John McDonald of Boulevard Brewing Co.

(Press Release)

KANSAS CITY—In an agreement signed earlier this week, principals of Boulevard Brewing Co. and Duvel Moortgat approved the combination of their US businesses. Boulevard, one of the largest craft brewers in the Midwest, and Duvel Moortgat, an independent craft brewer based in Belgium, will join forces to better promote the continued growth and success of their widely respected brands.

A family-owned business spanning four generations, Duvel Moortgat produces premium beers including Duvel, Chouffe, and Liefmans at several breweries in Belgium. Duvel Moortgat’s US activities include a specialty beer import company and Brewery Ommegang in Cooperstown, NY. The Moortgat family will maintain their existing ownership structure in Europe, while John McDonald, founder of Boulevard Brewing Company, will be an important partner in the new US-based company. By uniting with Duvel Moortgat, Boulevard secures the resources to embark on a significant expansion of its Kansas City facilities, and gains the depth and experience of the 142-year-old firm to help extend its strong regional presence throughout the U.S. and Europe.

“Since I started Boulevard in 1989, the company’s long-term future has always been top of mind,” said founder and president John McDonald. “I wanted to find a way to take the business to the next level while retaining its essence, its people, its personality—all the characteristics that make our beer and our brewery so important to Kansas City and the Midwest. Duvel Moortgat’s commitment to quality and independence, and their proven record helping breweries fulfill their potential, made this a perfect fit and an easy decision.”

Read a 2012 interview with Boulevard president John McDonald

“Our path for growth became abundantly clear as I got to know John and Boulevard,” said Michel Moortgat, CEO of Duvel Moortgat. “Our companies share the same values. We have great mutual respect for each other’s achievements and maintain a deeply-held belief in exceptional quality as the platform for long-term success.  Even as recently as this week I was happy to learn that both Boulevard and Brewery Ommegang won 3 medals at the prestigious Great American Beer Fest. Together, with our combined strengths and our mutual obsession for outstanding beers, I’m convinced that one plus one equals three.”

McDonald intends to remain closely involved with Boulevard in Kansas City, where the base of operations will remain. He will be intimately involved in Duvel Moortgat’s activities in the US,  with a stake in the combined company and a seat on its board. Boulevard will maintain its leading role on sustainability initiatives, including support for Ripple Glass, the glass recycling company founded by McDonald and other brewery principals in 2009.

The transaction between the two privately-held companies is expected to close by the end of the year; no financial details will be disclosed. First Beverage Group acted as advisor to Boulevard. Further information will be released as it becomes available.

Read a story about foreign-born brewers in America, including Boulevard Brewing Co.’s Steven Pauwels

Pale and demure as pilsner with a come-hither effervescence and aroma, its drinkability unleashes the trickster within: a sinister alcohol content of 8.5 percent. A revered brewing scientist designed Duvel in two separate adventures, decades apart. It spawned a style and helped open the door to the exploration of Belgian ale. In short, it is a style of paradox—simple, unassuming and refreshing, with a stealthy knockout punch.

Few Belgian ales are entirely severed from their humble roots, with brewers keen to practice traditional methods and recipes where possible. The distinct styles that have evolved over the past hundred years are a result of having one eye on the past and the other to the future. An ability to adapt and borrow is key to sustainability. Such is the case with Moortgat, brewers of Duvel, who borrowed liberally, embraced progressive science, yet held on to their identity in a 20th century European market awash in pale lager.

The Moortgat Brewery in Breendonk owns many brands today, but at its founding in 1871 was a typical farmhouse operation, brewing a variety of dark ales. In 1900, founder Jan-Leonard Moortgat handed the reigns to his sons Albert and Victor Moortgat. Inspired by the ales of the United Kingdom, Albert Moortgat introduced the commemorative Victory Ale in 1918 to celebrate the end of World War I. Ever the student and tinkerer, Moortgat continued to experiment with his Victory Ale over the next several years.

