Malt & Grain

Brown beer owes its color to malt. For Oud Bruin, barley is steeped, allowed to germinate, and then dried in a kiln, a hot-air oven. The stronger and longer this process runs, the darker and sweeter the malt becomes, taking on notes of bread, caramel, and dried fruit.

The Oud Bruin style, as experts describe it today, sits between 33 and 43 EBC in color—deep brown. That's a stylistic benchmark, not any single brand's recipe. Which malt blend a given brewery actually uses is usually kept close to the chest.

The Roman brewery in Mater shows just how varied "brown" can be. Its Adriaen Brouwer, named since 2014 after the painter from Oudenaarde, is a bottom-fermented beer, comparable to a brown pilsner—thirst-quenching and light. That's not Oud Bruin in the classic sense, but it tells the story of the same dark malt through a different fermentation.

At the Gruut brewery in Ghent, malt carries the full aroma alongside the herbs, since hops are absent, with barley, wheat, and herbs together forming the profile. A pale barley malt forms the base for the Witbier and Blond varieties, while darker malts join in for the Bruin and Amber.

Strong beers like Kwak or Delirium Tremens lean on plenty of malt, since the sugar from malt turns into alcohol during fermentation. A high original gravity—the dissolved sugar before fermentation—is the prerequisite for beers around 8% ABV.