In this episode of BierTalk, Markus Raupach interviews Yvan De Baets, co-founder and brew master of Brasserie de la Senne in Brussels. Yvan shares his journey into brewing, from his early inspiration at Cantillon Brewery to co-founding Brasserie de la Senne, which played a key role in reviving Brussels‘ brewing scene. He also discusses the values that drive his work, such as sustainability and quality, and the social aspects of beer. Yvan explains the importance of traditional brewing techniques, the influence of Belgian beer history, and his passion for creating balanced, characterful beers like their flagship Zinnebir and session beer Taras Boulba…

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Markus Raupach: Hello and welcome to another episode of our podcast, Bier Talk. Today, I’m very happy to have Yvan De Baets from Brussels here on the line, and I’m very happy we know each other for a long time now. We meet at several beer competitions, for example, and of course, also in his brewery, which is a fascinating thing. We’ll hear about that and also he’s a great and wonderful person, and it’s very great to meet him on all these occasions. And also, a very funny thing I heard when we met first is that when he opened the brewery, his actual brewery, the Brasserie de la Senne, he doubled the number of breweries in Brussels. So very nice. I’m very much looking forward to our talk. Maybe you introduce yourself a little bit to the listeners, and we are very happy to have you here, Yvan

Yvan De Baets: Yeah, thank you very much for the invitation and introduction, Markus. It’s a pleasure for me to be there. Well, so my name is Yvan, I’m co-founder of Brasserie de la Senne with my business partner, Bernard, Bernard Leboucq, and my main task in the brewery is to be brew master. So I take care of the recipes of the beer. But honestly, if you’re a brewer, you know that the recipes are not the most important things, but more importantly, I choose to bring methods and the technology we are using in the brewery for making a beer. This is my main task. But of course, because I co-own this brewery, I have many, many other things to do, but these are less fun

Markus Raupach: Yes, and what is also very fascinating is that you are not only a brewer, you are also a beer historian, and you also have a social background. So it’s very interesting to hear a little bit about that. So maybe you take us a little bit with you and tell us how you came into brewing and what happened before in your life

Yvan De Baets: All right, it’s a complicated way that I’ve chosen. I will try to make it short. Let’s put it like that. Let’s say that from the age of 18, I like a burning passion for beer, and I tried to be serious with it. So I’ve been drinking beer before that, but less seriously, if I may say. But when I was 18, I had the chance to have a very important meeting in my life as a beer person, I visited the Cantillon Brewery and their Brussels Gueuze Museum. And I had the chance to meet the former brewer and owner of the brewery, Jean Pierre Van Roy. He’s the father of the current owner Jean, and we had time to have a chat together, and I really fell in love with his brewery. But also it really like transmitted me his virus, his love for the good beer. And what I learned with him is that behind a good beer, a well-made beer, there can be values, and that it’s worth fighting for those values. And from there, I decided to be like serious about beer, which means I wanted to try every single beer, especially Belgium beers. I wanted to read all the books on the subject. I started to work as a volunteer in a few breweries, and then I gained knowledge and knowledge. And meanwhile, I was doing studies that have nothing to do in university. I studied political sciences and then another master in work sciences. But when I was in political sciences, I was almost never in my faculty, in my auditorium, but I could follow as a, let’s say, guest student. The brewing courses of the brewing school of that university, it’s UCL University in Louvain. I had a chance there to follow the classes of the legendary brewing professor called Andre Levreux, a great human, a great person, also extremely knowledgeable brewing scientist and who had a lot of experience in breweries, because he used to work as consultant for many, many breweries and I was really, really fascinated. Long story short, as I said, I finished my studies, and then I found a job as a social worker, indeed, for five years. In the meantime, I started home brewing, and the passion grew and grew and grew. And finally, at the age of 33, I was a bit fed up with my current job, and I decided to literally change life and to go back to school, to go back to brewing school. So I went to the Brewing School of Brussels, called Meurice Institute for Brewing and Malting Science. And I did do those studies, and at the age of 34, I became a professional brewer. Again, in the meantime, my business partner, Bernard, not a business partner then, but a friend, started a small brewery in the suburbs of Brussels called Sint Pieters Leeuw, and yet no formal education on brewing at the time. And because I was having that formal education, I became very quickly his technical consultant, and we could stay two years in that location. And finally, in 2006 we decided to join our forces more officially and to create a new brewery called Brasserie de la Senne. We tried then to find a location in Brussels, which is our city. It was very difficult at the time, especially we started with no money, and honestly at the time, when you would go to see a banker to borrow some money from him, he would literally throw stones at your face and thank you, you were crazy. So we’ve been through difficult times for five years and finally, we found our first location in Brussels in 2010. This is when we could claim that we could double, indeed, the numbers of Brussels breweries, because the only remaining one at the time was Cantillon. And Brussels was founded, the official date is in 979 and of course, at the time, very quickly, a brewery was opened. And then nobody knows exactly when, but the second brewery came in the city. So that guy, a thousand years ago could claim he doubled the number of breweries, and then the number grew, grew, grew. The peak was around the year 1900. Brussels was actually a huge, huge and very important brewing centre, and we had about 400 beer makers at the time. And then started the decline and the brewery closed one after the other, and finally, Cantillon was the only surviving one. And so when we came on the market, we probably could claim that we were again doubling the numbers of Brussels breweries. And so that happened basically two times in a thousand years. And so it was funny to realize that.

Markus Raupach: So you really can say you made history a little bit. And also, what I hear is that there are some similar similarities between Bamberg and Brussels in terms of founding and the importance of beer and everything. So that’s also maybe something we can talk about later. Maybe a short question about your life as a social worker. So you were responsible for young people, as far as I know?

