza (and communications manager at Revolution Brewing), maps out the path to getting as geeky about pies as you are about beer—and uncorks a few Belgian beers along the way.

This six-pack from Heater Allen’s Lisa Allen is filled with formative beers that she’s stuck with through the years as well as inspirational lagers connected to specific beer-hall memories that have influenced the way she brews today.

“I could buy conventional grain and save some thousands of bucks per year, but then I don’t have anything to tell,” Jan Kemker says. “I don’t know if we need to call it terroir. It’s liquid storytelling, I think.”

Courtesy of the team at Foam Brewers, this homebrew-scale recipe is for one of their first double IPAs to enter their regular rotation for can releases.

After collective decades in beer, the team behind Foam Brewers are running their own show—and drinkers are seeking them out. “We never promoted anything; we just delivered,” says brewmaster Todd Haire. “If that travels by word of mouth, then that’s cool.”

We asked five brewing pros about their most beloved Belgian beers—any style, as long as it’s made in Belgium. Here’s what they recommend.

In various places around the world, brewers are choosing to limit their choices and root their beer in its place. In the first part of a triptych, here’s a look at Norway’s Eik & Tid and its kveik-fermented, oak-aged, mixed-culture raw ales.

For those who like it dark, strong, and contemplative, here’s a partial-mash extract recipe for a Trappist-inspired ale that can be cellared for many months, with a drinkability belies its strength and complexity.

Belgium’s dark, strong ales are among the most complex and impressive beers in the canon—yet extract brewers can tackle them as well as anyone, as long as we pay attention to a few key points.

This is less a recipe and more a set of guidelines and guesses, partly inspired by the Dundulis Moko Maukas Akmeninis stone beer in Lithuania, as described by Simonas Gutautas.

Ready to build a fire and brew a traditional stone beer at home? Grab your tongs and get ready to rock.

From our Love Handles files on beer bars we love: In Playa del Carmen, Mexico, this knowledgeable and welcoming bar on Quinta Avenida is devoted to local cerveza artesanal.

Mashing with hot rocks isn’t just an antiquated quirk of a few farmhouse brewers. In fact, we may be able to blame the technique for the founding of human civilization.

The idea of making beer with flaming-hot rocks conjures an indelible mental image, yet the common understanding of what “steinbier” was is almost totally wrong. Here, Lars Marius Garshol explains the methods of a lost farmhouse style.

This homebrew recipe is based on everything we know about how Duvel brews its iconic golden strong ale.

Duvel, Belgium’s iconic and elegant golden strong ale, is pale, dry, highly carbonated, and it boasts a distinctive fermentation profile. What are the stories, ingredients, and processes behind the archetype?

While the pandemic has led to a general loosening of restrictive Prohibition-era laws regarding beer for takeaway and delivery, there’s still plenty to do to liberalize the United States’ antiquated approach to alcohol regulation.

Full of malt depth yet dry, leaner than a doppelbock yet sneaky in strength... Once you brew a dunkles bock, you’ll wonder why you don’t have one on tap year-round.

From drinking to cleaning to a serious conversation piece, here are a few new products we’re enjoying.

This fan favorite at The Establishment in Calgary is an offbeat, pineapple-infused take on a light and smoky Lichtenhainer.

Three years after opening in Calgary, The Establishment has ridden its mixed-culture creations to the height of respect in Canada’s beer scene—winning medals, winning fans, and running out of room.