To create the beer that he desired, and to capitalize on the popularity of Scotch ale, he set about teasing the yeasty secrets from a bottle of McEwan’s Scotch ale, procured during an excursion to Scotland—an enterprise that did not go over well with his provincial Belgian brethren. He also enlisted famous brewing scientist and pioneer Jean de Clerck to assist in the elaborate undertaking. A master of yeast characterization and isolation, de Clerck was also on the faculty at the University of Leuven, and author of A Textbook of Brewing, the most comprehensive opus the craft has ever seen. His handprints are all over 20th century Belgian brewing, his having been consultant to many well-known breweries.

The McEwan’s sample yielded between 10 and 20 strains of yeast, so the painstaking isolation and selection was lengthy. A single strain was finally selected for the job, the strain still used today. The formulation of the “original” Duvel was nearly complete, though it was still known as Victory Ale. During a tasting session among villagers in 1923, a local shoemaker, no doubt under the influence of Victory, proclaimed, “this is a real devil”! Perhaps in a move to put the war behind them, Moortgat renamed the beer Duvel (a corruption of the Flemish duivel), shrewdly projecting light-hearted naughtiness on a catchy brand name. All that it had in common with the Duvel of today, though, was strength, since it was still dark ale.

Duvel is unassuming upon first view, aromatic and ebulliently inviting, and stealthily sinister in its effect. Developed as a counterpunch to the roundhouse popularity of pale lagers after World War II, Duvel spawned a nouveau style that has been widely mimicked in both its homeland and abroad. It is tidy and refreshing, unusual yet again for a beer of its formidable strength.

Birth of the Devil

The majority of Belgian ales, be they secular or monastic, tend to retain a bit of their farmhouse, agrarian or natural history. Bottle conditioning is still widely employed, the unusual ingredients of their forebears are still likely key components, and individuality is a highly valued commodity. Duvel and its offspring are purposefully designed beers that portray both modernity and anachronism. Its development is recent, and owes its success in part to Scottish ales, Belgian creativity, and, ironically, macro European pale lagers.

Duvel is brewed at the Moortgat brewery in the aforementioned village of Breendonk, not too far from Brussels. The brewery was founded in 1871 and always made dark ales, not uncommon among contemporary Belgian countryside and farmhouse brewers. To celebrate the end of World War I in 1918, Moortgat brewed a beer designated “Victory Ale” that was, predictably, hefty and dark. Legend has it that a friend of the Moortgat family called it “a devil of a beer,” or something along those lines. The name was changed to Duvel, Flemish for devil, and the name, at least, has become one of the most recognizable brands in the world. The beer, however, was nothing like the Duvel we know today, a beer that has been decades in the making.

After WWI and the restoration of peacetime trade, imported Scotch ales became all the rage in Belgium. They were similar in might and hue to the more familiar ales of Belgium but were exotic and noticeably different, owing to the yeast. Albert Moortgat had spent considerable time in Britain learning the intricacies of ale brewing. When he returned to Belgium, he brought with him a cache of bottle-conditioned McEwan’s Scotch ale. Each bottle was a treasure trove of viable, alien microorganisms. In his zeal to create a beer that was similar to the Scotch versions lapping up market share, Moortgat decided that the amalgam of yeast in the McEwan’s was worth investigating. He enlisted the help of none other than Jean De Clerck, the preeminent brewing scientist, pioneer of yeast isolation and characterization, and prestigious member of the Faculty of Brewing at Leuven University.

The alliance proved to be an important one, as De Clerck discovered that the stock sediment had at least 10 and as many as 20 different strains. By meticulously isolating them and examining their individual properties and nuances, De Clerck made it possible to employ separate strains for distinct tasks during fermentation and conditioning. One of the primary strains was selected because of its tolerance for high temperature fermentation, which can be upwards of 80 degrees C. It produces a relatively restrained fruitiness in spite of the high temperatures. It also contributes a distinct footprint when coupled with the house malt. Another yeast that De Clerck selected compacts very densely in the bottle, making it perfect for bottle conditioning. With the new yeasts, the reformulated Duvel was re-released in 1930 with quite a different character from its predecessor, Victory Ale.