Antidoot Wilde Fermenten

When brothers Tom and Wim Jacobs started homebrewing, they were buying packets of yeast like anybody else. They also had friends who worked for modern breweries, including Duvel Moortgat. There may have been bemusement at the brothers buying miniature copies of their company yeast.

“And there is something very weird,” Tom says. “Because the craft world, they argue that they’re bringing something new and fresh to the scene. But actually, they are just buying, say Duvel yeast, or Chimay yeast. So, at the end, the ones who are creating the diversity are not craft brewers … because there’s no stubbornness with them.”

That realization became a driving force behind the evolution of Antidoot Wilde Fermenten: “We had the idea that what’s lacking somehow today is this stubbornness, to stick to something—and to create something distinct in that way,” Tom says. “Like, you’re not creating diversity by just brewing 40 different beer styles, because that’s just going with the hype and what’s fashionable today. That’s not something that lasts. For us, we want to do something that lasts.”

TAKING IT FURTHER

Not only a brewery, but also a cidery and small-scale winery—sometimes those products mingle in the bottle to form new ones—antidoot dabbles in a variety of mixed-culture adventures.

The Jacobs founded Antidoot in 2018, after several years of experimenting as homebrewers. That evolution was something that Tom says happened organically after he and his wife moved to the small town of Kortenaken around 2009. “The idea was to live more self-sufficient on the countryside—so, have our own vegetables, have our own meat,” he says. “And we really liked to drink some beer. So, then we started homebrewing. It was just actually a way of making things ourselves. But that was kind of a thing that got a bit out of hand.”

Tom says he and Wim were never serious beer geeks, but they enjoyed drinking Saison Dupont, Orval, and the black-label Gueuze Girardin. At first, they brewed tripels or other classic ale styles, but within a few years they were adding Brett-laced Orval dregs to their fermentations. Things snowballed from there. They began buying oak barrels, seeking a more complex bacterial profile. “Before we knew it, we had too many big wine barrels in my brother’s cellar,” Tom says, “and then we had to make a decision. Like, ‘What are we going to do with this? Are we going to take it further, or not?’”

For Tom, who was tired of his day job as a philosophy lecturer, the choice was easy. In 2017 they built a small but professional brewery at his house. “In some ways it’s still homebrew,” he says, “because it’s literally at my home that we do it. And it’s still very similar to homebrew—it’s just that the kettles are a bit bigger.” They brew 10 hectoliters per batch, enough to fill three wine barrels each time. Currently they brew only 15 to 20 batches of beer per year, primarily in winter.

Antidoot beers are dependent on the seasons and climate. When I speak with Tom in early December, they’ve just finished their two-month cider season of picking and pressing. The next step is to clean up and start the beer-brewing season, when the cooler weather allows use of the coolship.

They use the coolship for its original purpose—it cools wort. “We don’t have a plate chiller,” Tom says. “Everything goes through the coolship. … We have learned to brew only when it’s really cold enough because we’ve seen some problematic infections when it’s too warm. So, we’re very careful with that.”

They prepare a starter of their house culture and pitch it to get fermentation going quickly, Tom says. This helps to get the ph down, since they’re not acidifying their wort. It also helps to ensure fermentation progresses despite the cool temperatures of

their winter brewing season. Inevitably, the culture must also live in those barrels.

THE ORIGINS OF A MIXED CULTURE

The Jacobs brothers describe their house culture of yeast and bacteria as “indigenous.” Over the years, they have done a fair amount of yeast-wrangling around their rural brewery. The popular Milk the Funk website gave them lots of ideas on how to collect the local micro-critters and ferment starters with them.

“We tried different wild captures until we had a kind of capture that we were happy about,” Tom says. “We used different plants and fruits from the garden and the surroundings. And it was a few years of experiments with that.”

Whenever they got one they liked, it would wind up in the mixed culture.

So, what exactly is in that culture? “We have no idea,” Tom says. “We’ve never run lab tests of those cultures. We just know it works. It’s a bit like when you have a sourdough culture—you know how to use it, you know how to feed it, you know how to keep it alive. You know somehow what it does, what its effects are. … But we don’t know the details, say, on a microbiological level.”

However, based on how the yeast behave, Antidoot can make some safe assumptions: There are Saccharomyces strains driving the fermentation; there is Pediococcus,

since the beer develops a telltale “ropey” viscosity early in its maturation; since the ropiness doesn’t last, there is likely some Brettanomyces chewing up the exopolysaccharides that cause the ropiness.

