Belgian sampling ales

"Belgium is rightly famed throughout the world for its beer culture, in 2016 earning a place on UNESCO’s List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The country's many beer styles reflect it brewers' mastery…"

Belgium is rightly famed throughout the world for its beer culture, in 2016 earning a place on UNESCO’s List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The country’s many beer styles reflect it brewers’ mastery of the use of yeast, all types of grain, and even the careful use of spicing, to produce beers of all strengths and varieties.

Belgian blond

Belgian blond ales are a fairly recent development, starting to arrive in the early 1990s. They tend to be around 5.5-7.0% ABV, their character varying from intensely spicy to balanced and delicate. Most are enhanced by re-fermentation in the bottle. They actually post-date the so-called ‘Belgian-style’ beers that American home brewers had started making by the 1980s, aping the spicy nature of some Belgian beer imports, but creating this by using specific yeast strains. Neither of these types of beer has much historical authenticity, but an interesting cross-pollination has occurred over time, with many Belgian brewers now using the same yeast strains in some cases, to replace direct spicing of their beers.

Dubbel (or Double)

Expect rich malty flavours, a bit of fruitiness and/or chocolate, caramel and a few well-behaved phenols in this brown beer (6.3-7.5% ABV) that is best enjoyed in bottle-conditioned format. The term implies that double the malt is used in the mash, though in practice, 50% extra is more realistic. The style resonates with beers from other parts of Europe, such as British Double Brown and Italian ‘doppio malto’ beers.

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About the Author

Tim Webb

The lead author and curator of The Beer Styles of Europe and beyond is Tim Webb, co-author of The World Atlas of Beer.

Before the First World War (1914-1918) a typical British drinking beer was around 5.5-6% ABV. Temperance-supporting politicians used the declaration of war as an excuse to diminish the strength of beer considerably; the inter-War period brought punitive taxation; the Second World War reduced production once more; and austerity in the 1950s continued to staunch beer’s revival.

French sampling ales

The rapid advance of the French brewing scene to have more breweries than either Germany or the UK, has seen a geographical expansion of brewing too. Ales were once only found in the area between Strasbourg and La Manche (The English Channel), in the north and east of France, but are now made across the whole country, following every tradition and none. There remain local regional traditions, however.

North American sampling ales

North American craft brewers, experimenting in the 1980s with assertive hop varieties from the Yakima Valley region, fell in love with the story of India Pale Ale (IPA), the high-hopped beer exported from Burton-on-Trent to Bombay at the height of the British Empire. They therefore took its name to apply to a new breed of assertively hop-forward pale ales, brewed with attitude for an emerging and gratefully impressed constituency of beer fanatics.