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How to Make a Pumpkin Keg

Pumpkin Keg

Love it or hate it, with Halloween and Thanksgiving quickly approaching, ’tis the season for pumpkin beer— and business is booming.  No longer is it just the so-called extreme-for-the-sake-of-being-extreme craft breweries busy in the brew house smashing pumpkins.  Behemoth breweries like MillerCoors (Blue Moon Harvest Moon Pumpkin Ale), Anheuser-Busch (Shock Top Pumpkin Wheat), and Samuel Adams have all kicked around the pumpkin patch to produce their own seasonal salutes to the great pumpkin.  In total, there are roughly 800 different commercial examples of pumpkin beer on the market to choose from today.  Perhaps this is part of the reason why the GABF has officially canonized “Pumpkin Beer” as a beer style all to its own; a distinction shared with no other berry on the beer style roster (yep- pumpkin is a type of berry).

The bottom line is that if you’re still on the fence about pumpkin beer, there’s no better time to head to your local purveyor of craft beer, and put together a sampler pumpkin pack.  You may discover your newest favorite pumpkin beer yet.

Pumpkin Beers

And chances are you’re either going to be invited to (or hosting) a Halloween/Thanksgiving-type event this year, or sometime in your bright and sunny future.  Sure, you could always cleverly share a 6-pack of your new-found fav pumpkin brew, but that’s only a little clever.  To really steal the show, present your pumpkin beer in style: with a Pumpkin Keg.

Not only is a Pumpkin Keg a party hit, it’s also easy to put together.

Here’s what you’ll need:

  1. (spoiler alert…) A pumpkin
  2. Pumpkin Beer (I make a few recommendations below)
  3. A box of wine (3-5 liters)… the kind with the pull-out plastic tap.

Here’s what you do:

1.  Cut open the top of your pumpkin and scrape out all its pumpkiny guts just like you would when carving a pumpkin. Keep the top of the pumpkin to use as a lid later.

2.  Using the plastic tap on your Box-O-Wine, transfer all of the wine out of its box.

3. Open the box of wine and remove the plastic bag from inside the box.

Box of Wine

4. Cut out a hole near the base of your pumpkin that will snuggly accommodate the plastic tap. You may want to disassemble the plastic tap first (see step 6) to better determine the size of the hole you will cut.  

5.  Ensure that the plastic bag and tap fit well with the pumpkin by placing the wine bag inside the pumpkin and sliding the plastic tap through the hole you’ve cut. You may decide it’s easier to disassemble the plastic tap from the wine bag, place the wine bag inside the pumpkin, and then attach the tap from the outside. Adjust the hole in the pumpkin if necessary. 

6.  Remove the plastic bag and tap from the pumpkin and separate the plastic tap assembly from the plastic bag. This can take a couple minutes depending on the wine bag— some are easier to disassemble than others. If you get a tricky one, you can use the backside of a butter knife to wedge apart the circular plastic fitting surrounding the tap from the circular fitting on the plastic bag. [See picture below]  The small plastic tap is pretty sturdy, but still, try not to twist or break it off of in the process.

Removing the Tap from a Wine Bag

7.  Rinse out the plastic bag with water.

Dissembled Wine Bag

8.  Gently fill the plastic wine bag with your pumpkin beer of choice.  You can always use a plastic funnel to better guide the beer into the plastic bag, but either way, try to keep the beer as carbonated as possible by not splashing too much.

9. Carefully place the plastic bag into the pumpkin and push the plastic tap through the hole in the pumpkin.  At this point, you may want to pull the plastic tap through the pumpkin hole from the outside of the pumpkin to adjust it, but BE CAREFUL! If you pull the tap forward with too much force, you may end up pulling it right off the wine bag and spilling beer all the floor instead of in your tummy, where beer belongs.

10.  Place your carved pumpkin lid on the top of the pumpkin, and your Pumpkin Keg is ready for action.

*Optional: It’s up to you if you want to further pimp-out/decorate your Pumpkin Keg; just remember if you’re carving, it’s probably best to do that before you place a filled bag of beer inside the pumpkin.