Yvan De Baets: Yeah, like two periods in the first one, I was coordinating different social projects in the poorest area of Brussels and of the country, actually. So it was different projects, and I did the coordination of them. And then I became, indeed responsible for the youth service, as we call it, and I was responsible for animators who were supposed to work with the young people also in this very poor area, yes.

Markus Raupach: And I think you still are very social or active in that whole idea. Always, when we talk, you’re very talking about these social things and how important that is. So do you think that is something dating back to these times, or did you have that all your life before?

Yvan De Baets: Difficult question, I don’t know. I probably had something of that in me. And you know what’s fair in our current activity as brewers of values are always very, very important. And since we exist, we have traced like a red line, which are values, our core values, and we have always tried to follow them, and we continue to this day. And so, yeah, the values are something very important for us and of course, human values, but also environmental values, quality values, all those sorts of things and yeah the social part of it is probably a part of the whole thing. It’s not only that, but it has always played a role on one or another, yes?

Markus Raupach: Yes, and I also think that beer is a very social drink. So normally people come together having a beer, and also people from different areas, and also different worlds and whatever, come together and share a beer. So this is something that brings people together, isn’t it?

Yvan De Baets: Totally, it’s the best social rubiconsever. And also, one other beauty with beer is that it’s the only alcoholic beverage that has been created in all the possible, all the existing human cultures in history. And so it’s, for me, at least it should be, the beverage that unites the humans. And I think it’s really beautiful when you think about it.

Markus Raupach: Yes, very, very well said. And something I feel always when I’m travelling, and no matter where you go in the world, you find people who love beer and you can come together and you can talk about it. And so you always have a common ground. So that is something really interesting. Okay, let’s go back to the brewery. But when you started, you didn’t have your own equipment, so that you were like a gipsy brewer, we would say, in American text?

Yvan De Baets: When we had the very first brewery in the suburbs of Brussels, we had our own equipment, which we made with, as I said, almost no money out of secondhand dairy tanks. But it was a proper brewery, and the length of a batch was four hectolitres. Everything was manual. So brewing was manual, the brewer’s paddle, etc. It was really exhausting. And then so we left that first place, real brewery in December 2005 and our second brewery in Brussels then we could do the first batch on December 22, 2010, so five years later. What happened in between is that we have been brewers but without the brewing equipment. But I insist that we were still real brewers. It means that we were renting other people’s breweries, but we brewed ourselves. So the beers were not commissioned full force. It was not made for us by someone else. It was us using someone’s equipment, like if I can borrow your car, for instance, but I’m the driver, I mean, and so I’m responsible for everything. It’s the exact same idea. And it also allowed us to gain experience, because the breweries we used were more professional than our first one, and so we really gained experience and knowledge about equipment, etc., and we basically used two other breweries, De Ranke first, I knew their brewery very, very well, because I used to work two years for them, and they were also using somebody else’s brewery before having their own. And I was there when they started their brewery. And so I knew that place like mine actually, because I was there from day one, basically. And they had extra capacity that we could fulfil making all beers. We even bought some extra lagering tanks that we could place in their cellar for increasing the lagering capacity. And at a certain point, they didn’t have enough capacity for us because we wanted to create a new beer, a triple called Jean DuBois. And for making that beer, I had to go to another friend, located in France, between Lille and Dunkerque in the north of France. It’s Brasserie Thiriez. I was very good friend with Daniel Thiriez. I did some consultancy for him also, and it created a very strong relationship between us, and he had some capacity for us. So every six weeks, say I would take my car and go to his brewery and brew a batch of our triple then come back home. And so this situation lasted for five years. And so 2010 we had our own bring equipment. The size of a batch was 20 hectolitres. Then we ended up in this place brewing a bit more than 13,000 hectolitres, then the place became too small. And now we are at our third facility more in the centre of Brussels. We do batches of 60 hectolitres, and we brewed last year a little bit more than 16,000 hectolitres.

Markus Raupach: Yes, and it’s a wonderful building. I’ve been there many times now, and I only can recommend it to our listeners to do that and also to have the great beer there, of course. But that’s something maybe for later. I think it’s very important that you, that you state that you were always being the driver. So really brewed yourselves, because that is different nowadays, with many beer brands that are on the market, which are more or less brewed by others, just as a brand. So this is really very important. And also I think it’s important that you had the possibility to brew at the brewery you really knew very well. And also the people knew you very well because that is something I sometimes hear, here, when they say, okay, we have some people which want to brew at our brewery, but we don’t trust them what they are doing with our equipment. And that’s also another reason. So I think that is very special that the guys let you work on their equipment. And I was visiting the Ranke last year, and it’s a beautiful brewery, especially the brewing kettle and then the system. So it’s a great setup I think.

Yvan De Baets: It’s not easy to give so to say, your brewery to someone else. You really need big trust in the people. What was easy at De Ranke is that everything was manual, also basically, and so it was not such a complex brewery to use. It really helped us a lot, for sure. And when I was brewing at Thiriez, it was a little bit more automated, which was also good for me to learn more of a more complex brewing equipment. But Daniel Thiriez was always there to assist me. And so, yeah, it was, as I said, it was a great way of learning and see what works, what doesn’t, and things like that.

Markus Raupach: And how did you come upon the name Brasserie de la Senne? So was it something you already had in mind, or was it like an idea?

