Object #39 - Brussels Calling

21st century

Brewery Life

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Ritual - sometimes sacred, sometimes profane, usually a heady mixture of both - has always been central to Brussels’ beer culture. The city’s medieval brewers’ guild held meetings in their Grand Place guildhall under the dual patronages of St Arnoldus and King Gambrinus, and were active participants in the torchlit royal processions, Ommegang pageants, and religious feasts of the period. Brussels’ brewing season, like much of pre-modern northern Europe, began and ended on saints' days - stretching from the feast of St Michael on September 29 to St George’s Day on April 23 in early spring.

These days the rituals lean more profane than sacred. The country’s brewers still gather in the old guildhall, marking the arrival of autumn (and the start of the Belgian Beer Weekend festival) by traipsing from the Grand Place up the Treurenberg hill to Brussels’ cathedral for a mass in St Arnoldus’ honour. Lambic brewing still takes place during winter, though now it’s bookended not by religious observances but by public brew days at Brasserie Cantillon. 

As Brussels’ long-dormant brewing sector began waking up towards the end of the 2000s, the brewers and drinkers responsible for its revival introduced their own rituals. The first of these arrived on the afternoon of December 22, 2010. On that day, Brasserie de la Senne brewed the inaugural batch of beer at their new Brussels brewery housed in an old industrial bakery adjoining the Molenbeek cemetery. This test batch announced the end of the brewery’s near decade-long nomadic trek across Flanders, Wallonia and France, and its return to its hometown city. It also marked the opening of Brussels’ first new brewery in decades, instantly doubling from one to two the number of commercial breweries in the city and signalling a turning point in its brewing history. 

Having searched for a location in Brussels for several years, by 2009 it looked like de la Senne had found it - a 1,000-square metre location in Molenbeek enabling them to double the amount of beer they made. By winter 2010 de la Senne had moved in, and were sure that the beer with which they planned to test their new brewhouse would be special. 

Not veering too far from the template that had served the brewery so well thus far, they took the Taras Boulba formula - light, dry, bitter - and increased the ABV a little and used German Hallertaü Hersbrucker hops. De la Senne christened it Brussels Calling, designated it as a Belgian IPA, and released the beer early in 2011. 

It’s a ritual Brasserie de la Senne has observed every December since. The brewery might tweak the recipe each year, with Herkules hops used in 2013, for example, and Hallertau Blanc in 2014. But every year, as the vernal equinox approaches, a beer called Brussels Calling starts appearing on shelves and in glasses across the city, foamy and effervescent and burnished yellow and announcing, as it did the year before, that the dark winter is nearly over and spring is just around the corner.