Naturally, there are also lactic-acid bacteria, which they keep under control by using hops. They have been experimenting with the quantity and blend of hops, to get gentler acidity and a more balanced beer. “We want to limit, early on, the Lactobacillus,” Tom says. “We don’t want any quick Lactobacillus growth. We’ve seen a big difference if we use very few hops, that we get beer with a different acidic profile, which we don’t like so much. We prefer the slow acidification, which probably comes through Pediococcus.”

“You’re not creating diversity by just brewing 40 different beer styles because that’s just going with the hype and what’s fashionable today. That’s not something that lasts. For us, we want to do something that lasts.”

THE ELEMENTS OF AN ANTIDOOT BEER

The hops Antidoot uses are Belgian, and they’re literally a mixed bag: some homegrown, some aged hops, and a few fresh ones. They’re also functional: “It’s all for the antibacterial effects,” Tom says.

The hops go in the kettle for the entire three-hour boil. Why such a long boil? “I cannot really explain it, let’s say, on a scientific level,” Tom says. “It’s an intuition. When you boil that long, it’s [denser]. It’s not about the acidity, but the mouthfeel is also very important for us. We’re looking for a beer … with a bit of a creamy mouthfeel. And we have the idea that with a longer boil, together with all the raw grains that we use, it’s a [denser] wort.”

They also conduct a lambic-style turbid mash for all their beers, to produce more dextrins for their culture to chew on over time. The grist is typically one-third unmalted wheat, or occasionally spelt or a bit of oats. The unmalted grains always come from a local farmer—but that’s not always possible. This season, Tom says, the farmer has no wheat because of an insect problem. So, Antidoot will use spelt while looking for another local source of unmalted wheat.

The rest of the grist is organic pale malt from Dingemans or Weyermann. Tom says they would buy it from a smaller, more local outfit if they could; there are no small maltings in Belgium, though nearby Hof ten Dormaal brewery is beginning to experiment with malting its own barley.

They typically bottle their drinks in attractively labeled 75 cl bottles. About a third of what they produce is cider, and the rest beer. While they do grow their own grapes and make natural wine, they don’t sell the wine; instead, much of it ends up blended with either the beer or cider. “But for us, it’s very similar,”

Tom says. “We don’t make a distinction between those.”

Bottles are hard to come by. The brewery is tiny, and early accolades led to an uncomfortable amount of attention from traders and speculators who were re-selling at many times their price for personal profit. So, Antidoot established a club, which received many more applicants than there were spots. They chose 300 successful applications at random. Their website’s membership page currently reads, “Unfortunately, there are no more spots available for 2022. There is also no waiting list.”

TAMING THEIR OWN CREATURE

When they were experimenting with wild captures of yeast, they knew they wanted to focus on capturing Saccharomyces, Tom says. They wanted their culture to be a reliable and hardy fermenter—but they also wanted it to be their own. In reading American sources on mixed fermentation, Tom says, “what they mostly do is they use a commercial Saccharomyces strain, and then they mix it with, say, Lactobacillus, or they add some Brettanomyces to it. And that was something we didn’t want to do at all because for us, that’s not wild fermentation.”

They didn’t want the same domesticated strains that anyone can get. “We really wanted to see, what’s the effect of the wild Saccharomyces on the beer? With these wild captures, we saw very interesting profiles that had nothing to do with what people normally associate with wild beers—namely, Brettanomyces and bacteria. It had all to do with the character of the Saccharomyces.”

Of course, there are limits to what their culture can do well—but those limits are part of the point. Their culture produces a lot of fruity esters and some spicier phenolics, too. It would not ferment a nice IPA, Tom says, because the hops wouldn’t shine. However, after two or three weeks of fermentation, he says, the beer resembles a Belgian saison. Those fruity esters mellow over time in the barrel while the house character develops further.

One of the things that makes Tom happiest is when people can identify that house character and say, “Oh, that’s an Antidoot beer.”

In describing the profile, Tom says a typical Antidoot beer tastes herbal, even when they don’t add herbs; the esters are mellow and “aged”; it’s gently acidic, not sour; and there’s a creamy mouthfeel that persists in the bottle. One thing he and his brother don’t like much is Brett funk—too much can be distracting, while also tasting too much like other Brett beers. As an example, Tom cites natural wine makers making very clean, vivid wines using indigenous yeast.

“Because I think what’s for us interesting is to create, somehow, diversity in the beer scene,” he says. “And what annoys me a bit is that a lot of breweries are just copying each other somehow, or just looking too much at each other.”

So, he believes the main way they can stand out on their own is via fermentation. “The backbone of a beer for us is mostly yeast-driven. And it’s interesting just to be a bit stubborn, and stick to that character, and try to build a house identity on that—rather than on these kind of artificial tricks.”

