BierTalk English 46 - Interview with Sibren de Bast, brewer and co-founder of Man & Brouw from Wilsele, Leuven, Belgium

Markus: Hello and welcome to another episode of our podcast BierTalk. Today we have an interesting and fascinating journey to our neighboring country of Belgium, close to Leuven, in a little place called Wilsele. There is a fantastic brewery, a hidden brewery, a secret, a jewel. However, you call it and I’m very happy to have now Sibren from Man & Brouw here on the mic and also some of the beers here, so we will take them together and I’m looking forward to it. And first of all Sibren great that you are here. Maybe you say a few words about you to our listeners.

Sibren: Sure, hi, I’m Sibren, I’m brewer at Man & Brouw indeed in Wilsele, a small village next to Leuven, yeah, we have a small brewery here. It’s actually indeed really hidden because it’s in the back of my garden, so you can’t really see it from the streets. There is a sign that says it. But yeah, you really have to go through my garden. There is a shipping container where we’ve built a full brewery, where we can brew around three hundred liters of beer, so it’s a lot of fun.

Markus: Yeah, in a container really hidden and also as I said like a jewel, because the beers I could taste them in place. They are fantastic and they are also in very high class restaurants and and you do a lot of special things We’ll talk about that in a moment. Maybe in general, what was the plan to say I have brewery in a container in my garden?

Sibren: Well, there really never was a plan. I think we started out just as homebrewers a couple of years ago and then during the COVID pandemic. I bought this. House and there was already a shipping container in the backyard removing it was impossible. So I said I’ll make my little brewery here. But at that point I was still thinking just homebrew twenty liters for myself. But then the pandemic was, it was getting longer and longer and second and third lockdown and I was getting a bit sick of my normal job, because I wasn’t seeing anybody. And I was thinking, OK, maybe I should start a brewery, because beer it always brings people together and I was maybe longing for that a lot at that point. So at that point I registered for like this entrepreneurship course that was organized by the city of Leuven and one thing led to another. We started the brewery. Then I think that was officially in twenty twenty three that we brewed our first beer, because of course starting a brewery. It’s a journey about getting the right permits, getting your equipment, getting everything installed, finding your suppliers and your customers and then finally really starting the brew only after you already did a lot of work. So that’s how we started out and now, yeah, it’s going along and we are always improving our brewery and expanding a little bit. But yeah, we always make a plan in the beginning of the year, what we want to reach and we’ll see. So that’s the plan for now.

Markus: It’s always good to have plans whatever happens afterwards. But was there someone who had to come from the city to say it’s okay that the brewery is there in the garden in the container, because I think no one else had seen such a thing before or was it for them okay, or did they never see?

Sibren: Well, you just have to register that you’re gonna do something at this location, but the specifics of where or what I didn’t really have to give, so I don’t know actually if the city is okay with it, that it’s in a container, but it is registered and like the food safety inspection came around. And also the people for like the taxes and everything on beer and they were all fine that it’s in a in the back of a garden, in a shipping container. We really installed it to be a brewery, so it’s legal in the way that everything is foreseen for brewing there and it’s food-safe and everything like that. So we had our inspections, but not really from the city, more from food safety and yeah, customs then everything was

Markus: that was more or less what I meant so because if I think so in general I was there, it’s great, it’s fantastic. So do a wonderful job and you did a wonderful job installing it. But if I would think of like an official here from the German government, from the city of Bamberg or so and I would say okay, come with me, we go to our backyard and there is a container and there’s the brewery. They would at first have very big eyes and have to think about it so fantastic. Yeah, what is the reason that there was the container? Did the guy before use it for something?

Sibren: Or I heard it from my neighbor that once there was in the house that I live in a travel agency and they were arranging skiing trips for the students of Leuven towards the Alps and they used the container for storage of often a lot of beer actually, which is funny because that’s also what it’s used now to do, but Yeah, it was basically the free beer and the free drinks that this organization got from big companies and that they would hand out to the students that was stored in this shipping container.

Markus: So the perfect continuation of that story now. So maybe before we talk more about the start of the brewery, we have all these wonderful beers here and of course I would like to try them with you. What would you suggest? Which would be the first one to start with

Sibren: I think then yeah, of course we start with the lightest, I guess and that will be Cool Camille, that I sent you.

Markus: Okay, wonderful. Here we have Coole Camille and by the way, it’s beautiful labels, so it’s the regular bottle and then there is the label hanging on the neck and it’s cut in a very nice way, so it’s going along with the shape of the bottle and then you have it’s fully with color and beautiful paintings on it. And We have Coole Camille and you see the flower of the Camille and a little boy jumping out of the center of it. So it’s really nice. Here we go

Sibren: so Coole Camille, it’s a grisette style of beer, so it’s a very light saison style of beer, so it’s only three point, seven percent historically it was meant for the miners in the south of Belgium, so that’s why it doesn’t have a lot of alcohol, because yeah, it has to be refreshing for the miners and they still have to be able to work afterwards without any accidents.

Markus: Classic grisette.

Sibren: And of course here we added camomile, so chamomile flowers to the boil to impart the typical Chamomile aroma.

Markus: I think grisette itself is somehow connected with the saison, I think isn’t it?

