He is fighting back, through the creation of beers that are meant to be “simple but not simplistic―that’s important.” Like Cilurzo’s beers, De la Senne beers cannot be gulped mindlessly: they demand attention, but ultimately depend on flavors in balance.
The two men introduced their distinctive, bitter beers in different countries and over a decade apart. But both were in the position of being somewhat ahead of the consumer curve, faced with bringing the drinking public along with them. Both credit forward-looking bar owners who were willing to pour their beer.
“In San Diego, there’s O’Briens,” says Cilurzo. “Jim O’Brien had taken it to a certain spot in the early 90s before Tom Nichols bought the bar. It was a Bud bar to begin with, and Jim would turn them on to Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and our Blind Pig Golden Ale, and he even turned them on to our IPA, and after that the other breweries started making more of these beers. So it happened very organically.”
De Baets finds Brussels bars don’t live up to their vaunted reputation, but singles out one bar, Moeder Lambic, for making a significant contribution to the city’s beer culture. “It is the best bar in town, the best in Belgium actually,” he says. “It’s two young guys with a huge passion for good beer―they are front-line fighters. Because they also educate their customers. It is the only bar in my country where you enter, you look at what is being drunk at the tables, and 90 percent is extremely good beers. It’s really fantastic.”
But, for all that Cilurzo and de Baets have, themselves, been “front-line fighters,” challenging what drinkers expect from beer, both share a deep regard for brewing masters from the previous generation. For de Baets, “the guy I consider my―can I say, my Yoda?―for good beer is Jean-Pierre Van Roy, the father at Cantillon.” His first visit to the Brussels lambic brewery taught him “beer is not simply an alcoholic beverage. It is something with values behind it, human history and culture: it is something extremely rich.”
Cilurzo’s admiration for Sierra Nevada’s Ken Grossman is more prosaic, but genuine. “Ken Grossman’s great. He had a junk sale at Sierra Nevada,” Cilurzo remembers. “You’d say, ‘Ken I want to buy this,’ and he’d say ‘Oh, man, I’d forgotten about that piece. It’s not for sale.’ But I bought a flowmeter, and he threw in a bunch of extra stuff: I think every American brewery should have a small piece of Sierra Nevada.”