At university, Kemker studied agriculture and the food business, and he knew he wanted to work in that area. Around his hometown of Münster, there were jobs in the agricultural supply chain, but they were tied to conventional farming; he wanted to be part of something he viewed as more sustainable and smaller scale. There was some distant farming background in his family, but there was no farm to take over. Also, farmland in that area is among the most expensive in Europe; simply buying land to start a farm was not an option. “We need to have a business model that kind of works for us,” he says. “It’s not possible to just do farming here, like classical farming. You need to inherit something.”

So, he knew he would have to start from scratch. He also knew that he liked beer.

That interest began as a teenager; the legal drinking age in Germany is 16. He tasted his first Belgian ale at the age of 18, and it was like an awakening. “Back in the day, that was an eye-opener,” he says. “Like, ‘Beer can taste like something!’” He wanted to drink that kind of beer at home, but it was expensive and hard to find in Germany. “And I had the smart idea: ‘Yeah, homebrewing! It’s going to be cheaper!’

“Of course, it was a fun hobby,” he says. However, spoiler alert: “It wasn’t cheaper.”

At first, he jumped from style to style, trying to brew everything from an Irish red to a Cascadian dark ale. Over the years and after more travels, he gradually narrowed down his preferences toward the dry, complex, fruit-forward character he produces and enjoys today.

In the meantime, however, he inevitably began thinking of how to combine his interests in beer and agriculture.

“What was pretty close to farming was brewing,” Kemker says, “especially the way we do things now in the brewery—like working very [closely] with farmers preserving old grain varieties, planting trees for cider, and so on.” He also knew the by-products, such as spent grains and apple pomace, could then be fed to livestock. “So that was the value stream on how we can build a farm ourselves.”

Around 2014, he explained the farm-brewery idea to a professor; she was not amused. A couple of years later, when he had further refined the idea, he pitched the idea to some bankers; they were not amused either. “‘There isn’t a market, it isn’t a proven business model,’ and whatever,” Kemker says. “Well then, fuck it. No one’s giving money for my idea to open a generic craft brewery. Well then, I could at least start small and brew beers that I like to drink.

“And that’s how the idea of Kemker Kultuur was born. … We started completely bootstrapped.”

Also, he adds, “I’m now brewing the beers that I like to drink, and that’s dry and fruity beers.” He also appreciates beers that are sour, bitter, herbal, or smoky. He generally avoids sweetness— the sweetest beer he enjoys, he says, is Schlenkerla Märzen—and there is nobody telling him to brew a sweet beer, or anything else that might sell better.

CONNECTING WITH LOCAL HISTORY

Kemker knew that Münsterland, where he and Marzec were born and grew up, was where he wanted to be. Yet, for him, there is another attraction to the area: its brewing history, little-known to the current inhabitants. While Münster today has more than 300,000 people who drink mainly industrial pilsner and altbier, Kemker says it was once a town of just 10,000 people boasting 140 breweries making beer in a wide range of styles.

Even in Germany, few people realize the diversity of styles that the country once brewed, including many top-fermented beers in the north. There was a broad belt across the grain-growing, commercially connected regions of Europe brewing pale, acidic beers. The most famous survivors are lambic and Berliner weisse—“but if you draw a line from Brussels to Berlin, you find lots of cities,” Kemker says. Münster is in that belt, as are Düsseldorf, Köln, Leipzig, and Goslar.

Münster was a gruit-brewing city about

600 years ago, and later it was famous for brewing keut, which evolved from gruit but embraced hopping as fashions changed. By the 19th century, however, Münster’s own version of altbier had become dominant— this was an aged and acidic beer that apparently had its lovers and haters even at the time. Local brewery Pinkus Müller’s unusual Pinkus Alt is a vestige of that tradition, with its own light lactic tang.

“The beers that were brewed here were also sour or herbal beers, and also some table beers, spelt beers,” Kemker says.

Though the brewers’ understanding of them would have been different from our own, those all would have been mixedculture beers, enjoyed either fresh or with a more vinous character that developed over time. Thus, the local history isn’t only compatible with Kemker’s relatively austere tastes. It’s also compatible with his own mixed culture of yeast and bacteria.

“Like, you have a dead body, and you open the layers— next layer, and the next layer—and you forget in the moment that you had some food on the table, and your food is getting cold. And, the vibes with your friends are getting cold. So, don’t think too much. Drink.”

KEMKER’S KULTUUR

Kemker began developing his house culture during his homebrewing days. It began by pitching in bottle dregs and yeast strains of beers that he liked, but now it’s evolved and taken on a life of its own. Lactobacillus and Pediococcus are in the mix, as are “all three families” of Brettanomyces, according to an analysis that Richard Preiss of Escarpment Labs did for him.