Sibren: Yes, yes. So they are both from like the south of Belgium, they use the same kind of yeast, so it’s very high attenuating yeast, so very dry refreshing, but the saison was more used for the people working on the field. It’s a little bit more higher in alcohol, a little bit more energy for people working on the field, but yeah, in the mines more alcohol. It’s not really what you want, I guess

Markus: It Could be dangerous. Let’s say it like this. So, but it’s as you said, the aroma is great, so you really have the impression of the Chamomile, but also a little bit of honey and other herbal aspects, but in a very nice tempting way and very intense, so there’s a lot of aroma, also it has a lot of nice white foam, so also very very stable foam, beautiful and the beer itself is quite light and yeah, I will try so cheers enjoy. I do and very nice it’s it’s an interesting journey, so it starts very very fresh, so a little bit almost Champagne like with a lot of carbonation. We have some yeah, whiny aspects and that turns then into this honey and also chamomile aspects and when you then yeah, reach the tongue and it and swallow it, then you have also some bitterness in a very nice way so it really cleans the palate and also is also refreshing, also adding on to this and also is a little, a nice counterpart to the Chamomile, which is quite intense and all in all really really a very round and for the little alcohol a very intense beer and the Chamomile is very well presented. Do you add other special ingredients maybe for the foam or for the mouthfeel?

Sibren: We tend to use a lot of wheat, so that’s also typical for saison grisette style that you would. Use wheat or oats and other greens and barley. But here, also in Leuven historically there has been a lot of use of wheat and we like it as well so yeah, usually our recipes are around thirty forty percent wheat most of. The time when we brew just a blonde beer. It usually has indeed this high percentage and this gives this nice foam stability, because there is a lot of proteins in the wheat makes the beer a bit hazy, but we don’t mind that no.

Markus: And it’s really has a little for me almost like a noble character, so really would be for me example at the beginning of a menu a nice first thing you have maybe in a champagne glass to have that as a starter. It’s really very nice and the Chamomile is something very special you normally don’t have in beers, so this is really nice. So how did you have this idea to make? This was like several trials and other herbs or whatever or did you have in mind? Okay, Chamomile is the thing I will go to no.

Sibren: The first time we brewed with chamomile, then we indeed we bought a lot of herbs and we were brewing teas from them and checking what will be a nice flavor in our beer. And at the same time I also got a bag of fresh chamomile from my mother in law, grew a fresh chamomile in our garden and we tasted this, we smelled this and it was fantastic. So then I asked her to grow more for me and then we brewed with our fresh harvested chamomile with this. Beer. So yeah, we tend to buy often random herbs and ingredients and just see what we find interesting there. And it’s our way of exploring new ideas and flavors just by randomly going to a shop and buying random spices that we don’t know or things we do know and then just trying it out in tea or infusing it in already-done beer or merkéng. An iced tea out of it, just to try what these flavors give. And then we also know what should be the ratio or the dosage in the real beer. And that’s how we tried to make a new thing, a new beer, a new flavor.

Markus: And if you talk about we or us, it’s two of you. I think your friend Tom and you.

Sibren: Tom and I, we know each other already since we were twelve years old. But then I think in university we really became friends and after university we lived together with a couple of other friends in the house and that’s when we started brewing. So Tom and I started brewing them together, we also followed brewing class together and then. Started the brewery together and we come up together with these recipes and then we brew them.

Markus: And the idea was at the beginning already to make these very special beers or did you also make something like a pills or regular. Blonde or triple or something like that.

Sibren: In the beginning we did just when we started out our brewing adventure, we weren’t as adventurous as we are now we were just the normal Belgian guy that said, oh, I want to brew a triple and another abbey style of beer or normal blonde. But then during our brewing classes we were more inspired by the other brewers that were there and then they were. Also it was a good way of exploring what else was there. And then when I started traveling, it was an often with my wife, I was traveling and then we would encounter these other small breweries and brewpubs all over Europe in cities. And you see other styles from other parts of the world. So you start exploring that and reading about them and you see all these flavors that are out there now in the world in beer. And of course you’re inspired by that. And you start experimenting yourself. And at first, indeed at homebrew level, we started adding a lot of different kinds of fruits and yeasts and experimenting with that and then we also found our love for sour beers actually so quite, or dry or sour beers that we usually make so yeah, the experimenting was soon there when we were homebrewing. It’s also maybe because we are both scientists at the time, we were both doing a PhD in engineering, so we are used to merkéng experiments and trying new things out. And I think from both experimenting and very curious minds, we really want to go for our ideas and check out where they lead us. And that’s why we usually make very special beers with special ingredients.

Markus: Yeah, that was the other thing. I was really surprised when I was in your brewery. So one thing is of course the beers. But the other thing is, you really see in every part of the that both of you are engineers and that you are really thinking of what you are doing And what is the final goal of where you want to go there? And you really do the things the way that you will end there. And for example with the labels, but also with many other things that is really fascinating, absolutely. Maybe before we start talking about that we could try another beer so because it was very nice, but it was also very light, so it’s already gone. What would be the next one to try?

Sibren: Then I would go for the one without a label that looks the clearest to you.

