Stephen Beaumont's Brewpub Cookbook
	A Taste For Beer
	Great Canadian Beer Guide
	A World of Beer

The French Brew Beer, Too!

The question was hardly unwarranted. To most travellers, Lille is just a way-station, a stopping point on the train run between here and there. But to the beer voyager, Lille is much more than a transfer hub, it is also the centre of artisanal brewing in France, and not surprisingly, that was why we were there.

There are two main brewing regions in France: Alsace and French Flanders. The former area, heavily influenced as it is by the beer styles of neighbouring Germany, is known for the pilsners, Viennas and dunkels of breweries such as Kronenbourg, Fischer, and to a lesser degree, Meteor. Economically, at least, this is the heart of French brewing.

The soul of the industry, however, must reside in French Flanders. For while the beers of this region are unmistakably flavoured by Belgian brewing traditions, there is also a unique "French-ness" to the brews of Castelain, Duyck, and St. Sylvestre. They may not be as famous in the world of beer as are their cross-border peers, but they can be equally compelling.

What surprised me the most about the French breweries I contacted during our stay was how old they were. I suppose that because I discovered the beers of the French northeast during the course of the North American craft beer renaissance, and because they have little written about them, I just assumed that the breweries which produced them were of a fairly recent vintage. Little did I know how wrong I was!

The Brasserie Castelain, for example, was founded in 1926 and purchased by the Castelain family in 1966; Brasserie La Choulette got its start in 1845 as Brasserie Dubois; and the Brasserie St. Sylvestre has been around so long that no one seems to know exactly when it was originally built. Everywhere I turned, there were decades more of brewing history.

The beers do nothing to belie this heritage, either. Trois Monts from St. Sylvestre, a full and rich bière de garde, has long been a favourite of mine, as have Jenlain from Duyck, Sans Culottes from La Choulette and Ch'ti Blonde and Brune from Castelain. And those, I'm pleased to say, represent but the tip of the iceberg.

Two things did bother me while I was staying in Lille, though. For one, there seems to be a trend away from bottle conditioning these beers and I fear that this will undesirably affect the character of the ales. After all, they are known as bières de garde because they are supposed to store and age well, and how well will they do that without yeast in the bottle is a question I would prefer not to have to answer.

Secondly, I was dismayed by the relative difficulty I had in trying to find local French beers in what is supposed to be the capital of French Flanders. They were available, but some persistence was necessary if you wished to try more than one or two in the local bars and restaurants. A little support of the local industry, please?

Overall, however, I was heartened by what I found in the soul of the French brewing business and look forward to seeing many more of these wonderful brews make their way across the Atlantic to my neck of the woods. With English-speaking beer aficionados now discovering what French beer lovers have known for decades, it must certainly be only be a matter of time before that happens.

World of Beer Update

So don't get left behind. Register here to receive the Stephen Beaumont's World of Beer Update each and every month. It's free!

Sign up for Stephen Beaumont's World of Beer Update.

Stephen Beaumont reserves all rights that pertain to the text of his articles, in any form that it appears.