Leave the Abbey, Join the Playground

The Crucial Influence of Foreign Breweries on Belgian Beer.

- Will Hawkes

Given its proximity to Cantillon, you might expect Brasserie de l’Ermitage to be a Lambic brewer. You would be wrong. “We’ll brew an American Pale Ale, a hoppy beer dry-hopped with Citra and Jasmine flowers and green tea, and a hoppy Porter,” says founder Nacim Menu, whose new brewery will be a mere 200 yards from Cantillon on Rue Lambert Crickx when it opens this summer. But that’s not all. “Two wheat beers,” he adds. Witbier? “No, a white IPA, and another made with Sicilian grapefruit zest when it’s in season.”

Belgian beer is changing. Menu, 30, and his co-founders, François Simon, 27, and Henri Bensaria, 28, are part of a new wave taking inspiration from what’s happening across the Atlantic in the United States and across the channel in England. A nation whose remarkable beer culture was recently recognized by UNESCO appears to be falling for the siren call of India Pale Ale.

For some, this will seem tragic. Belgium, though, has always absorbed influences from elsewhere, whether it’s the English style barrel-aging and blending that defines Rodenbach or the German-style lagering that produces the country’s most popular beers such as Jupiler and Stella Artois. In fact, this is the world’s greatest little brewing nation partly because it has been able to absorb the best of elsewhere and make it its own.