Markus: Okay, I will see. So we have to explain the listeners. I had a mess in my packaging with the two beers, one had a label and the other didn’t and the label somehow went off and so I don’t really know which one is which one, but I will see. So first I will try, this is maybe the clearest. I will see, I can describe what is the aroma? And then you can say, if it’s right or wrong, yeah, it quite had a lot of pressure. Yeah, there may be apples, then that is the wrong one maybe.

Sibren: No, no, that’s the right one, that’s the right one.

Markus: Okay, so I have in the nose I have some apple notes, some pear notes, hints of orange on the palette. It starts a bit sweet. But then one moment, then, also this apple fruitiness even it goes in a little bit into cherries or maybe even strawberries, a lot of red fruits also. And then I have a little bitterness, not too much. And it goes back like the apple skin, something like that. And stays quite a long, quite long and it’s not too strong in general. So is it the right one? Or isn’t it?

Sibren: I think you opened the right one. Yes, Passionele Pommelien. And it’s a blend of sixty percent saison and forty percent cider, so the taste of apples is definitely correct. We work together for this with a local cidery. It’s one town further than where our brewery is. It’s called most and they make cider from local apples. So they go to apple farmers at this point, but they also have their own little piece of orchard apple orchard where they all varieties of cider apples. And this was one actually with their first harvest of their own apples and a little bit of bought apples of apples they bought at local farmers that we pressed these apples here at the brewery. And then, six months later we blended the cider that we had from these pressed apples with a saison that we brewed especially together how we made this beer.

Markus: Yeah, it goes very nice together, I must say. And it really has both components. And now I took another sip during you were talking about it. And at the end I also have a little bit of the spiciness and some leather aroma, so I think that the saison also is there and makes its way it’s there. They’re really nice together. If you say you crushed the apples so was it like the whole apple and you squeezed it more or less or was it did you peel the skin or what about the seeds?

Sibren: The apples just go whole into the mulcher. So the apples are first mulched until they are really fine parts and then we press them so skins, seeds, everything goes in. Also we didn’t pasteurize the apple juice, but we did add cider yeast, so there is some wild yeast that was still active on the apples as well. So it was really dry when we after fermentation. That’s also why we chose to blend into the saison, so that it was also a dry beer, so that you control it more of how it would continue fermenting in the bottle. That’s also why there was quite a lot of pressure now. I think it’s already bottled more than a year and it’s always getting a little bit more, a little bit more fermented and a little bit higher in pressure the bottles. But they’re almost sold out, I think now. But it’s because there is still a little bit of activity of these wild yeasts that were on the apples and that was given, yeah, it the flavors develop as well in the bottle, when we first bottled. It was very soft in flavor, I think. And now it’s becoming more pronounced and they’re are some sharp interesting edges coming so it’s a very interesting beer in that way as well.

Markus: Yeah, it is very complex so that’s really now, as it gets a bit warmer, you also have a lot of floral smell, so like roses, rose hips or these things and more and more the applish aroma coming coming up so like a red apple, something like that.

Sibren: It was a blend of apples. So I know that the ones they bought were Jonagold apples, but then, yeah, because that’s one of the most popular apple varieties here in. The area. But then they, also from their own trees, were all legacy varieties, real cider varieties, but I don’t remember their names. It was a whole blend of specialty apples.

Markus: Yeah, great combination also. And I think, as you said, there is some wild yeast going on, some microorganisms working together and that’s that’s always interesting. Also to see what they do so because one of them eats this and the other one eats that and some eats what the others left over and thinks and so it’s it’s building on and that can be really interesting. And it’s the other thing is, it is really still fresh, so you don’t taste it like it’s one year old, it’s still a very fresh, active, lively, intense fruity beer. Great. Yeah, would also be if you would have a menu, it would be good for maybe a salad or later for some cheese or something. So it’s a nice, nice beer. Great. Is there in your place another brewery? Or are you the only one?

Sibren: The town? We are the only brewery, but our town is part of Leuven and there is of course multiple breweries.

Markus: Yes. And we visited some of them together too. And how did the other ones react when you said, okay, we are opening a brewery, so what was the reaction of maybe the neighborhood, but also the other brewers?

Sibren: The neighborhood, I don’t really know. My neighbors were quite positive when I told them and they’re like very interested in, You’re gonna brew in here in the backyard. Oh cool. But nothing too fancy of what they said or nothing too special. And the other brewers are very positive. Actually, we help each other a lot. For example our grains, we’re gonna, we’re getting our grains from a local brewery that they’re called Hof ten Dormaal and they also. Have a farm where they grow their own barley and wheat and they molt the barley and wheat themselves and we go and get our malts there as well. So we have a good relationship with them. We’re always talking about brewing them when we’re there and they teach us things. Definitely, when we were starting up our brewery. It was very helpful. Also Brouwerij de Coureur, brewer Bart and his wife Ine, they are also very helpful. We are actually often ordering supplies together, because as small breweries, when you can combine your orders then, yeah, it’s a bit cheaper because you only have to pay for transport ones and all these kind of things and you also learn a lot from each other, because when you’re together, ah, you’re ordering this and this and how do you do this and what’s on your planning? And then naturally you start talking together exchange ideas, so that’s all really fun. Actually we never really had any bad experiences from other brewers in the neighborhoods. Everybody’s just interested in ah, what are you brewing, how are you brewing this? And We’re just exchanging ideas most of the time, so it’s a really nice community actually the brewers in Leuven absolutely,

Markus: That was also the same way I experienced it and also Leuven itself, it’s a city of beer of brewing, maybe the oldest brewing university in the world and so there’s knowledge been for centuries and but also always innovation and new ideas and a lot of lot of input from the outside, so that also keeps it still very, very innovative and very a good soil. Let’s say for new ideas and new grounds and new breweries. So really interesting. Okay, the apple is done, what are we going to drink now?