Also keep in mind that there’re 33.814 ounces in a liter, and 12 ounces in a standard beer bottle, so if you’re filling a 3 liter bag, you’ll need about 8 bottles, or 14 bottles for a 5 liter bag.  Can’t find a use for 5 liters of cheap wine?  How about polishing off a few nice bottles yourself, refilling the bottles with box wine, and then serving them to your wine snob friends.  Don’t feel bad, they deserve it.

If you want to serve more than just the 3-5 liters that a standard wine bag will accommodate, you can either collect and pre-fill other wine bags with pumpkin beer, or simply refill your existing pumpkin keg when it’s empty. In a pinch, you can just cut a hole in the top of the wine bag and pour your pumpkin beer in through the top, but this obviously isn’t as secure as the method described above.

Speaking from experience, I recommend doing a quick practice run with your Pumpkin Keg by filling the plastic bag first with water and then assembling it.  That way if you make a mistake and spill somewhere in the process, you’ve only lost some water instead of precious beer.

If you wanted to forego purchasing the Box-O-Wine and removing the related plastic wine bag and tap for some reason, you could try cleaning out the inside of the pumpkin as described above, then take your chances wrapping the inside with plastic wrap, or melting wax and coating the inside of the pumpkin, and lastly buying and fitting the pumpkin with a plastic bottling bucket spigot from your local/online homebrew store.  Good luck.  

The idea with using a wine bag is to preserve the original flavor of the beer you’re adding by not having it come into contact with raw pumpkin flesh and also to prevent leaks.  If you’re just using a tap or spigot and you cut the hole in the pumpkin too big, you either have to figure out a way to plug the excess clearance or buy a new pumpkin.  No thanks.

The Raw Dog Pumpkin Keg (Not Recommended)

Some people might opt not to use the wine bag method or cover the inside of the pumpkin (with wax or plastic wrap), but instead pour the pumpkin beer directly into the hallowed out pumpkin after firing/flaming the inside of the pumpkin to create additional roasty flavors.  Again, the problem there is not only is it extra work, it will almost certainly change the appearance and flavor profile of the pumpkin beer, perhaps not to everyone’s liking. (Most people probably wouldn’t care much for those little pieces of ash and other floaties that make their way into the beer either.)

But even if you don’t flame the inside of the pumpkin and simply want to add pumpkin beer to the raw flesh inside of a hallowed out pumpkin for some other reason (maybe to save time or to add some additional possible squash character to the beer), there are other problems.  

For example, you can’t simply add ice to your pumpkin keg to keep it cool without worry of diluting your beer.  However, if you use the wine bag approach, you could dump ice directly over the wine bag or put the ice in zip-lock bags, and place them around the wine bag to keep the beer cool.

Oh yeah, and there’s one other problem with adding beer directly into a hallowed out pumpkin…

Nucleation Aggravation

The other issue with allowing any carbonated beverage to come into contact with raw or roasted pumpkin flesh is that your beer will quickly become flat due to exposure to what is called “nucleation sites”.  A nucleation site is anything on a surface that causes the physical separation of liquid, solid, and gas, or for our purposes, the CO2 separating from the beer resulting in flat beer.  For a real world example of the effect of nucleation sites, let’s imagine that you’ve been served a beer in a dirty glass that has grime stuck to the inside of the glass.  A speck of grime stuck to the inside of a glass is a nucleation site, and you can tell because you’ll see a stream of bubbles jetting away from it because that grime is separating the CO2 from the liquid in your beer (bar tending no-no).  Because the inside of a pumpkin is one giant nucleation site, if you pour your beer directly into it, the beer will foam, which is your visual clue that the CO2 is separating from your beer.  Bad idea.

Selecting a Pumpkin Beer

There is a vast diversity of different flavors within the pumpkin beer market, and because people have different personal tastes, my advice is always to try a few pumpkin beers out for yourself to see what you like. 

That said, the majority of pumpkin beers on the commercial landscape today fall into two categories: (1) pumpkin beers that try to mimic pumpkin pie (including the spices), and (2) pumpkin beers that don’t.

If you’re looking for pumpkin-pie-in-a-bottle, I like KBC Pumpkin Ale from Trader Joe’s.  It’s cost-effective at $5.99 a six-pack, but it’s also a bit sweet, bordering on Pumpkin Soda.

