Malt & Grain

A farm wanting to make beer first needed malt. In Silly, Marcelin Mynbrughen malted his own barley: the grain is moistened until it sprouts, then dried and roasted, and only this process creates the sugars that later ferment into alcohol.

The base of a saison today is usually pale barley malt, giving the beer a pale to golden color. Wheat or other grains are sometimes added, making the beer drier and a touch fresher.

With a Trappist dubbel, things look different. It gets darker malt and dark candi sugar, which brings notes of raisin and caramel. The sugar ferments almost completely, making the beer stronger without making it heavier.

A tripel, by contrast, relies on very pale malt and light sugar. The result is a golden beer high in alcohol that doesn't taste sweet, but dry and faintly spicy. Chimay Blanche is considered an example of this, and according to the brewery, the monks added it to their lineup last, in 1966.

Belgium has no purity law like Bavaria's. Spices, sugar, and other grains are allowed, and brewers use this freedom to refine their beers. What actually goes into the beer is usually found only in the brewery's own recipes. For drinkers, this means that spice notes in the glass don't necessarily come from spices, since the yeast produces many of them on its own. The farm also once supplied the leftover grain, the spent grain, which was fed to livestock.