Yvan De Baets: We didn’t really have it in mind, but we had to do like a brainstorming at some point, to find a new name. And actually, it came quite naturally. La Senne, for the people who don’t know which means most of your audience, I guess, is the river of Brussels. And it’s actually thanks to that river that the city exists because back in the days you would build a city along to a river for water supply and possibly communication also. And it’s also thanks to that river that we have had so many breweries in Brussels because most of our breweries were located along the river Senne and a lot of them were taking the water from the river. And so it’s a river that is extremely important to the city. And it’s also now the drama of Brussels, because very sadly, in the late 19th century, the river has been covered by the authorities of Brussels for very bad reasons. And it’s, I say it’s the drama because I think that a city really desperately needs a river to be nicer. It gives a very nice energy to the cities, the rivers and ours has been stupidly covered. And it was also a way for us to like, give like a sort of tribute to our beloved river that we cannot see anymore.

Markus Raupach: Yes, it’s really something you have to uncover, or to look for, if you are in Brussels, to look for the river. So I also, I didn’t know that before, and then on the city tour, the guide led us there. And so it was really very interesting. So you helped also the people to discover the river and their history. And you also made a beer named after the river, I think the Sennebeer.

Yvan De Baets: Yes, actually Zinnebir. It’s our flagship beer now and the nice thing is that it’s our foundation beer too. It’s the very first beer that we ever brewed, even as home brewers, and now it’s our flagship beer by far, and it has really been adopted by the local people in Brussels. It’s really their beers. And yeah, the name refers to two things. Zinne means the river Senne in the local dialect, but it also refers to zinneka. And zinneka is the nickname that we Brussels people give to ourselves, and it means a little mud. So it’s a dog that is a mix of all possible races. It’s not a purebred, not a pure race dog. And we had many of those in Brussels back in the days, and it became our nickname, because Brussels is, since forever, a very international city. We’ve always been invaded by all the possible neighbours, and we have always welcomed also all the possible foreigners in our city. And it sort of created our richness. Not a lot of people know that, but we are the second city in the world with the most different nationalities. So the first one is Dubai bizarrely, but the second, I was always sure it would be New York or something like that. But no, the second is Brussels. So you can hear all the languages that exist on the planets in our city, basically. So it’s also a tribute to that, the name of our beer, Zinnebir.

Markus Raupach: Yes, that’s also interesting that the city itself now is more or less the capital of Europe. So I think this is something that reflects that also. And but also, I think this is part, then, of your success story that you kind of gave the people their beer back, or a beer back. Because I think Cantillon is not a beer you drink half a litre. So this is, I think, really a beer people can now drink and enjoy.

Yvan De Baets: Indeed, and Cantillon was a beer that everybody here in the city would have drunk 100 years ago. But sadly, the drinking habits changed dramatically, and now it’s even hard to find the cafe serving gose in our city. And but to come back with our Zinnebir, it’s probably our biggest product, is that it’s a beer that is a lot of character. Because, you know, we basically only brew beers that we want to drink ourselves, and we like beer with character, with bitterness. It’s very important for us, even if we want our beers to be balanced as well. But okay, when we started, when we launched Zinnebir the first years, it was way too bitter for the people, and we had to spend hours and hours and hours talking to the customers, talking to the bar owners, to the bar staffs, to explain the beauty of a bitter beer. And it gained some success. Obviously, we did a good job, because a few years after, it’s totally normal for the locals to drink a beer with the level of bitterness of Zinnebir. And I’m not talking only about beer experts. I’m talking about the people, I call the normal people, or the normal drinkers, which are the customers I cherish the most. They are not at all specialists. They were raised with industrial beer, and now they love a beer that is the character of Zinnebir. So we somehow created a classic for Brussels in a short frame time in 21 years, actually, basically. And this is something we are extremely, extremely proud of. We could reach the normal people.

Markus Raupach: Yes and really, they totally adopted the beer. And because I see it when I’m in Brussels, and no matter what cafe you’re going and what other beers are there, but mostly you find the Zinnebir and this is really a great thing. I really like it. But to be honest, my favourite of your beers is the Taras Boulba, which is also an interesting story I think.

Yvan De Baets: Taras Boulba was the second beer we made in the very first brewery. And you know, as I told you, everything was manual brewing there. And so the brew days were very tiring, not to say exhausting. And after a long brew day, of course, we needed the beer. But after one or two Zinnebir at a certain moment, we wanted something even lighter and more refreshing, and this is why we decided to make this session beer 4.5% of alcohol, more bitter than Zinnebir, drier, extremely refreshing with dry hopping, with German hops, by the way, extremely refreshing kind of beer. And it’s a real story. The first batch we are making batches of 400 litres. And so the first batch we really made for us. You know, when you are really thirsty, 400 litres doesn’t last so long. You can deal with it. And of course, we had friends visiting us from time to time, and we told them, oh, we made a beer for us to drink after work. Try it. And people liked it so much and some brought some bottles to cafes, to bars, and in some bars, people liked it also. And so we would like to make a second batch, a third batch, and the story begins like that. But it was really at the origin of beer made for us to quench our own thirst after a manual brew day.

Markus Raupach: And that still works wonderful. So that’s my really, my go-to beer, when I’m in Brussels. That’s a very refreshing, very nice drink. And also another little parallel to Bamberg, because we have the Spezial Brewery, which is one of the two smoked beer breweries, and the owner also started some decades ago to brew a beer just for himself, which is a pale lager without smoke. And this was something you could never get normally as a guest, because he brewed it just for himself, the family and maybe some of the workers, and then some of the people, which are always there, they noticed it, and then they got to try the beer. And they asked him, maybe I can order it. And so it became more and more a secret thing, and then it became available, and it took until the pandemic, then they first time bottled it. And now it’s one of the favourite beers there. It’s also interesting that sometimes these beers, brewers make for themselves are very successful if they come off the market.