The other difficulty with recommending a beer has to do with availability.  In other words, because the distribution of beer is very regionalized, what you might find in one state, you might not be available in another.  With that in mind, here’s our 2015 review of of 40 pumpkin beers, many of which you can find in the western U.S. (west coast), and another 2015 review of pumpkin beers from Paste magazine you might find in the South.  It’s important to read the descriptions of the beers and not just the rank to see what flavor profiles speak to you.

Now, if you’re a homebrewer with a killer pumpkin beer recipe, rack that bad boy into a Pumpkin Keg, and we’re talking the ultimate pumpkin trifecta.

By the way, find a good watermelon beer in the summer, and the Pumpkin Keg concept easily translates into a Watermelon Keg.  I also have ideas for making a Turkey Keg— just waiting on Dogfish Head to create an off-centered Turkey Beer.  Only question would be which end to put the tap

Now that you know how to rock the Pumpkin Keg, go forth and be the king/queen of Halloween and/or Thanksgiving.  I’ll be here self-loathing, wondering how I turned into the Martha Stewart of beer.

I just keep telling myself “It’s a good thing…”

Cheers!


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Or feel free to drop me a line at: dan@beersyndicate.com

Hi, I’m Dan: Beer Editor for Beer Syndicate, Beer and Drinking Blogger, Gold Medal-Winning Homebrewer, Beer Reviewer, AHA Member, Beer Judge, Shameless Beer Promoter, and Beer Traveler.  Interests? Beer.

Daniel J. Leonard

How to Make Swamp Cider

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Eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog, Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting, Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing

    -Second Witch, Macbeth, Act IV Scene I

With Halloween just two weeks away, it’s time to get into the spirit— cider style.

For this insidious installment, I’ve exhumed a diabolically delicious drink from the depths of my recipe vault for you to take a stab at.  It’s a ghoulishly green grog, afflictionately referred to as Swamp Cider, and it’s brain-dead simple to make.

If you don’t drag your feet, you even have a bloody good chance of summoning up a freshly fermented batch of this beastly beverage to serve your fiends and family in time for All Hallows’ Eve.  Besides, you know what they say: Idle hands are the devil’s workshop

[Point of Clarification: This recipe/tutorial is for creating a fermented, and therefore alcoholic, cider. For a non-alcoholic version of Swamp Cider, try blending roughly equal parts green juice (see below) and Martinelli’s (non-alcoholic) Sparkling Cider, or force carbonating green juice with a product like SodaStream.  Now, on with the show…]

Here’s the bare bones list of the two things you’ll need in order to brew up to 5 gallons of Swamp Cider:

1. Green Juice. I use Trader Joe’s Green Plant juice which contains a fair amount of apple juice; it tastes good and won’t break the bank.

green juice

There are some other more pricy blends out there that may work for you including Naked’s Green Machine, Odwalla’s Superfood, Suja’s Glow, Juice Press’ Love at First Sight, BluePrint’s Green Juice, Organic Avenue’s Mellow Love, etc.   Ultimately, the decision is yours as to which green juice tastes best to you, so feel free to sample a few, and go with your favorite.  Just keep in mind that some green juice blends are thicker than others and may need to be diluted a bit with quality, 100% apple juice or apple cider (fresh pasteurized cider from an orchard is best, but of course not necessary). 

bonesNote!  It’s deathly vital that your store-bought juice DOES NOT contain the preservatives sodium benzoate or potassium sorbate. These chemicals, which should be clearly noted on the ingredients list, are usually a death sentence when it comes to your cider ever fermenting and becoming alcoholic.  Citric acid or ascorbic acid is fine.  Again, it’s also critical that you actually enjoy the taste of the green juice that you’re using because the final product will retain much of the original aroma and flavor components.