Sibren: Can you remind me of what else I sent you?

Markus: Of course I have a Lustige Leia, I have Duistere Dolly, Betoverende Becca, Frisse Frieda and the mysterious bottle with then I think

Sibren: I would go for the Frisse Frieda.

Markus: Okay, let’s do that. Here we go another beautiful label. By the way, do you design the labels yourselves?

Sibren: Yes, most of them, I do them myself now for the bottle that doesn’t have a label for you, because there weren’t in yet when I sent you the box, we had an artist drawing them, but most of the labels, I draw them myself. So it’s always looking for an ID, which can take a long time and then when I have the idea, it’s usually one night that I draw them and they’re done and usually I want to go for like a funny story or something that the label is telling, because I think that really attracts people as well in buying the beer. And when the label has some kind of story to tell.

Markus: Yeah, there’s this bottle man or bottle human, I don’t know. So a bottle with arms and legs and is experiencing the world and also the different topics of the beers, which is really funny. Yeah, great. So this one now is more or less like bathing in hops. I would say, if I were to interpret the picture and when I see the beer, it’s a beautiful foam hat, so that’s very, very impressive. Great, very stable, very thick, very bright, great. And in terms of the aroma, there’s a lot of fruitiness, also some citrusy and also some apricot taste and in the other side there’s also some herbal, some grassy, yeah, greenish aroma. It’s a nice mixture, also bit floral, some roses, also very interesting, very very complex again. And so cheers, I will try, Cheers.

Sibren: So this one is a sour beer that we brew. We tend to brew a lot of sour beers and to this one we added fresh hops. So also in the garden next to the shipping container, we have a wall that we’re growing hops on ourselves. So last year in September, I was then picking the hops and then we added them to the fermenter actually as a dry hopping with fresh hops. I couldn’t really find any other sources of dry hopping with fresh hops. And a lot of people that were on the Internet very afraid of it for infections and anything. But I said, OK, let’s try it. And I think that the fresh hop aroma really came true. In the beer freshly. It’s quite unusual aroma. I would say, it’s something that I didn’t really smell often before in beers, but that i really the beer smells like how I remembered that the brewery was smelling when we were picking hops in the end of september. It’s indeed quite complex with very fruity notes, but also grassy, a lot of grassy herbal notes.

Markus: We have one brewery here close to Bamberg, they brew the whole year round a fresh hop beer and the background is that they harvest the hop fresh and then they deep-freeze it and so they can use it anytime for merkéng new beers and so the base smell or base aroma of the fresh hop, that’s definitely. There’s this green grassy hay, yeah, classic hop aroma, a little bit hempy maybe even, but on the other side, I think. And that’s maybe from the, let’s say microorganisms, which are also present, is this fruitiness, this very special fruitiness. It’s it has that citrusy part, but also a lot of other fruits, yellow fruits and yeah, complex, yeah.

Sibren: How we sour our beers is usually in the fermentation tank. So we boil our beer without hops. We transfer it to the fermentation tank when we have cooled it to thirty-five degrees and then we add lactobacillus and they tend to give also a lot of fruitiness in the aroma. And that’s something that’s. I’m often missing in other sour beers when you do like a kettle sour where you sour. Your beer in your kettle and then you boil it again, but then you lose a lot of aromas when you boil it. And especially with this string that you are using it gives a lot of tropical fruit in my opinion and I really love it. So that’s why we do it in this way that we keep all these aromas that this lactobacillus is providing.

Markus: Yeah, wonderful. And also maybe a good time to talk about the names because we had coole Camille. Now we have the frisse Frieda. So it’s you always try to have the alliteration with the two letters and also a nice twist in the word. So what is the idea?

Sibren: Yes. So first of all, because our brewery is called man and brau, which means men and brew, but it’s a workplace on men and wife in Dutch. So our brews are wives basically. Here it’s a female. So we give all our beers a female name and then we alliterate with adjective before it. So here it’s frisse Frieda, so fresh Frieda. So that’s our naming scheme and we tend to stay in this way. We like it for brand for people when they see a name like this that they could see. Okay, that’s a beer from Man & Brouw and we try to be creative in this way.

Markus: And you are and it’s fantastic and very interesting. And that more or less directly leads to another question, because I understand you started homebrew brewing and then you started this brewery and then you had this three hundred liter batch thing and then you. Had your first beers. But I think it’s quite hard to find the market, because if on that level you cannot sell your beer cheap and you cannot sell it to huge places, so how did you make that? And how did you find the right places to position the beers?