Yvan De Baets: Yes, it’s a nice story. And Spezialis one of my favourite breweries in Bamberg, for sure.

Markus Raupach: Yes, that’s also interesting, because you said the Taras Boulbais like a session beer, but if you come from a German idea of beer, a 4.5 beer is a little less than a normal beer, but still a normal beer. So I think there are some differences between the drinking habits of the Belgian people and the German people. But how did you experience that? That would be maybe interesting for the people to switch the view, if someone comes from Belgium and then comes to, let’s say, Franconia, and first-time experience the drinking culture here. So how was that for you? And how did you compare that to yours?

Yvan De Baets: So yes, the first time I came to Bamberg, I had the impression I pushed the door of paradise, honestly. I have to say that I’m for Belgium drinker first and then a brewer. I was and I am very open-minded and extremely open-minded to other beer cultures from Europe, namely the British one and the German one. So I really came with that open mind, and I fell in love with the Bamberg beers and this beautiful city also. And then I came back home and I visited, yes, of course, I visited the region around Bamberg too. And I came back home and I talked to everyone I knew, oh, you know, we Belgium’s always claimed that we are the beer paradise. But sorry, but I found it, and it’s in Bamberg and around as a joke, but I meant it because I really love first the diversity of beers. There’s the quality and the super high drinkability of all those beers. Drinkability for me, is always the most important word when you talk about beer, and it defines what a good beer is, actually.

Markus Raupach: Yes, maybe, let’s say we have two paradises, because it’s real, at least maybe there’s another one. So if you are in the British countryside, it’s also a beautiful experience. So I think everywhere where you have a true beer culture which is based on beer history, of course, after hundreds of years and if it’s still there, they must have invented something they really like. And so yes, and as we already told, it really brings people together. But if you talk about drinkability, this is also something I think all your beers have in common. What are you doing in the brewing process to support that, to bring drinkability in your beers? Are there any secrets you want to tell?

Yvan De Baets: Well it’s really not a secret, but every brewery will tell you that it starts with quality ingredients first, of course, it’s very, very important. But I think our way towards drinkability has like two main parts, maybe. The first one is the choice of hops. We love hops, we love bitterness, we love hop-forward beers, but we have decided for all beers to only use European hops. You know, of course, that the big trend in Britain now is to use hops from the New World, like the US, Australia, New Zealand, whatever. Those hops can be very beautiful. They are extremely interesting. I have nothing against them, but I find it’s way more difficult to use them to get the balance in beer and then drinkability. I think that it’s so much easier to get that with European hops, because they are themselves more subtle, more balanced, and they are not punching your face with bold aromas all the time. So it’s a clear statement that in no core beers, it’s only European hops. And basically they are actually coming only from two countries, Germany and Slovenia, and that’s it. When we do collaboration brews, then we are open-minded. We can use American hops, etc. It’s fun, no problem. But our beers, it’s only European hops, for sure. The second thing trick, if I may, say that we use for getting balance and drinkability is that we designed very special fermenters that are not special at all if you know history. Our fermenters are quite flat. It means that they are wider than tall. They have a special geometry, as we say. And actually, thanks to that geometry, they will give a better balance between esters and higher alcohols. Basically, if you ask your yeast to work in very tall and narrow fermenters, she will use more efficiently the free amino acids that are in the wort and long story short, again, she will create a lot of high alcohols and too little, in my opinion, esters. And so you will get the beer that is easily disbalanced. In our flat fermenters, it’s the opposite actually. The yeast will create less higher alcohols and more esters. And I’m strongly convinced, personally, that the ratio between those two key components is really the key to balancing beer. And who says balance says high drinkability. So that’s really the idea behind it.

Markus Raupach: Yes, and when I was there, you showed me also this tank for the fermentation and to be honest, I think for me, it’s like a mix between the old open fermenters, which were also quite wide, but now in a closed way, because you still have a closed device, but you don’t fill it up to the complete height. So you have this wide thing and I think this is a very good idea to have the advantages of both. So the low pressure, but also a closed system, so no infection. So I think it’s a very clever way to do that. And yes, and it was your idea to do, so.

Yvan De Baets: Yes, but honestly, what I did, I have to be humble with that, because it’s not at all revolutionary. I just took all the ideas because the ancient brewers, that’s how they would build a fermentation tank, but with modern knowledge and using modern science to understand the why behind it. And indeed, the idea was to mimic the quality of fermentation you have in open tanks. It’s my favourite fermentation tank. But when we built our two breweries, we didn’t have, you know, it cost a lot of money to build the brewery and we didn’t have the money to have, like, a separate room for having open tanks, because you need the environment to be very clean, so you need to build like a box in the box, and we couldn’t afford to do that. That’s why I had the idea that, okay, the box would be the fermenter itself, same shape than an open tank, but indeed, with the safety of having it closed, so there is no risk of infection and it’s like super easy to clean, indeed. But I’m sure that if you would put our fermenters in two and having the same one open next to the one that is closed, that the flavour of the beer would be identical. I’m almost sure of that, really. And it’s still my dream to have, one day, a real open fermenter and to build a small box in the big box. That’s my dream before I retire is to have one or two open fermenters and I think I will install my office and my bed in front of those tanks, and spend my life there to admire the beautiful Krausen during fermentation, because there is nothing nicer to watch in the world, in my opinion.