Now, if you already have a killer green juice recipe in your spell book, you could conjure up your own concoction, just bear in mind that your blend should contain approximately 25-50% apple juice or cider.  If you’re feeling a bit sluggish, you can always pick up a tasty green blend at one of your favorite juice bar haunts.  There’s just one catch… Your homemade juice and most likely the fresh pressed juice at the juice bar is not pasteurized (flash boiled), which means there will almost certainly be wild yeast and possibly certain spoilage bacteria in it which can produce off-flavors in your final cider.  In this case, the options are (1) heat your juice to 180°F for 45 minutes (do not boil), which will kill most bacteria and wild yeast, or (2) just add the unpasteurized juice and cross your fingers…

2. Yeast. Yeast is the age old fungus that will provide the magic needed to transform your limp green juice into a lively libation. The yeast, which comes in either dry or liquid form, will consume the sugars in your juice and convert them into alcohol and bubbling CO2.  

Using baker’s yeast will probably ferment your Swamp Cider, but it might also produce more bread-like aroma and flavor components, so it’s not exactly my first choice— ever.

For this recipe, I recommend a liquid English Ale Yeast (WLP 002) which you can find at your local or online homebrew store.  Shipping liquid yeast through the mail usually costs more than shipping dry yeast, not to mention, liquid yeast usually costs about double what dry yeast does (about $8 VS $4, respectively).  So if there is no local homebrew shop in your area, you could use a dry English yeast such as Windsor Ale Yeast, which will be cheaper to ship.  English Ale Yeast generally will leave you with a semi-sweet cider, whereas cider and wine yeasts have a tendency to finish dryer, sometimes bone dry.  The amount of yeast sold in a single packet or vial at homebrew shops will be enough to ferment up to 5 gallons of Swamp Cider, and certainly no problem for fermenting lesser amounts.

Basic Procedure

1. Combine your green juice and yeast into a clean* food-grade plastic container (up to 5 gallons), and cover with aluminum foil. You can poke a few holes in the foil with a fork to allow the CO2 produced by the yeast to more easily escape. If using a glass container, DO NOT tightly seal a lid onto the jar, or the jar will most likely explode due to the building pressure of the CO2 produced by the yeast. Remove the lid and replace with aluminum foil like mentioned above.

Tip! Stretching the Yeast: Buying multiple packets of yeast can get pricy, so if you’re fermenting in two containers, but only have one vial/packet of yeast, you can divide the yeast in half (just eyeball it) between the two containers.  If fermenting in more than two containers with only one vial/packet of yeast, you could add the yeast to a cup of green juice or cider, shake or stir well, then evenly distribute the yeast to the different containers.

[* Cleaning: I recommend rinsing the inside of your containers, or any equipment coming in contact with your yeast or unfermented cider, for 30 seconds with a product called “One-Step”.  One-Step is a human-friendly, scentless cleanser which can be found at your local/online homebrew shop. It comes in a dry, white powder form which you simply mixed with water for use; usually 1 table spoon to 1 gallon of water.]

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2. Place container in a consistently cool place (60°F is ideal) and wait 1-2 weeks. At above 70-75°F, the cider can start taking on stronger alcoholic notes. Too far below about 55°F, and the cider may not ferment at all.

 [Fermenting Swamp Cider in glass jug.  Notice a small grimy ring called a “krausen” will form near the top of the liquid; this is normal.]

3. Drink. Straight from the container, you’re cider will be slightly effervescent at best, but generally flat, or, as it’s referred to in the cider world, “still” or “petulant”.

Optional: If you want to carbonate your cider, the easiest/cost-effective way to do it if you don’t have a kegging system or a product like SodaStream is to wait until fermentation is complete (1-2 weeks), transfer your cider to cleaned plastic containers, and then add a measured amount of sugar back into your cider.  If you want your Swamp Cider ready by Halloween, then ferment for 9 days, then bottle for 5 days.  Here’s a program to help you determine how much: Priming Sugar Calculator

If you want to bottle in glass, you need to make sure the glass you want to use is thick enough to handle the carbonation.  Swing-top soda and beer bottles are fine, but the standard wine bottles that are used for uncarbonated wine are too risky.  If you want to bottle in regular beer bottles, here’s how you do it: How to Bottle

Well, boils and ghouls, you’re now possessed with the knowledge of how to make a sinister Swamp Cider, which means that you can get to brewing, and I can stop invoking the Crypt Keeper….

Bone appetite!

[Thirsty for more? Below you’ll find a little fermenting F-A-Q just for Y-O-U.  Enjoy.]