Sibren: Yeah, so our main customers are craft beer bars and craft beer shops in the city. Of Leuven and then we have some other bars in Leuven. And indeed often when you go to a random bar and you offer our beers the first thing, they say that’s a bit expensive. But if you find the right places where they do offer more craft beers, more specialty beers, then the price is usually less of a problem. It’s more in need of having a good story, having good beers, having exciting beers that people want to try. And that’s how we manage most of the things. And of course we also go to festivals and local events and we have our own web shop, where people can order our beers. And in this way usually we have the problem that our stock is quite low, so I guess we’re doing quite well at the moment, But of course it’s only three hundred liters, so it’s not huge volumes, but that also keeps it interesting for us, because it’s only three hundred liters. We can do crazy things that sometimes involve a lot of manual labor. We will talk about this when we for example taste rusticlea that it can. Yeah, that these recipes are often quite hard to scale up. If you want to brew thousands of liters of these, it will become very hard.

Markus: But there are some beers which you have more or less always on your lineup, or is it always a new thing?

Sibren: No, it’s always a new thing. Actually it’s a way we challenge ourselves to always brew new recipes. It’s something that we. Yeah, that’s also coming from the fact that we were homebrewers and we were never really interested in perfecting that one recipe. We were always tasting new things and then being inspired by new things and wanting to brew new things. And that’s why every month now we have new beer and it’s often an experiment because we don’t know what. Yeah, we do small experiments beforehand with merkéng some tea with our ingredients, but yeah, if you brew it on a bigger scale, how will it go through the whole fermentation process and after packaging. How will it behave? It’s always a bit of a guess in the end it’s a calculated guess. But still there is often some unexpected outcomes,

Markus: Talking of unexpected outcomes. What will be the next beer to try?

Sibren: Then we’ll go to. It’s not really an unexpected outcome, but Lustige Leia, I think is the next all right year to go.

Markus: That’s that’s the favorite label for me at the moment or not. Let’s not say the favorite one, but one which has some familiarity for me, because it’s the Star Wars topic which I really love. And then you already see like Tatooine or some planet like this on the label and a lightsaber. So this is great and yeah, so let’s open it.

Sibren: Here we go

Markus: Lustige Leia. That means, we are now in the Star Wars theme.

Sibren: Yeah, we didn’t really did it on purpose. I’d say the Star Wars theme, we just like the name Leia. And then of course when you take Leia into account, you think about Star Wars and then of course when you make a label you think about Star Wars theme and you go. For that. So indeed we there depicted Princess Leia, but then in the form of our beer bottle character, that’s indeed on this dystopian planet. And there was actually, yeah, I drew this label myself first, but very, very simplistic. And then I experimented with AI actually to give it texture and some depth and lighting. So we’re engineers, we’re scientists. So we like to experiment as well with AI these days. And there it was really an experiment of like, okay, can I quickly draw with some simple shapes what I want to see and then really let AI do the work in texturing it and giving it a polished finish, because I really just gave it some blobs.

Markus: What is really fantastic, Princess Leia, she has a very special way of haircut and so more or less two big blobs on the right and left side of the head. And this we have exactly with the bottle man or bottle boy, whatever it is, that’s really beautiful. So fantastic. And also what is fantastic? The whole room now smells like fresh lemon bergamot, some grapefruit, so very lot of citrusy aroma and a very fresh, very intense. So I’m really tempted. Cheers, Prost.

Sibren: So Lustige Leia is our lemonade sour. So we made a sour. We took a quite fruity yeast of course and paired with our very fruity lactic acid bacteria. And then in the fermentation vessel. We added a lot of lemon peel, so that’s what I said before. It’s not always that easy to brew our beers on a larger scale, because I think for this the amount of lemons we had to peel, it was a couple of hours of work. And then we also added some. It’s called grapefruit mint, it’s a very special kind of mint that has this, yeah, it’s called grapefruit, but I don’t find it really grapefruity. I find it more tropical notes with some pineapple and stone fruits, but it’s also a mint that we grow ourselves in our garden, because you cannot really find it anywhere commercially that I know of that you can really buy it in bulk, so we grow it and then once a year we can brew with it. And this added a lot of fruitiness as well to the beer, but of course doing this on a bigger scale. Then you have to find bigger suppliers and even more work in peeling and harvesting and it will become quite difficult. So that’s why we keep it actually quite small, our brewing capacity, because then we can still do these things.

Markus: Yeah, now, as I tasted it, I can only say yes, it’s a wonderful idea to do it. And this mint really has has a lot of aromatic power, so yes, we have this pineapple and again some apricot and yeah, for me, also I had the Bergamot already on the smell. I think it’s also a little bit on the taste again. And at the end some fresh notes, maybe that also comes from the mint, so that’s really, yeah, great composition and it’s quite sour, but still on a very drinkable level, so really. And I think it hides the alcohol so it’s, it’s very easy drinking, but probably it’s more than five, I don’t know, but nice, yeah.

Sibren: We also tend to use a lot of oats when we brew a sour, because oats usually give a little bit more of a body, a little bit more of a sweetness and this balances really nicely with the sourness.

Markus: We think, yeah, you also have a lot of restaurants, they have your beers, so is it for them. I would guess, if I would be a chef, I would love these beers, because they have so many options for food pairings, because you have so many different aromas and complex aromas, so you can really play a lot around, so do they do that?