Markus Raupach: So you don’t need any TV anymore, because you have the best. That’s definitely sure. Do you have your own yeast strain in the brewery?

Yvan De Baets: Yes, we have our house strain of yeast for our ales. We make lagers also. For the lagers, we use a very classic German strain that Professor Narziß from Weihenstephan chose in 1970 and it’s the most widely used lager yeasts in the world nowadays, and it’s a great yeast. But for our ales, and we are mainly an ale brewery, we have indeed our house strain of yeast, and I choose it very carefully, and I choose, I strongly believe in the versatility of yeast. I think that you can make a lot of different styles of beer with one strain if you choose the right one, and then you adapt the process and the recipes to the styles you want to do and to your yeast. But I will never be the kind of brewer who will change yeast every time he brews a different style. The reason is that is, for me, very important to get to know your yeast, because it’s the beauty of our trade. We work with something that is alive. And because it’s alive, it’s complex, it’s very sensitive, and you have to build, like, a relationship, I think, between you and your yeast. And so you have to know her. But it takes years and years and years to know your yeast. I don’t have, it takes almost a life, actually, and I don’t have 50 lives. So how could I have, like, 50 different yeasts? I would know nobody the right way, and I would make mistakes all the time. And so I prefer to rely on one strain and work with her all the time. I think also, because it’s related, that is very important for a breweryto have a style, to have a touch that the people can directly recognize. And there is a Brasserie de la Senne touch. When people drink our beers blind, they can, oh, that must be a beer from de la Senne. I think it’s very, very important, and we get that touch because of our yeast, because of our fermenters and because of our brewing methods. But I would not like us to be like a brewery that could be managed by anyone, anywhere. This is, for me, the way to have a sense of a place. You know, we talk about terroir for wine, and terroir exists for hops a lot, for barley also. But once you buy those raw materials, you can make beer everywhere. But the sense of a place, the terroir of a brewery, are the little technical details that make the brewery. And this should all come from the brewer’s decisions, and the brewer’s decisions have to come from his vision about beer. What is for me, the best possible beer, and how will I try? And I say try, because it’s an ongoing process, how will I try to make this beer of my dream become a reality? This is extremely important for me.

Markus Raupach: This is really a great picture to see the yeast, more or less like a pet, to have it in your whole life, work with it. But then I have the question, so if you say you work with your pet, with your yeast, but is there also an influence by the pet on you? So did the yeast also change something in your thinking in the last years?

Yvan De Baets: Oh, I would believe so, because it’s not a one-way relationship. We have to work together. And others see yeast as some goals for ourselves, and the brewers have some goals for themselves. And I think the good brewer is the one who makes everybody happy and who makes compromises sometimes. Because the yeast is there, and she has her own needs and things like that. I know it’s a little bit talking like a hippie about yeast, but I think it’s very important to have that special relationship and to use also your senses and your intuition when you make beer. And it can look like totally ridiculous, I admit, but when I’m alone in the brewery, I speak to my yeast and it helps creating that special relationship. Of course, I don’t do that during the day, otherwise, my guys would make fun of me all the time. But when I’m alone, I open the fermenters and I speak to her or when I pitch the yeast, because, yeah, I forgot to say that, but I’m still a real brewer in my brewery. So I didn’t abandon brewing. I brew minimum one batch a week. This is really my minimum, because that’s what I like to do.

Markus Raupach: So when the day comes when AI is capable to translate yeast language into human language, we hear a lot of nice stories about you and your yeast, maybe. That’s really, really, very, very interesting and I think it is like this. You have to have your ingredients and also your yeast, to work with you and know how it functions and how it doesn’t and all these things. One beer, which is very much related to the yeast, is also the Saison. It’s a beer style you wrote a book about, I think, in 2004 or something and also, you did a lot of talks about it. So maybe you can share a little bit of your insights about this Saison to our listeners. Because I think some of them may know it by having tried some Belgium Saisons or American versions, whatever. But maybe some insights from your perspective. Also, you made a series of differences also in the brewery to reflect the different decades of Saison brewing. So yes, share a little bit of your Saison knowledge with us, beautiful.