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Or feel free to drop me a line at: dan@beersyndicate.com

Hi, I’m Dan: Beer Editor for Beer Syndicate, Beer and Drinking Blogger, Gold Medal-Winning Homebrewer, Beer Reviewer, AHA Member, Beer Judge, Shameless Beer Promoter, and Beer Traveler.  Interests? Beer.

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FAQ- (Frequently Axed Questions)      

Is it really that simple?

Yep.  If you want to learn how to create different kinds of cider recipes or improve your technique, you can read more about it on the aptly named tutorial How to Make Great Cider, but if I had to pick out the two most important bits, it would be this: (1) be clean, and (2) control the temperature of your cider during fermentation. Being clean means not only keeping your hands clean, but making sure your equipment is clean too.  Controlling your fermentation temperatures can be a little more complicated.  At the beginner level, either finding an area of the house that’s consistently about 55-65°F, or putting your fermenting containers in some sort of clean bucket or bin, adding 60°F water up to about half way of your container(s), monitoring with a thermometer, then occasionally adding ice to reduce the temperature when necessary.  Just don’t let any water from the bin get inside your fermenting cider— who knows what’s floating around in it.

How will it taste?

Depends on the quality of the green juice and what type of yeast that you use.  As long as you enjoy the taste of the green juice prior to fermentation and you’re running a clean operation, your Swamp Cider should turn out well.

Can I pour the yeast right into the green juice containers?

Yes, but most containers you might find in the grocery store are relatively small, containing usually less than a gallon.  If it were me, I’d ferment at least 1-2 gallons at a time (one gallon equals about ten 12 oz beer bottles).  One little trick I use is to buy the 1 gallon jugs of apple juice/apple cider from the grocery store (Sprouts/Whole Foods, etc.), drink or transfer half the juice, and then ferment right in the glass jug.  An identical 1 gallon glass jug at the homebrew shop runs about $5-$6; I found the same one at Sprouts on sale for $5.99, except it was filled with organic unfiltered apple juice.  You do the math.

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Will it make me sick?

Extremely unlikely.  If you’re clean and keep the fermenting cider away from germ spreaders like pets, kids, bugs, and the undead, there is very little chance some bad thing is going to get into your cider; no more so than would get into a bottle of soda kept in a pantry.

How much alcohol will be in the cider?

Depends on how much sugar was in your green juice, but probably somewhere in the 5-7% range.

Gose and Gueuze: A Tale of Two Sours- Act 2

[Read part one of this article, “Gose and Gueuze: A Tale of Two Sours- Act 1“]

The Search for the Origin of a Belgian Masterpiece: A Wild Gueuze Chase

The naming of a beer style isn’t always a consistent practice. Sometimes a beer style is named after the place where the recipe was originally brewed as with California common ale or Flanders red ale.  Other times the name reflects the ingredients used in the recipe of the beer; take oatmeal stout or fruit beer for example.  And in at least one instance, a beer style is named in relation to the people who drank or popularized it, as is said to be the case with porter, a dark ale of English origin named after the river porters and other physical laborers who favored the brew.

Similar to the way porter reportedly got its name, some have suggested that geuze (or “gueuze” in French) was named after the Geuzen, a political group whose beverage of choice was a nice sour, carbonated geuze.

Break out your historian hat, it’s theory testing time.

For all those not very well versed in pre-independent Belgian history, here’s a little background on the Geuzen.

Geuzen, Gueux, and Sometimes Geus

Emblem of the Geuzen

The term “Geuzen” and sometimes “Geus” in Dutch (or “Les Gueux” in French) translates as “beggars”, and, in the historical context we’re concerned with, was first documented as referring to a coalition force of Dutch freedom fighters from the 1560s.  Originally composed of noblemen, the Geuzen opposed Spanish rule and religious despotism in the Netherlands during the days leading up to the War of Dutch Independence, a.k.a. the Eighty Years’ War.

For those who are a bit rusty, here’s the quick and dirty version of the Eighty Years’ War in 80 words or less… The Spanish Empire was calling the shots in The Netherlands at the time (16th century) and were being Inquisition-y jerks about it which caused the Dutch, in part instigated by the Geuzen, to go to war for their freedom.  The end of that war resulted in The Netherlands being divided into two regions: in the north, The Netherlands as we know it today won its independence (congrats); however the Southern Netherlands (modern day Belgium) remained under Spanish rule (sorry bros).

