Description
De Troch it seems will try flavouring beer with anything, 3.5%.
Visit the bucolic countryside around Brussels and discover Wambeek and the Brewery De Troch, which produce the “CHAPEAU” fruit beers. A 19th century land-use plan of the area mentions a brewery owned by a certain Petronnella De Troch. Even older records indicate that her father, Pieter De Troch, was running a brewery on the same site in the late 18th century. Petronnella married Egidius De Troch and in 1898 their son Louis took the family business over. Louis Married J. De Neve, and their son, also Louis, inherited the brewery and farm in 1936. The same Louis married M.L. Van den Moortel. Their nephew Jos Raes and his wife M. Vanderhasselt took on the family tradition in 1974 and have been running this rare craft brewery ever since. In 2002, their son Pauwel Raes jointed his parents into the family business.
GEUZE and KRIEK are brewed by age-old methods which depend on spontaneous fermentation and ripening. In the first stage a mixture of malt, wheat and water is prepared.
During the process the starch is transformed into sugars suitable for fermentation. The mixing is repeated several times over. A liquid is obtained by filtering the mix. This is the wort, which ultimately becomes beer.
Matured hops are added to the wort, wich is then boiled for 4 to 5 hours so that it reaches a density of 5 Belgian degrees. After boiling the by now useless hop buds are removed.
The wort is then cooled in shallow vats. The outside air is allowed to pass freely over the large open vats. This air is essential to the brewing method, as it contains the micro-organisms wich give LAMBIC its unique flavour. For this reason LAMBIC brewing is a seasonal activity (October to end April).
The cool wort is then run into tubs before being directly transferred to casks. A few days later the main fermentation process becomes evident with the appearance of foam in the bung holes.
The beer is then allowed to ripen on oaken casks wich hold about 650 litres each. This is the true spontaneously fermented LAMBIC.
By mixing young (one-year old) Lambic with older Lambic a second spontaneous fermentation in the bottle is obtained.
The result is called GEUZE.
When our cherries are added to the casks of Lambic a drink is obtained after about 5 months called KRIEK, which has a very special flavour and a red colour. FARO is another traditional speciality, and is obtained by sweetening the spontaneously fermented Lambic with crystallized sugar.
The fruit beers are, like KRIEK, the result of adding peaches, bananas, raspberry or mirabelle plums to the spontaneously fermented Lambic.
These beers are strawberry and mirabelle plum flavoured lambics, they are spontaneously fermented wheat beers like those of Cantillon, Morte Subite and Timmermans with a wider range of fruits added to them.
De Troch's fruit beers are known as Chapeau and are very popular as low alcohol aperitifs at the Devonshire Cat. Made using syrups these beers are sweet and a good introduction to lambics.
De Troch cannot be dismissed as some kind of alco-pop brewery however as its beers are still brewed in an old-fashioned coal-fire kettle and the beer has enough sharpness to cut through the fruits.
25cl bottles.
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