Yvan De Baets: Well, that could be very long, and I don’t think we’ve all that time in front of us, but yes. Basically, yes, Saison was a beer originally, although this is poorly documented, but it’s poorly documented because it was a countryside style and the scholars who wrote the big books about brewing in the past, they were city guys. And so they would write about what they knew, what would surround them, actually. So there are plenty, plenty of knowledge about all the urban styles of beers, but almost nothing about the countryside beers. And that was what, that is what Saison where, actually. But so basically, it most probably started in farms. So you know, in farm, in the winter, you don’t have much to do. And so the bigger farms of Belgium, there’s a small brewery attached to them, and what they would do in the winter would be to make a beer meant to be drunk by the many workers they would need in the summer. And it anyway made sense to brew in the winter, because it was the good brewing months like in all the beer countries, like in Germany. Also, you would not brew in the summer, because you would be sure to have infection in your beer. So it was really classic to do that. And so it was a way of making what we call Bière de Garde. So that’s French for beers to be kept, keeping beers that you found in all the beer cultures, in Germany, in UK, in France, in the Netherlands, whatever. And so those beers were made on the way that they would be able to keep for months. Most of the beers of the time they would run, they would be running beer, so beers that were to drink very quickly. But you also had a series of Bière de Garde like the Lambic beers from Brussels, like the Flemish Brown and Reds in West and East Flanders and in Wallonia, especially in the part of Wallonia called Enno, but in all Wallonia, the beer, the local beer together, was the Saison. And so those beers were massively hopped and then after the main fermentation they would undergo, they would age in wooden barrels. And this is what was the most important. They would undergo a secondary fermentation within the wooden barrels. And so this is something really important to understand, is that for those kind of beers, from a historical point of view, the fermentation that counts is the secondary one, not the primary one. And so the brewers could use many, many different yeast for the first fermentation, the first part of fermentation. And it’s a big mistake to believe, like a lot of people nowadays, that there exists something that would be a Saison yeast. It never existed. The problem is that what you find on the trade are yeast that have been taken, some people would say stolen, by yeast companies in bottle of beers sold in Belgium and beers called Saison by the brewers. And those yeast companies, of course, they have to find names for selling the yeast, and so they decided to call those yeasts Saison yeast or Bière de Garde yeast or whatever. And then some brewers make the mistake to believe that you are obliged to use that yeast for making a Saison. You can, of course, use them for making your Saison, but you can use plenty of other yeast. What is important is what will happen in the secondary fermentation. And imagine you are in the 19th century in Belgium, and you age your beer in wood. What will then be the yeast that will be involved in your secondary fermentation? It will, of course, be brettanomyces. So for me, if there is one Saison yeast that ever existed, it’s brettanomyces, of course. And that yeast was perfect for the drinkers of the time, because if you take the whole Belgium, the northern part of France, the southern part of the Netherlands, and I would guess, but I’m not an expert in German brewing, a part of Germany too that touches that area, the people wanted to drink beers that had two qualities. The first one, they liked sour beers. I don’t mean vinegar, but a beer with a nice, appealing tartness, nice appealing sourness, and also beers with a wine-like taste, with some aromatics that make you think about a nice wine. So wineness and sour, it was the two main qualities of beers for the people of those regions and it was called the taste of the north. And actually, when you have brett taking part of the fermentation of your beer, and of course, those yeasts were not added at the time, people didn’t even know brett existed. But it was there, living in the wood and living in breweries. When they ferment a beer, they give very complex aromatics that make you think about wine also, and in some circumstances, they can also bring some sourness to the beer. When they come in contact with oxygen, they will bring some sourness. But the brett were not the only source of sourness. Of course, culture yeast didn’t exist at the time and the person would use a leaven, and that leaven of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, you, most of the time, had some lactic acid bacteria also, and those would also impart some bitterness. But so making beers that we brewed in the winter do not have too big of an infection to tame the infection level so to say. And then followed with a secondary fermentation in wood, brettanomyces would give, anyway, the perfect beer that the people wanted to drink at the time. And basically the old Saisons, they would resemble something between a bitter gose, a bitter traditional gose, or a paler version of a Flemish Brown. I consider that those three styles, they were actually from the exact same family, and there were a lot, there were more similarities between them than differences, and this is why I call them the Belgium Bière de Garde.

Markus Raupach: Fascinating, and I think for a lot of our listeners, a lot of new information, but a lot of things to think about. Also in our beer culture, I think until the beginning of the 20th century, it was all a mixed fermentation, and there was used a lot of wood. So I still have, like, films or movies from the 1950s and 60s where German breweries still used wooden vessels for maturation of beer. So wood was all around for a very long time and, of course, with all the consequences. And of course, people had the beer in the old times, also just as a drink. Of course, it had to be some very pleasant but it’s not our idea today to have this refreshing, whatever, five, six per cent clean lager stuff. So it was there, the drink, the beer and I think there are a lot of similarities in many regions in Europe or even in the world, how these beers tasted just depending on the local sources of ingredients and water and, of course, hops.

Yvan De Baets: Yes, I’m equally convinced, and I knew about that. And again, I think it’s the beauty of beer, is that the people were equally creative and intelligent when it was time to make a beer in different cultures, and there were more things that were similar between beers from different countries than things that would oppose to those beers. And I think it’s really beautiful.

Markus Raupach: Yes, also what I think it’s interesting that this idea of beers from different countries is also something which maybe is also quite a modern thing. Because if we think of the medieval times, I think most of the people didn’t realize that there are different countries because it was so small entities, and they normally never left their place where they lived. And so if there was export or beer that came from another place, it was maybe from a different country, but it was not the idea. So I think all these today ideas of like, we have a German beer style, or an Austrian or a Belgian, this is also something quite new, because it was just local beers with different histories and different ideas. So I think you come, if you work a lot of beer history, it really gets into a ground where you don’t have these strict differences between things anymore. Because they didn’t say, let’s brew a pilsner or let’s brew a dark Marzenor whatever. They brewed a beer, full stop, and they wanted to sell it, and that’s what they did. And that leads us into beer history. So how did you come to the interest or the inspiration of working with beer history, or about beer history?

