In complete contrast to Theillier, Brasserie Duyck, in the town of Jenlain, is the most industrial and largest of all the breweries in the region. However, were it not for this brewery, bière de garde would likely have been forgotten. In the 1970s an effort to cut costs led Duyck to package their most famous beer, Jenlain Amber, in cheap recycled 750 ml Champagne bottles with a wire-fastened cork. They were one of the first breweries in the north of France to do this; something we see commonly today. This innovation made Jenlain Amber all the rage in the nearby university town of Lille, particularly with the students. Today Duyck is the largest of the bière de garde breweries at 100,000 hectoliters. Of all the bières de garde, this beer has the strongest presence and is the most widely available globally. It has become the benchmark.
Another long established brewery, Brasserie St-Sylvestre, is found in the town of St-Sylvestre-Cappel, just down the road from the town’s imposing church. This third-generation, family-run brewery has a beautiful old copper brewhouse. When asked how long he had worked in the brewery, the current CEO, François Ricour, replied that he was born in the brewery.
One of the joys of these old breweries is their quirkiness—St-Sylvestre’s cork has a “V” cut into it with a single giant staple to hold the cork in place. These seem daunting to remove, but just pop the staple with a knife and use a corkscrew. This brewery is a good example of why the bière de garde style is hard to pin down, as one of their fine beers, the 3 Monts, tilts heavily into the saison camp.
Looking Ahead
France’s first brewpub, Au Baron, or Bailleux, in Gussignies, doesn’t just straddle the border of saison and bière de garde, but completely obliterates the style divide. The Cuvée des Jonquilles embraces all the funk and junk of a great saison and the amber beer (ironically named Saison Saint Médard) has all of the caramel, dust and barnyard tastes of a great bière du garde. You can walk to the border in three directions within 10 minutes, as this area of France juts into neighboring Belgium. The brewer is a second-generation saison brewer, and maybe because of his Flemish heritage he doesn’t think there is any difference between bière de garde and saison.
This picturesque brewpub is situated in the bottom of a valley with a babbling brook running by their expansive deck, where in the spring the Cuvée’s namesake daffodils blanket the surrounding hills. The beers complement this restaurant’s delectable menu, which includes a grilled meat platter bigger than anything Wilma Flintstone ever served Fred.
With this area’s strong brewing history, it is interesting to see the rebirth and progression of the style. One of the new school French breweries, Brasserie Thiriez, is less than 10 kilometers from the brewing and hop-growing region of Belgium in the tiny town of Esquelbecq. It is named for its brewer and owner, Daniel Thiriez, who started as a homebrewer before homebrewing existed in France; he had to source equipment and information from other countries. Daniel took his formal education at the brewing college in Leuven, Belgium. His inspiration was a homebrew book written by Jean-Louis Dits, the brewer at the saison brewery Brasserie à Vapeur, one of the last steam-run breweries in the world. Thiriez makes a number of great beers, including the American-influenced Thiriez Frères de la Bière (EXTRA), the hoppiest beer brewed in France,
Brasserie du Pays Flamand, which is spitting distance from Thiriez in Blaringhem, is settling into its farmhouse digs. These young upstarts have been brewing in this rural village for only one year and are already exceeding their production goals with exports to Canada and the United States. French ale is safe in the hands of these guys and the farmhouse ale culture is surviving and even growing as a new generation of brewers is modernizing this old garde. Olivier Duthoit and Mathieu Lesenne are working hard, along with other regional breweries, to get an appellation for bières de garde similar to Champagne, lambic or Kölsch. This brewery is looking ahead, but with an eye to the past.
Full Circle
This brings us back where it all started, at the brewery without underwear, La Choulette, in Hordain. This brewery is tiny at 4,500 hectoliters but has a larger global reputation than its annual production would suggest. Its third-generation bière de garde brewer, Alain Dhaussy, told us that at the onset of the Second World War, his grandfather lost his brewery when the family fled the region so they would not have to endure the hardships of war.
Faithful to the family values of brewing great beer, Alain Dhaussy purchased this 1885 farmhouse brewery in 1977 and changed its name. This copper and wood brewhouse turns out some amazing bières de garde. The brewery’s name, La Choulette, references a historic golf-like game played with a wooden club that has a metal pick on the end. Not surprisingly, the brewery is involved in the sponsorship of the World Choulette Championships each year.
And the name of the flagship beer, Sans Culottes, is actually a historic reference not to underclothes, but to those “without pantaloons”: the French Revolutionary soldiers who didn’t wear the knee pants and stockings combo worn by the king’s army.
Dhaussy is a walking encyclopedia of local beer history and provided a good chunk of the historical information included in Phil Markowski’s Farmhouse Ales, a must-read for those with more than a passing interest in the sister styles.
As for my quest to find a difference in styles? They grow from the same tradition, share the same attitude and display the same passion. They are both daughters of Flanders; but they are sisters, not twins.