Sibren: Yes, so usually the restaurants where we work with, they really go for beer pairings, so they make their recipes of their own dishes and they really pair together like, okay, this food will go very well with this kind of beer and these aromas. For example now Cool Camille will in a couple of months be paired with some asparagus, because the Cook thought, wow, this will pair really well with asparagus, so we get some cakes site for now for the Asparagus season that will be. Coming and so on.

Markus: And if people want to experience your beers or your brewery, can they just come along or is there a special place? Where would you recommend to go to or how would that work?

Sibren: So if you’re from outside of Leuven, then it’s new. Now you can book a tasting, so you can go to a website and ask for a tasting, a private tasting. It’s always a private tasting, because it’s not really easy to make our brewery open to the public. But if you are interested in our beers and you just want to drink them, there’s for example in the city center a bar called MALZ there usually you have one beer on tap and a couple of them in the fridge and also in Hops ’n More in the city center there’s usually a couple of our beers available that you can buy.

Markus: Fantastic. So great experience. What did you do with the rest?

Sibren: Yeah, we peeled all the lemons, but we also juiced them and we added the juice as well. I forgot to mention that.

Markus: Okay, that also explains this very special kind of sourness, because it’s also very fruity so this is really great idea

Sibren: it also adds citric acid indeed, so it brings an extra complexity in the sourness.

Markus: I think in every aspect you really feel that you are engineers, so are there still connections to your former job by of course engineering parts of the brewery and parts of the labeling process and also still something you’re doing as an engineer.

Sibren: Yeah, yeah. So actually the brewery it’s only a part time job. I still am an engineer at the company here in Leuven. I actually design GPS receivers and yeah, for me I love being an engineer, so I don’t really want to quit my job and become a full time brewer, actually, because I really like this job as well, but I don’t really like to be sitting at my desk all the time. So that’s why I also then added a brewery as a part time job, because there I can really be practical. I can really make my hands dirty and brew and bottle and go do some sales and you really meet a lot of interesting people by being an entrepreneur like this. And that’s something that I don’t miss in my daily job, but my daily job is maybe more challenging on the mental level, like it’s a lot harder the algorithms I have to develop there are quite novel and then in the brewery I can really be more of a creative person, think about new flavors, make beer labels, brew beers, do sales, go out and yeah, I think it’s the best of both worlds actually combining

Markus: these two jobs and I think it’s a perfect addition for both of the jobs, because you get a lot of input and creativity being this home brewer for your engineer part and the other. Side around. So because you have a special mindset for the beers, which makes it different and also makes it possible to have these beers and these crazy ideas in the end, but made in a very professional, very strict way, so that’s great and I think that’s maybe also the success behind, so that you still have these two worlds and maybe it wouldn’t be good to be just a brewer, so everything together is always nice.

Sibren: That’s really, because when I come into the brewery, then I’m happy that I can brew, because I finished then my working week or I first did some engineering days and then you’re happy I can brew again and in the other way as well because I can brew then I come back to the engineering job and I’m like, ah, I can work on this again, stop with the brewery for a couple of days and you really like are looking forward to the other job sometimes and then your work never really feels like working, but it always feels nice.

Markus: We have to talk about what your wife says about all of this, but maybe we first have another of these beers, so there are still three left, so which one would you suggest? Dolly, Becca and the mystery bottle.

Sibren: Let’s do the mystery bottle, because now we can stay into the sourness.

Markus: Okay, moment, Here we go. Oh, this now has a special color, little reddish, also yes, and very fruity again.

Sibren: Yeah, it’s again a sour beer that we made. It’s called Pittige Patricia. And to this one we added black pepper and also Tasmanian mountain pepper, so we wanted to really emphasize a bit of peppery notes in there and that Tasmania mountain pepper, yeah, it really gave this dark purplish kind of color, so now it the color of the beer is a bit reddish more. To be honest, I’m not really that happy with the color.

Markus: Oh, it depends. Yeah, I think it’s, it’s a mystery color and I think it adds on a little bit to have this pepper special idea, because I think many people also associate this red berry pepper things and so. Yeah, I like it. And you already have, also in the smell, if you take a deep breath, then you have really the intense peppery notes, but the complex ones on that net own not just pepper as we have it in a restaurant that have this cheap black stuff. So it’s much more like fresh milled and also diverse pepper with a lot of different smells again fruity notes, also floral notes and this really nice spiciness in the end, which hurts a bit, but in a nice way.

Sibren: For this one as well, we just ordered, I think seven eight kinds of different kinds of black peppers and other kinds of peppers and then we put some tea from them, smelled them, tasted them, selected the ones we like the most for in a beer and then we brewed with them. So that’s how we work always we just, yeah, we do our research, what kind of peppers are there? And then of course reading on the Internet about them only tells you this much. So we really just order them and decide then which one we like the most, because the description on the Internet doesn’t say that much in comparison to really experiencing them.

Markus: Yeah, they have very very complex aromas and it reminds me a bit of my travels to Egypt for example, where you have these huge local markets with also a lot of different kinds of peppers which are piled on there you can try everything and you smell a lot and that’s so so different to what we know as the regular pepper we got normally in the supermarket, that is so great, so intense and so diverse. It’s really nice to bring that into a beer and to also to have it play the main role, because there are, I know other beers which have some pepper, but also in addition with some fruits or some other things. But here it plays the main role and this is really, oh very nice and it doesn’t really have this sharp spicy character if you drink it so it’s really really nice.