Back to the Geuzen.

You might be asking yourself why would well-to-do noblemen revolutionaries be referred to as “beggars”?  Well, the story goes that on April 5, 1566, about 250 of these nobles marched to the palace of Regent Margaret, Duchess of Parma, to present a petition of grievances, demanding less taxation and more religious freedom.  Margaret, who was Governor of the Netherlands under King Philip II of Spain, was initially startled to see such a large group marching on the palace until one of her councilors, the Count of Berlaymont, is said to have remarked, “N’ayez pas peur Madame, ce ne sont que des gueux” (fear not madam, they are nothing but beggars).

Three days later, Hendrik van Brederode, one of the leaders of this opposition party, purportedly proclaimed in a speech that if necessary the members of his political group must all be ready to become “beggars” (Geuzen) for the sake of their country.

Hendrik van Brederode

Whether or not Hendrik personally heard and was directly referencing the alleged impolite comment made by the Count of Berlaymont who referred to this band of nobles as “beggars” is unclear.  Nevertheless, the name “Geuzen” stuck.

Now on to the connection between the Geuzen (political group) and geuze (beer style).

One theory has it that members of the Geuzen confederacy used to carry beer (presumably lambic, but then known as “yellow beer”) in a jug on their belts, and as a result of the shaking of the beer while walking in the sun, a second fermentation was induced creating a carbonated ale, suggestive of the how modern day geuze goes through a secondary fermentation in the bottle.

But as lambic history enthusiast Aschwin de Wolf discusses on his website lambicandwildale.com, this story was considered and ultimately rejected by Belgian poet Hubert van Herreweghen in his 1956 book Geuze and Humanism (yes, there’s actually a book called Geuze and Humanism).

Ok, so this theory was rejected.  But why?

To find out, I contacted Sophie Matkava of The Brussels Gueuze Museum and legendary Cantillon Brewery, who was kind enough to indulge me on my wild geuze chase.

Cantillon Brewery

We know that geuze is a blend of uncarbonated young and old lambic which is then bottled (lambic is uncarbonated by definition).  Once bottled, a secondary fermentation occurs inside the bottle itself, resulting in a carbonated sour beer.  Because of this, geuze has the somewhat peculiar distinction of being a beer style that, with rare exception, by definition must be bottled, which of course makes finding a traditional geuze on tap something of a challenge.

Nowadays, geuze is typically bottled in thick champagne-style bottles capable of withstanding the sometimes significant levels of carbonation created by the secondary fermentation that takes place in the bottle.  But as Matkava pointed out, in the 1560s “there were no bottles that could be closed to keep the CO2 gas inside to have a production of “refermented” lambics.  Even for Champagne it was too soon.

She’s right.  In fact the champagne method and the strong glass required to prevent sparkling beverages from exploding under pressure wasn’t even invented, or at least officially documented, until 1632 when Christopher Merrett presented his paper to the Royal Society in London about it, which is long after the Geuzen were active.

Remember, the story is that the Geuzen were carrying around glass jugs of fermenting beer on their hips.  The deal with beer that hasn’t finished fermenting yet is that not only is the fermentation process creating more alcohol, it’s also producing more CO2.  If the glass containing this still fermenting beer isn’t strong enough to withstand the pressure of the ever-increasing CO2, then, you guessed it, the bottle will explode.

So it’s highly unlikely that these Geuzen from the 16th century were strutting around with bottles of still-fermenting geuze swinging from their hips unless they didn’t mind the occasional bottle bomb spraying shards of glass shrapnel in their face after the bottle would explode under the gradually increasing pressure of CO2.

Case closed.  Geuze (the beer) couldn’t have been named after the Geuzen from the 16th century who are said to have drank a geuze-like drink from glass bottles because the glass bottles of the time weren’t strong enough to hold carbonated beer.

Geuzen of the 16th Century

Even so, Matkava didn’t entirely rule out the idea that geuze might have gotten its name from a group of revolutionaries called the Geuzen.  Eh, just not the Geuzen from the 1560s.