One of Kemker’s signature beers is Aoltbeer, a barrel-aged, mixed-culture riff on the old Münsterisch altbier, sometimes with grapes, other fruit, or additional hops added. His recipe includes barley and spelt because he believes that’s what they were mostly growing in the area back then. He also uses whole-cone hops, somewhat aged, just as they would have before electric refrigeration. (There were no T-90 pellets or walk-in coolers back then. There were burlap sacks, and there were dry attics.)

The beer itself, however, would have matured underground. The Münster brewers had their own cellars below the city where they could store and age the beer, and this would have meant a longer, cooler, slower maturation, and possibly a softer acidic bite. “We had less acetic acid in the beers, compared to lambic,” Kemker says. “And that’s what we tried to mimic with our current location.”

The current location is a former cattle barn that Kemker renovated in 2018. It stays relatively cool, even in summer. Kemker says this inhibits the acetic-acid production—though he wouldn’t mind just a touch more of that vinegar-like sharpness. “Because you need a little bit, like a spice in cooking,” he says. “You need to have a little bit of acetic acid to make a barrel-aged beer interesting.” Some beers that they have aged longer, for two years, have developed that spice, he says.

Kemker also occasionally brews an interpretation of gruit, in collaboration with local beer historian Phillip Overberg and his Gruthaus brand. The red-brown beer, called Dubbel Porse, is flavored with what they believe to be the original gruit mixture of Münster: bog myrtle, caraway, juniper, and just a bit of hops.

About 85 percent of Kemker’s production is aged in various types of wine barrels. The current oak-aging capacity is about 20,000 liters (5,283 gallons). “We experimented a bit with other barrels. Rum was very disappointing. We threw away the beer; it didn’t taste good.”

He tends to age the beer for a long time, and he says he thinks in terms of summers instead of years. “I think most of the beers are ready when they have seen two summers,” he says. “But sometimes you also have a pretty good beer after one summer. So, it’s between 10 months and 20 months.”

KEMKER ABIDES, ESTABLISHING ROOTS Without some kind of validation, it’s not the German way to appreciate unusual things that appear in your own backyard.

Outside of a few aficionados and a couple of Münster restaurants with artisanal interests, the locals overlook Kemker’s beers; they don’t fit the prevailing understanding of what “beer” is supposed to be. The villagers, he says, privately predict the imminent failure of the “sour-beer brewer” any day now. Somehow, he’s still there. (Occasionally, a local will take a business trip to Berlin and encounter a Kemker beer, and then some measure of local pride must emerge. “Oh, it actually tastes good!” they’ll report.)

For the most part, Kemker’s customers are farther abroad. Kemker Kultuur sells beer via their website—often for less than €10 a bottle—and that direct-to-consumer shipping within Europe has been helpful during the pandemic, while making those beers accessible to those who appreciate them.

They don’t own the farm, but they rent. In cooperation with the landlord, they’ve grown older heirloom varieties of oats and barley and planted apple trees for cider.

They also planted more apple trees on his uncle’s land. They partner with another farmer nearby in growing spelt for the brewery, as well as schwarze pfauengerste, or black peacock, a dark-husked heirloom barley.

Embracing those historic grains is one way that Kemker’s beers are developing their own local strut. “It was used for brewing 150 years ago,” he says of the black barley. “And it was a bit neglected because the yields weren’t that good, and it was also tough to grow it. But the malting process was quite good, and the end-product was quite good. And it’s also looking quite nice.”

When asked about terroir, Kemker responds by explaining that he can’t taste the difference between barley grown on loamy soil versus that grown on sandy soil. Instead, what interests him and Marzec is “a local value chain.” They like that the grains are grown locally (and wish there were a small maltster nearby). They like that the by-products of their beer and cider help to feed nearby livestock.

Why brew beer this way? “Why not?” he asks. “The brewery started bootstrapped, so it’s not investor-driven. So basically, we can do what we want [as long as] we still make turnover, or profit. There are not lots of people who can talk—it’s Nicole and me, we are making the decisions, and we decided that we wanted to go this route.”

They know there are easier ways—and cheaper ways. “I could buy conventional grain and save some thousands of bucks per year, but then I don’t have anything to tell,” Kemker says. “Finding stories is also challenging. So, if you do something good, then you have something to talk about.”

There is something else, too: never quite knowing the next plot twist, whether tragic or sublime. Either way, it will be something new.

“It’s a very repetitive process, what we do, but the outcomes are often very different,” Kemker says. “Because the organic grains, they are inconsistent, they change all the time. Then the climate in the brewery changes all the time. Barrels behave differently. The yeast culture behaves differently [during] the year.

“I don’t know if we need to call it terroir,” he says. “It’s liquid storytelling, I think.”