Sibren: Yeah, for this one we didn’t add that much pepper that it was really gonna be a sharp spiciness in the in the throat or anything. We just wanted to go for the aroma.

Markus: It’s perfectly there so. Yeah, of course, there must be a difference to Let’s say a chili beer or something like. That.

Sibren: Yes, because that’s the next year we’re gonna release actually this one with chili peppers that we we. Grew jalapenos in the garden last year and then I made some fermented hot sauce from them. And then this year in January, beginning of January, we brewed a lag and then during the boil and also during fermentation we added a lot of hot sauce. So now it’s a refreshing lager with a spicy kick to it to be coming out in the future.

Markus: Okay, please reserve some bottles. I really love that. If a beer has this nice spicy way, it depends a bit how intense it is. So we had for example a friend of mine has a brewery in Denmark and he specialized on chili beers and one he. Really makes for merkéng the people cry so he uses it. For example at beer festivals, they all think, okay, they have to prove their boldness and so they have to try it and whatever things. But he has also a great bandwidth of different ones. And I really like this combination with spiciness.

Sibren: When we use chilies, we try to balance it out that you really have that heat in the back of your throat, but that it doesn’t linger on that it quickly goes away. And because when it’s too hot indeed, you still have to enjoy a full beer of this, that’s what we think.

Markus: This special beer he just does for that. So because the people come and say, okay, we have to try this so but in general of course, and what is really interesting? That also like the pepper here, also the Chilies, they have so many other aromas, which are not only just that spiciness, fruitiness and floral notes and whatever things. And that makes also a lot of complex complexity and great aromas in the beer. So I also love that. And or for example when I was in Chile, I think two or three years ago we did a collaboration brew there and the idea was to make a smoke beer more or less in a traditional Franconian Bamberg way and to add the merkén, which is like a chili powder they produce in Chile and they mix the powder, the chili for the powder also with a lot of herbs or garlic for example or other stuff. And so we went to the market and bought, I would say like twenty or twenty five different versions of this merkén spice. And then we also tried to mix them in a way to make a blend for the beer and it really turned out to be quite nice. So we had to be able to make the beer in like a bock beer strength, so to have it a bit more body and to carry that aroma. But it ended up really in a nice way, so you can do a lot of spices. I love it. Fantastic. So thank you for that. Two more to go. So I’m sorry, by the way, people shouldn’t think I’m. I’m like rushing, but we said we will talk about an hour and there’s still two years to go and we are almost there. So I think we have to go on.

Sibren: I think we’ll then quickly go to Duistere Dolly.

Markus: Which is maybe my second favorite in terms of the labels, because now we have that sheep with crazy eyes and the bottle man sitting on it. So and running through the night or to the or maybe even to the universe. Yes, exactly.

Sibren: Wonderful. So we go for it. So this is a black Session IPA

Markus: Finally something dark

Sibren: Now and then we do have to brew something dark indeed. And here we really think that the style of black IPA is very interesting, because it really adds this extra layer to just a normal IPA, the roasted chocolatey tones that rosette malts give you. I think they pair very well with, like the fruity notes of hops. And then we went for a session IPA, because we never really saw a Black Session IPA and we actually like lighter beers. We’re both young dads that have very young children. So we have to be able to wake up very early in the morning and be a good dad at home. So if we brew lighter beers, then we can enjoy more of the beer without having a hangover in the morning when our children wake up and start jumping on the bed.

Markus: Yeah, which then helps both parties. Yeah, I think it’s my first session black IPA probably. And it’s really very well done, so in terms of the color, it’s spot on, so we have this dark brownish color and also the foam, it’s again stable a lot of foam and it’s also brown, so it looks beautiful. And in terms of the smell for me, what’s really interesting is, that chocolate plays the main role at least at the beginning, but underneath it you have then these fruits, tropical fruits, pineapple, mango, but also some peach and ripe apples for example, so a lot of interesting fruit characters. And when you try it, then taste it, then it starts also with a chocolate note, with some toffee, some coffee, but like a roller coaster. The fruits always come through and say hello. And then it has a nice finish where the bitterness of the hops comes together with the bitterness of the roastiness. So and the body is quite intense for a session black IPA. And but as I said, it’s one of my favorite beer styles, I love black IPAs. You don’t get a lot anymore, because many brewers gave it up. But what I really think is a great work on the hop side, because it’s there, but it’s not overpowering the maltiness, so in a very nice way. That must have been quite hard work to get there with the hops

Sibren: It was okay, I think.

Markus: So you just had the idea and started, or did you do some trials?

Sibren: For this we didn’t do any trials actual actually, actually, yeah, but we used one of our, yeah, a couple of our favorite hops actually, it’s actually all German hops in this It’s Calista, Ariana and Tango, which are actually not that popular all these German aroma hops, but I think they are quite fantastic and definitely, when you live in Europe, these ones are a lot cheaper than all these overly hype maybe American New Zealand. I don’t know from where hops so in one way. It’s a bit chauvinistic of us to go for European hops and really want to use them. It’s also a bit of an economical thing, because indeed our beers are already a bit more expensive than usual Belgian beers, so to keep them a little bit more affordable. We go usually for European hops. We also use this Overseas hops of course, when it’s needed. But for here we really wanted to experiment a bit more with these hops that we already know and love it actually. And then we just added enough of them. And okay, of course we you know from past experiences around how much you would need and you just go for it. And it turned out really well, I think.

