Exploring the Beer for Wine Lovers

If you know someone who says they do not like beer but loves wine, this is the video to send them. Matthew and I sit down with a Flanders Red, often called the Burgundy of Belgium, which is generally considered the most wine-like of beers. We have both found that plenty of people who claim they do not like beer fall for sour ales like this one.

Balanced by sour, not bitter

Most beer is a balance of sweetness from malt against bitterness from hops. An IPA leans bitter, a Scotch ale leans sweet. Flanders Red works differently. It is balanced by acidity against sweetness, which is basically how wine works. That is why wine people take to it.

How Flanders Red is made

The style comes from the Flanders region in northwest Belgium. We are drinking Duchesse de Bourgogne from Brouwerij Verhaeghe. The malt bill is mostly bready malts with some darker, roastier ones, but it is not a roasty or bitter beer. It is hopped at very low levels. The darker malts are there mostly for a light copper to deep amber color. After a normal ale fermentation, the beer matures for many months, about two years, in huge oak casks called foeders. Rodenbach, which pioneered the style, has foeders as large as 60,000 liters, roughly 16,000 gallons, in rows and stories of them. At Verhaeghe, they use old red wine barrels. As in winemaking, the oak gives flavor, mouthfeel and tannins and maybe a touch of vanilla.

Most of the flavor and aroma, though, comes from the microbes living in the wood. Lactobacillus, the bacteria you find in yogurt, makes lactic acid. Other bugs make acetic acid, which is vinegar. Flanders Red leans toward the acetic side. It should not taste like a cup of vinegar. If a sour beer ever reminded you of salad dressing, it was not a good one. Because the beer sits in wood, there is also some Brettanomyces, a yeast that makes funky, spicy, earthy phenols. Depending on where the barrel came from and how it was cared for, one foeder can taste totally different from the next.

Blending old and young

That variation is why blending is a hallmark of the style. Breweries blend younger beer, which is sweeter, with older beer, which is drier and more acidic, to land on a balance of sweet and sour that is neither cloying nor bone dry. Rodenbach Classic leans toward the younger beer, so it is a little sweeter and less sour. Their Grand Cru uses significantly more older beer, so it is drier, more acidic, more earthy and considered the finer product.

Oud Bruin, lambic and cooking

A close relative is Oud Bruin, similar in color, with ruby garnet highlights when held up to the light. It ages in stainless steel instead of oak, so you get a similar acidity but less of the earthy funk and generally less acetic character. The malt shows up more, with some nuttiness and toastiness in the background, though it is still not a malty beer.

We also touch on how these differ from lambic and gueuze. Flanders Red is a mixed culture beer, with bacteria and ordinary ale yeast pitched in a more controlled way, while lambic famously relies on spontaneous fermentation from whatever blows in the window. Lambic is funkier, though it is also aged in wood and blended. Belgian brewers would not care much about our style talk, since to them this is a food product meant for the table. Flanders Red is a fantastic beer to cook with in place of wine or lemon juice, adding acidity and deep bready flavors.

The verdict

In the glass I got black cherry and a whiff of cola. Matthew and I landed on a cherry cola vibe, with a little vinegar. It is the vinegariest of the styles. A bite of dark chocolate with it is magical. If you are a wine drinker curious about beer, grab a Flanders Red or an Oud Bruin.

Watch the video above, then taste along. If you want to go deeper on sour and wood-aged styles, the Certified Cicerone course and the Beer Scholar Study Lab are where I teach them. Matthew also runs virtual beer tastings for date nights and corporate events. Email him at [email protected].

Cheers! –Chris