All About Beer Magazine

He’s full of good humor, but Falcone is serious about beer, well versed in its history, culture and gastronomy. He kilns his own malt in a coffee roaster to get the flavors he wants for his darker beers, and he plays classical music and jazz for yeast in the tanks. In the basalt-lined cellar he had constructed beneath the brewery, bottles of his Monasterum Tripel mature to the strains of Gregorian chants. One of a handful (well, just two fingers at this writing) of brewers in Brazil to make a Belgian-style tripel, he also brews an IPA, equally rare there. The rest of the line consists of a schwarzbier called Ouro Preto, literally “black gold,” the name of Brazil’s most famous gold rush town. Falke Bier also makes a toasty Red Baron märzen and the obligatory pils, which pours frothy and cool, with a gentle but crisp hop aroma and soft bitterness more on the order of a Munich helles.

Falcone entertains guests in a purpose-built room that is enclosed by glass on three sides, which makes for a very pleasant afternoon of tasting. Beers are produced along with the famous Minieros cheeses, and it’s clear he understands the ins and outs of pairing—which the Brazilians call “harmonization”;—a nice word, I think. When it’s time for the tripel, a sabre is produced, and with a brisk whack, the top of the champagne bottle flies off. “I learned this in France, in Champagne,” he says.

While Falcone’s son isn’t old enough to do more than brewery chores, the younger generation is getting involved elsewhere, and some of them are very fired up about beer. In Belo Horizonte’s Cervejaria Wäls, a brewery is squeezed into the family’s fruit juice factory. The boys, José and Thiago, have been around the business all their lives, but the sudden departure of the founding brewer have drawn them into the business, and they are finding it to be a compelling one. Wäls brews an honest pilsner, 45 IBU and dry-hopped on top of that, reeking of Saaz. It’s obscenely hoppy by Brazilian standards. For now it’s a seasonal, but they hope to make it a full-time beer.

Wäls has just introduced a light beer, surprisingly the first in Brazil, not more than shade lighter than the usual pilsner here, with a dry palate and a crisp finish. But this beer has hops—plenty in the nose and a little tickle on the tongue. Tame as it seems to us in hop-addled North America, this is subversive, a kind of comment by the brewery that says “our light beer has more flavor than your regular beer.” Good positioning for the coming revolution, I think.