Markus: I think these three hops are really very interesting ones. Once a year I’m always at the Hallertau Hop Research Center, where exactly these varieties were developed and I think the Calista and Ariana are really intense fruitiness. When I had first time Calista, I was really thinking of this multivitamin thing so really, really great. And also what I really love is the Tango story, because this is a hop that was developed to replace something like the traditional Perle hop, but it also has a lot of fruitiness and a very interesting fruitiness and you can use it in several ways and it also has some of the red fruits and it rounds up a lot. So and I think this is what brings the other hops together is the Tango and it’s really nice. Thank you. Thank you for that composition. Fantastic. So I must, or maybe, maybe we first have the last beer and then we can talk a little and then we are done. So the next would be the Betoverende Becca. Thank you. I wasn’t sure how to pronounce it in the right way.

Sibren: The one I send you is actually a special version of this one. The label is not really exact because this one is the freeze-distilled version of Betoverende Becca. Okay, that’s why I kept it to the end, because I think it’s fifteen percent of alcohol. I don’t really know for sure.

Markus: So good night out there, fantastic. So we would say it’s an ice bock. So I’m really looking forward here we go so.

Sibren: Wow, okay, the basic version of Betoverende Becca was a golden stout with cacao, Tonka, Vanilla and coffee. But then, yeah, this winter I was experimenting again and I took a small part of our of our beer stash and I freezed it. And then of course in the freezer stealing way you take off. The part that stays liquid and this is then very rich in alcohol and flavor. So it should be around fifteen percent, If my calculations are correct.

Markus: I can imagine so when I look at the beer, it still has foam. So it looks like a beer Fantastic and the color is beautiful. It’s like a red brownish nice color. And you see already, if you have the beer in the glass and you swirl the glass a little bit around, you see how it sticks to the glass. So you see there is some more alcohol definitely and definitely more than ten percent, so that’s fantastic. But but what is also really great is the aroma. So I think at the moment the Tonka bean is taking the lead, but also there’s the cocoa, the coffee and the vanilla in the background. If I wouldn’t have known about it, I would even have guessed maybe there’s some wood in the game, so maybe some tropical wood, some amborana or something like that, because it’s really very intense on that spicy side. Great. It’s definitely very, very drinkable. So I wouldn’t say it’s fifteen, but I can guess it is because when you drink it, you also have this warming effect and so, but it’s really fresh at the beginning. Also it has really, yeah, it doesn’t doesn’t show up that it’s a stronger version. And you have of course this, yeah, this essential oils from the, from the Tonka bean and from the vanilla. That’s that’s the whole drink is covered by it and a lot of coffee and cacoa. So it’s really, yeah, it’s mind blowing. Very, very great thing. Did you just freeze it or do something afterwards like carbonizing or something like that?

Sibren: So I froze it and then I carbonated it in. Yeah, we use this sixty-liter fermentation vessel, just a plastic one basically that we could put in a freezer. So I first froze it transferred the liquids out of it so that you’re left with only basically very watery ice still has a little bit of the aroma left. So that’s the things that you don’t want anymore in your freeze-distilled product. And then I I carbonated it a little bit, because due to the freezing you lose all your carbonation and then I bottled it while it was already carbonated. Because of course, when you have fifteen percent of alcohol, your yeast doesn’t really want to do refermentation in the bottle. Nope, That’s how we traditionally carbonate our beer. But here, yeah, we really had to carbonate it with kind of CO2 in a fermentation vessel to get a little bit of the carbonation.

Markus: Yeah, what an experiment. So I think, what is really impressing for me is, you do very well with the beers with a low alcohol content, but you do also very well with the beers with a very high one. So that’s another great thing. Do you do that quite often? Or was it an experiment?

Sibren: This was really an experiment. This was the first time we freeze-distilled. It’s something that I already wanted to do for a long time. Now I saw the opportunity and I took it absolutely so maybe it will happen more often in the future, we’ll see.

Markus: We will see, okay, yeah, what I wanted to ask you before was, what did your wife say about that whole beer thing? Was she happy with it? Is she also drinking beer?

Sibren: She loves to drink beer. So that’s a good thing. She’s always happy when I open a bottle and I share with her so yeah, We’ll see how it goes maybe in the future. She will help more in the in the brewery and yeah. But actually my love for craft beer also started together with her, because it was on travels in Europe together with her that I already discovered a lot of breweries and a lot of craft beer then. So she cannot really complain that I went this spot because she went there along with me.

Markus: So it’s part of the story – united in crime – Fantastic. Yeah, really great journey, great beers, a wonderful story. And I’m very happy that I could visit you already myself in person in place and could also see your fantastic installation and all your ideas. And I’m very happy to welcome you soon in Bamberg’s. So we’ll have a great time and looking forward to that. And I can only say thank you and hope that all of our listeners are coming and trying and are having the same experience as me now. And yeah, thank you. Thank you for your passion and for all these beers.

Sibren: Thank you for having me.

Markus: Have a nice one today. Thank you.