Golden blond with 6% alc., malty, with a fine bitterness and a long aftertaste. The scent is complex, developing a fruity-hop intense fragrance.
Zinnebir – Brussels, 2002, Brussels’ People Ale
Before there was Brasserie de la Senne, there was Zinnebir. Bernard Leboucq was home-brewing in the basement of a central Brussels squat in 2002, and he was invited to brew Zinnebir as the official beer for that year’s Zinneke parade. Yvan De Baets, already passionate about beer, was a social worker working alongside youth groups on the parade. A meet-cute was inevitable.
“I saw this guy pulling a big trolley of beer,” says De Baets, “and I told the guys working with me to take care of the kids, I have to meet him. He offered me a beer, a second, a third.” Two years later De Baets joined Leboucq as unofficial brewing advisor in their first iteration of Brasserie de la Senne.
Together, they brewed 340 litre batches of Zinnebir to a tweaked recipe in an abandoned lambic warehouse in Sint Pieters Leeuw, on the outskirts of Brussels. “The original inspiration [for Zinnebir] was to make a sort of a hoppier version of a Speciale Belge, a Belgian pale ale,” says De Baets,” and my influence was making it drier, hoppier and more bitter.”
De Baets took his cues a German brewing tradition centred on traditional, noble hops; then as now, de la Senne beers used only European hops, 96% of which come from Germany and Slovenia. “I prefer the subtleness, the balance, the small beautiful nuances from the more traditional hops in Europe,” says De Baets. In recent years, he has visited the hop fields of his suppliers during the autumnal hop harvests, building relationships with them.