Yvan De Baets: I think it’s just the huge love I have for my trades being a brewer. You know, I love the sensation of feeling very close to people that lived in other centuries that I never met, and I will never meet, of course. And when you dig into history, you finally realize that those people they are facing the same kind of challenges that you are facing now in your modern brewery. And I like the, yes, that’s sensation of proximity with those ancient brewers. But I also, well, I like history in general, so to say. But what fascinates me the most is to see the intelligence of those ancient brewers. And they didn’t know as we do now the why of the things, but they knew very well the how of the things. They knew how to make a beer. They knew how to make a good beer. It’s easy now to imagine, when you read your books or you see old pictures, that all the beers were infected and probably tasting like crap. I’m sure that the ancient brewers, they were capable of making great beers, of course, the beers that you would keep where the sour Bière de Garde. The other beers, it was probably better to drink them quite rapidly, okay, but I’m sure that those beers were fantastic to drink, and they knew about the basic hygiene also. They knew that you’d better be cleaning your brewery. Of course, they didn’t have all the chemicals that we have now. They didn’t know about the importance of some microorganisms in the infection of beer, but they knew very well that if your tools and devices looked clean, and if you would use very hot water for cleaning them, you would make a better beer. They really knew that very well, actually. And for me, it’s fascinating to see that intelligence, and also if there is one word that I strongly hate in the modern brewing world, and especially among some small, trendy breweries, it’s the word innovation. You know, basically since Pasteur there is, for me, no real innovation in brewing. And if you read your books, you realize actually that the ancient brewers, they’ve tried so many, many, many things. That’s when a young guy now does something that he thinks is very special, when he makes a beer, and most of the time you will find a trace of that in old books, because an old guy, 100 to 150, 200 years ago, have tried the same thing before him, actually.

Markus Raupach: Yes, that’s totally true. I remember the podcast I did with the archaeologist, who dug out the Gobekli Tepe site, and she told that they saw all these devices, and then they made copies and brought them back to Austria and tried to make beer. And what they found out is that these old guys, so like, 12,000 years ago, already had the idea to heat small stones and then put these hot stones into the troughs with the mesh. And so they really could, like, adjust the temperature by adding one more stone or one more stone. And so it’s really like having something to adjust the temperature. So it’s really crazy how much they knew in these times, and this is really long time ago, about the process, so it’s really fascinating.

Yvan De Baets: And I want to add that those people, they have a quality that we are totally losing in our modern societies. They had a very, very good sense of observation, because they took the time to do the things, and they were observing every single detail, and they were very close to their own bodies and their own senses. And so they had very, very good feelings about things and intuitions. And so they, for instance, they knew that when you start seeing some steam at the surface of your wort that you are reaching conversion, saccharification temperature. They know that because they just put their fingers in the mesh and they saw that the mesh would become sweet at that time. And so they knew that just looking at the surface of the worts, that they’re very precious indications almost nobody knows that to do those days. This is also why I love to brew sometimes in very old-fashioned breweries. Like you have one wonderful in Bavaria is the Wasmeier Museum. They recreated an 18th century brewery where you can actually brew. I did that two years ago. It’s one of my best brewing experiences in all my life. And using this very simple set of material, you see really how the people were smart and that you can make a delicious beer that way.

Markus Raupach: That is really fascinating. And also, I found that when I was in England, for example, last year, we did a tour to the Black Country, and there were, let’s say, six or seven breweries that really still work with the equipment from the early 19th century. And also in Norwich, I found a brewer who is still working by measuring the temperature with his elbow. And it’s just, I think if you, if you are aware, if you learn how to do it, you can be a very, very good in measuring like temperatures and things like that. It’s just experience at the end.

Yvan De Baets: Last week, I did a quarter brew in one of my favourite breweries in the world, Harvey’s in Sussex, UK, and they basically work like in the 1920s, 30s. It was absolutely fascinating. And their beers are some of the best in the world for me. But when you’re brewing with such an equipment, you are, per se, very, very close to your product, and then to every single little thing that happens in your brewery, and you know how to adjust things. And it’s so beautiful. It’s really a wonder, I think.

Markus Raupach: Is there in general, in terms of brewing history, something you found out when you were researching, when you found maybe old documents or things like that, that really influenced some beers you produced or still are producing in the Brasserie de la Senne?

Yvan De Baets: For sure. I cannot like point a very precise thing, but I can definitely tell you that, because basically, I’m all day, every day, I read a small part of those old brewing books and it percolates through me, and I will never try to, like exactly copy those beers, because I think it’s impossible and everything has changed so much. But it’s definitely a very important source of inspiration for me, yes definitely. But it’s a general thing that, yes, as I said, that percolates through me all the time. So I cannot point like it’s exactly this or exactly that. It’s more like a general sensation, if I may say so.

Markus Raupach: Yes, I think you read it every day, you hear it, you visit breweries, you talk to people, and that all influences you and stays in you. And when you do decisions about your brewing, about your brewery, that comes out again somehow. And so that’s, yes, that’s really interesting. But I really can only tell our listeners, just visit your brewery. Have the experience. Have the impression. At the moment in Germany, we really have not easy time for brewers. How is in Belgium?

Yvan De Baets: Oh, it stays the same. There are many factors. I hate to say that, but there are way too many breweries and too many beers on the market because it’s not only a question of having too many breweries, we have way more beers than breweries. Because you mentioned that earlier, but the big problem in Belgium beer market now is all the fake brewers that are on the market. By fake brewers, I mean, the contract brewers who don’t know how to make a beer, they don’t have any equipment, but somebody else is brewing for them. And so the market is already saturated, was already saturated, and now it’s only over-saturated, because all those brands that show up every single week, and most of them, they are not lasting very long, because there is no ground behind them. But every week, there are new products on the market which can potentially take the place of the beers of the real brewers. And it’s really, really a problem that we have here. But also as a sure thing, people drink less and yes, there are many factors. People have less money. Also, the general ambiance on planet Earth is not so nice, also, for the moment, to say the least. And yes, there are many factors that put the breweries in danger. But it’s not only Germany, Belgium, it’s also UK, it’s the US, it’s everywhere. My hope is that the best ones will stay in business and that the people will continue to realize the beauty behind a good glass of well-made beer.

