For the First Time Outside Halle: Block 15 Duivels Bier
Duivels bier (sometimes “duivelsbier”) is a mostly-forgotten style of dark lambic native to the town of Halle in the Zenne Valley. (The Zenne flows through town, which is just two miles from Lembeek.) It currently exists as a brand property of Brouwerij Boon, which acquired the rights to the name in 2001 from Brouwerij Vander Linden, duivelsbier’s last maker. Surprisingly, Boon’s isn’t a spontaneously-fermented beer but rather just a pretty standard dark ale, like a dubbel. (When I visited the brewery in 2011, Frank Boon took me to dinner in Halle where we had it with our meal. He punted when I asked why he didn’t make it like a lambic.)
“We’re going to use this historical style as a strong inspiration for what we’re doing, and at the very least create something really unique and different.”
I would call the information about the historical style scant and speculative. We don’t have detailed contemporary accounts or brewing logs. The fragments we do have tell us it was a stronger, darkish lambic that may have its origins only in the late 19th century, or instead two hundred years earlier. (This is typical with Belgian styles, and and we really need a Pattinson/Cornell figure to sort things out.) It has a wonderfully evocative name —devil’s beer—but information about that is equally bad. Something to do with it being strong for the time, and drunk people blaming the devil for their drunkenness. As with all Belgian styles, some tellings involve monks, which makes me all the more skeptical. In any case, the bones are provocative: a stronger lambic, darker, with a name suggesting delicious maleficence.
A lover of weird old styles, I usually try to forward information I have to brewers who might be lured into trying to recreate them, and so after a day spent perusing information about this beer online, I sent Block 15’s Nick Arzner what I knew. Fortunately, he found duivelsbier as interesting as I did and it didn’t take long for him to create the beer. Because he made it traditionally, as a spontaneously-fermented, aged beer, it only arrived in bottles last month. I gave Nick a call to get the whole story.
Inspiration and Philosophy
Brewers who recreate styles, whether they’re contemporary or historical, have to decide how faithful their recreations will be. In our recent pod extra, Patrick and I sampled two alcoholic milkshakes that were described by the brewery as “gose” and “Berliner weisse.” I wondered aloud why they bothered—there was nothing of these styles left.
That’s not Nick’s approach. “For the last twelve years we've always pushed evolution at our brewery,” he began. (This is true, too. Block 15 has beers like Dab Lab and Sticky Hands that evolve with ingredient and product technology.) “Sometimes it's really refreshing to take a step back, relax a little bit, and let history guide you without wondering about whether it's a new hop variety or if I need to add some weird-ass adjunct or whatever.”
Nick has always had a deep respect for European brewing, despite his reputation for hoppy ales. Wandelpad was inspired by Westvleteren Blond, for example, while Wellspring evokes Orval. They currently have a cracking Schwarzbier available, as well, and it follows a festbier. So how does he approach beers with established tradition? “If I want to put my spin on things, we do that in a lot of our modern beers.” he said. “In classic or historical styles, what drives me is: can we nail it? Because a lot of times it can be very difficult. Where if I say, ‘Well, I’m going to do a Belgian dubbel, but I’m going to put my own spin on it and dry hop with Amarillo.’ Now I don't know if I came anywhere close to nailing it or I [screwed] it up and the Amarillos are covering it up.” Of course, there’s not a lot to go on with duivelsbier, and of course, no reference beers to consult.
“A beer like this I’m not overly concerned about whether it nailed what it really was like. There’s no way to tell. We did some poking around and we [concluded] that these were just spontaneously-fermented stronger, darker or amberish lambic beers. That’s what we rolled with.”
Formulation
Block 15 started making spontaneously-fermented beers early on, and Nick calls the program “Turbulent Consequences”—a verbal nod to the turbid mashes he employs. “We did what we’ve found to be successful for our turbid-style mash,” he said, “which is like a nine-step mash. When we started, I wanted to be as traditional as possible, and now we just do it to torture ourselves. I’m serious--it’s like a three-shirt mash; I'm going to change my shirt three times.” He was only sort of kidding (and mentioned he now often has his younger brewers do this phase.)
“We dough in 20% of our total strike water, so it’s dry as hell. That brings it to 110-115 degrees, and then we add 20% more and raise it, and then we take a portion of the mash out and put it in the kettle and heat it up and then add in more hot water, and then remove that to the kettle--so we’re making sure w’'re developing a wort that has a lot of starch in it."
Nick in his “magical basement.”
Block 15 now uses only Oregon-grown ingredients, and they used Metolius, Mecca Grade’s Munich, along with their raw wheat. They age their own Oregon-grown Goldings, which Nick used in Duivel’s Bier. After the arduous mash, he boiled the wort for four hours. That’s a long boil by modern standards, but Belgians making amber and dark ales a hundred years ago would go 2-4 times as long. Still, it may have further darkened the wort.
From there, the wort went “into our coolship in our magical basement for 24 hours. We give it a 24-hour rest—it’s what we’ve always done.” That’s unusual. Most breweries just leave a beer overnight, allowing it to reach a stable cool temperature. Leaving it in longer, the theory goes, will expose it to perhaps too much wild stuff. I’ve had most of the Turbulent Consequence beers, and they don’t suffer from this process. In fact, Nick’s lambic-style beers have a sweetness and clean acidity without a lot of the really funky undertones. Nick also discovered that one side of the basement is colder than the other, and the beer is better when inoculated on the warmer side—where the coolship now sits.
Since this beer used a special wort, they left it to age for two years and then blended the barrels back together for the final beer. It’s not exactly straight lambic, because each of the barrels created their own ecosystem and flavors, but it’s not a gueuze, either—the blends are all the same age.
The Beer
So what’s duivelsbier taste like? According to the references one can find in English, the historical versions were often sweetened like faro. Block 15’s was not—an important note. It sits in on the fence between dark amber and light brown, looking lighter while pouring and darker in the glass. It had a fragrant, wild arome, with lots of Brettanomyces and acid in the nose. The scent was sharp and I wasn’t able to pick out some of the subtler notes until after I’d tasted the beer.
It tastes much like a lambic, and the first sensations are all spiky, wild bits: sharp acidity, both lactic and acetic, along with the drying leather of the Brett. Gueuzes are blended for approachability by including different vintages of beer. Old lambic is dry and austere, and often very, very tart. Duivels Bier had that character. It should age extremely well, and may mellow and deepen after a few years. (I have a second bottle I think I’ll sit on at least three years.) After a few sips, however, I noticed more of the underlying flavors, and here I made a tantalizing discovery. The beer has a sweetness that comes, I think, from both esters and the malt. Together with the acetic acid, they create a note of balsamic that is characteristic of the oud bruins of Flanders to which they were sometimes compared. This is just one beer and it was a minor note, but I do now wonder if malt is the key to that balsamic flavor—a factor I’d never considered.
Much like some aged, single-vat lambic and more assertive Flanders beers (Rodenbach, Verzet), Block 15 Duivels Bier will be a bridge too far for many drinkers. Historical styles are often are—they were popular in a time and place because people appreciated their unusual flavors. Often when breweries recreate them, we think, “Well, that was interesting.” Duivels Beer is not one of those experiments, though. It’s very much a piece of the tradition that still survives around Brussels and in Flanders, and yet is not quite like either. For those who love the incredibly complex, unusual wild beers made there, Duivels Bier will be a must. Like a lost uncle, it’s in the family, just forgotten. It deserves to be rediscovered.