Duck, Duck, Geuzen

Wait a minute.  There’s more than one political group in and around The Netherlands calling themselves the “Geuzen“?  Yep.

As Belgian historian Marcel Franssens pointed out to me, since the time of the original Geuzen of the 16th century, those who opposed the establishment were called or called themselves Geuzen (or les Gueux).  Just when you thought pre-Belgian history was going to be easy…

The Geuzen Sophie Matkava was talking about were a lesser known group of Geuzen who were active in the late 18th century.  Keep in mind that Belgium wasn’t even a country until 1830, and before that it was considered the part of the Netherlands under Spanish, then Austrian, and finally French rule.  In 1792, France invaded and took control of Belgium from the Austrians.  This new group of Geuzen saw the transition of power from the Austrians to the French as an opportunity to revolt and establish a free and sovereign Belgium.  The people who comprised the Geuzen revolution of 1792, Matkava explained, were “people from the city working in guilds”, which included some brewers.

Alas, this little known mini-revolution failed, but it could be, as Matkava suggested, “that the term Gueuze was given to define the beer from the Gueux…  But it seems that the term Gueuze appeared formally in 1900-1902.  Before that people were speaking about refermented lambics.

Ah ha!  So, it appears there was a time that geuze existed as a bottled, carbonated, blend of lambics more of less as we know it today, but it wasn’t formally called “geuze” until 1900-1902, which makes the Geuzen from 1792 possible candidates for originating the name.

Either that, or, as Matkava threw in there, the name gueux could have come from “a brewery located in Brussels in the 19th century in the “rue des Gueux” (that does not exist anymore).

Once again, I turned to Belgian historian Marcel Franssens to help sort these theories out, and here’s what he had to said:

I have no indications which of them [the theories] could have a historical background.  In general I therefore avoid to comment on them.

Insert dramatic pause here.

A Geus with a Twist 

But Franssens didn’t leave me empty handed.  Reluctantly, he went on.

When I nevertheless have to say something on this topic, I mention different possibilities and I indicate as my personal preference the “political” one because there are some historical facts to support that.

It is very well documented that in the 19th century, in the small villages of Pajottenland and Zennevallei, brewers were very active in local politics and frequently there was even a catholic and a liberal (in the Belgian meaning of this word) brewer who presented himself as candidate [for] mayor. The name of “geus” was allocated usually to the liberals because the Catholics where considered [to be] representing the “establishment”.

Just to be clear, when referring to “Liberals” in Belgium, we’re not talking about those who conservative U.S. radio personality Rush Limbaugh would condemn a “Liberal”.  In English-speaking countries, the Belgian Liberal Party would be closer to moderate, fiscal conservatives— a party appealing to business people.  In Belgium during the mid-1800s, the Liberal party aimed to curb the growing power of the government and the Roman Catholic Church, a theme reminiscent of the Geuzen of the 16th century.   A “Catholic Party” was formed and politics in Belgium became polarized, with the Catholics on one end, and the Liberals, a.k.a. the Geus, on the other.

Franssens concluded: 

Not the drinking of “geuze” was assumed to be a sign of liberalism but its brewing. The use of the name geuze for that type of beer spread very rapidly and lost its presumed political background.

Final Verdict

It seems no matter what story we’re told about how geuze got it’s name, there is an inescapable link to the Geuzen.  And though it appears geuze as a style of beer did not exist until the 19th century, it is almost certain that without the freedom fighting Geuzen revolutionaries of the 16th century, geuze would not be called geuze.  And for my part, a geuze by any other name would not taste as sweet.  Or sour.  You know what I mean.

Proost/Santé!

[Still thirsty for more Gueuze origin stories? Here’s a link to some more Gueuze-tastic tales: https://www.lambic.info/The_Language_of_Lambic]


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Hi, I’m Dan: Beer Editor for Beer Syndicate, Beer and Drinking Blogger, Gold Medal-Winning Homebrewer, Beer Reviewer, AHA Member, Beer Judge, Shameless Beer Promoter, and Beer Traveler.  Add “Beer Historian” to the list?  Sure- why not.

Daniel J. Leonard

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