Markus Raupach: Yes, and also I talk a lot to brewers here, and I talk to them, okay, you are now a brewery which exists for, let’s say, 300 years, 400 years, and you always have been like a centre of competence in making drinks. And you reduced yourself in the last, let’s say 100 years, very much to a five per cent pale lager thing in Germany. And why not find a little bit back to your history and also do other things and be more open? And for example, we have now this, let’s say, wave of non-alcoholic drinks or beers. And especially because now it’s changing. I think let’s say, until four or five years ago, it was always about making a replacement for a, let’s say normal beer. But now we have a lot of people who never drank an alcoholic beer and just start in their beer career, let’s say with a non-alcoholic beer and will never touch an alcoholic one. So they will never compare, is that exactly like the other one? They will just ask themselves, is that a nice drink I like to drink? Is it nice in terms of the smell, the taste, but also in terms of, let’s say, the calories, or whatever, all these points? So are you taking that into consideration? Are you trying to do low-alcohol, non-alcoholic beers?

Yvan De Baets: My personal position is that I don’t like non-alcoholic beers, because I think for being called a beer, a beer needs alcohol. It’s a bit extreme to say so, but it doesn’t mean that the beer needs a lot of alcohol. My favourite beers are very light alcohol beers. And some of my favourite beers in the world are English beers. For me, if you have a good, well-made, English mild, it’s difficult to beat in terms of pleasure that it brings to you. And that’s basically 2.2 to 2.5% alcohol. So but this is a real beer. I want the beer to be fully fermented and made with classic brewing techniques. I don’t like the equipment that are made to take out the alcohol, for instance. I don’t like the fact that you are obliged to pasteurize non-alcoholic beers, otherwise it’s dangerous. This is not craft for me, and I want to produce beer on the craft way. But yeah, I really am a huge lover of light-alcohol beers, and I just developed two of them. One is 2.6%, the other one is 2.8 and I enjoy them very much because they have all the qualities of a beer, but just way less alcohol. And I like as a brewer, the fact that it’s a huge challenge to make those beers the right way, because in a normal beer, you have already lots of water in your glass, but in super light beers, you have even more water. And to that water, you have to give flavour and structure, mouthfeel as well. And this is what I really call the art of brewing. I say that easily as a Belgian, for me, there is maybe not so much out of for making a triple, for making a very good triple, it’s difficult. But for making a triple, everybody can do it. There are so much raw materials in it that okay, of course, it will be tasty and have lots of body, blah, blah, blah. But making a super light beer, this is extremely, extremely difficult. And I really love those kind of challenges.

Markus Raupach: And I have to say, I also enjoy that, for example, we have, even at our Schlenkerla brewery, they have a light beer with, I think, 0.9 alcohol, and it’s still, it’s a smoked beer. So I can go there for lunch and have two or three or four beers without any consequences in terms of alcoholization. So that’s a perfect thing for me to go for lunch with beer, and even can be able to work afterwards. So this is a great thing. So I think that’s another showcase that brewers have to see how it goes on, to adjust, to adapt to changes, and just to fulfil new demands and to keep on the market. So maybe a last question. What do you, in general, think about the future of the Belgian beer culture? And what role do you think the Brasserie de la Senne will have in that?

Yvan De Baets: Whoa, that’s a tricky question. And sadly, I forgot my crystal ball at home, and I’m still at the brewery now. So it’s difficult for me to answer. Well, the future will be a future with less breweries for sure. My hope is that it will be a future with only real brewers and no fake brewers anymore. But I’m not sure it will happen, because it’s too easy to be a fake brewer those days. And my hope also is that only, as I said, only the quality brewers will stay on the market. But I have no idea if it will happen or not. Yes, that’s the main thing I can say. I think indeed, that lighter beers of the future, I really hope that not all the beers will be non-alcoholic beers in the future, because then I will start making cider or wine or something, probably. But no, I really hope the market will focus on quality and on breweries having good values and will stop listening to the marketing people launching beers without any soul all the time on the market. So yes, but it’s more a hope that I have done a prediction.

Markus Raupach: And you will have your fermentation theatre at home, which is fantastic. And maybe the very last thing, if people want to come to your brewery, maybe want to have a brewery tour, a visit, or something like that, do you book that on the website? Or how do they contact the brewery?

Yvan De Baets: We have a very nice taproom which is really next to the brewer house, and so you can see lots of things already from the tap room, and now we have a nice restaurant also. We are closed on Mondays, but open all the other days of the week. Check on Google to see the exact times for the visits, because we have so many requests, we work with a specialized company who does the tours. But it’s a very, very nice company, and they guys are really passionate people. And I trained them. So basically what they say during the tour is what I would say during a tour. And they do that extremely, extremely well. But these are tours on demand only, so by booking, you can do it through our website or through their website. They’re called, OnceInBrussels, in one word. And on Saturdays, they do tours in French, Dutch and English language at fixed times. And I’m not sure, I’m right, but I think the fixed English tour is at four 4 pm every Saturday. But I think that you have to still book via their website. But it’s extremely well organized. And so if you ask us or them directly, it’s a very easy thing.

Markus Raupach: Yes perfect. I only can confirm that I did it, and it’s beautiful, it’s wonderful, it’s great people, and it’s a great experience. And I will put the links in the show notes so people can easily book. And so I say thank you very, very much for your time, for the insight in your world, and I wish you all the best, especially for the fermentation theatre, and looking forward to see you at the Belgium beer weekend in a few weeks.

Yvan De Baets: Likewise. Thank you for your nice invitation, Markus. And it has been great, great fun talking with you and to everybody. Just want to say a big prost.

BierTalk – der Podcast rund ums Bier. Alle Folgen unter www.biertalk.de.