The lambic hop is back home

In mid-September, the last bines came down at Bree-Eik in Gooik, in the heart of the Pajottenland. A mere few tonnes of organic hop cones, picked a stone's throw from our barrel room. By industrial standards, that is a small harvest. And we take only a small share of it – but every cone of it Coigneau. For us, it closes a circle that has stood open for more than a century.

Where the bines once climbed

Long before pilsner conquered the world, the region in and around the Pajottenland was one of the great hop gardens of Europe. The monks of Affligem brought the plant here. For centuries, ‘Aalst hops’ were sold at the Antwerp fairs, and a good share of the hops used by the Brussels brewers along the Senne came from these very slopes. As late as the nineteenth century, the district of Asse grew about as much hop as Poperinge. The older people around here still remember it. You could walk from Aalst to Asse, they say, without ever leaving the hop poles.

Then the poles came down. Cheaper foreign hops, the rise of pilsner, back-breaking work for very little money. Around 1880, farmers in Lennik and Dilbeek began planting strawberries instead of hops. One by one the hop fields disappeared, and the last field in Affligem was grubbed up in 2007. Poperinge carried on. Here, hop became something only grandparents still talked about.

The lambic hop

The hop that mattered most to lambic brewers was Coigneau. The story goes that Frans Coigneau found the plant next to his well in Teralfene, late in the eighteenth century. It grew vigorously, yielded well and, above all, it was gentle. With so little bitterness, brewers could add fresh Coigneau to their brews without throwing the lambic off balance. Around 1900, Coigneau grew on roughly three quarters of the hop fields around Aalst. A century later it had all but vanished. A plant had to be tracked down in an English hop collection before it could finally come home.

Back in the ground at Bree-Eik

Since 2018, we have been working with Bree-Eik, a farm with more than nine centuries of history, on everything that goes into our kettle: old wheat varieties, malting barley and hops. All of it certified organic. Together with the farmers of our grain network, this means our lambic is brewed with what grows in the Pajottenland and the Senne valley. We are the only lambic brewery and geuze blendery that works this way.

History has a sense of humour. It was in Lennik, just a few kilometres down the road, that strawberries first pushed out the hop, almost 150 years ago. Now the bines are climbing here again.

Why that makes a difference in the glass, too

In lambic, hop isn't there to make the beer bitter. It is there to protect it, to keep it clean through the long years in oak while wild yeasts and natural bacteria take their time. That is why we always used to work with aged hops. And that is why a soft, local variety suits us so well. And so our lambic is shaped by everything you give it: the air of Beersel, the wood of the barrels, the grain and the hops from the fields around us. We use only the best that true lambic deserves. The rest is patience.

Different by nature. And firmly rooted in it.