Special beers for Spring are an old tradition among France’s famous farmhouse bière de garde breweries. Typically, the brewers offered their very best stuff in this season, usually under the name Bière de Mars (March beer). In the days before refrigeration, farmer-brewers always brewed in the colder months to avoid problems with their yeasts, which tend to be rather cantankerous in the warmer weather. The first and best beers of the season were brewed in early winter, when cellars were coldest, using the freshly harvested malt and hops of the autumn just passed. This special beer was stored and re-fermented for two months or more, and offered for drinking in early Spring.
With relatively recent advances in technology, and following the ravages of two world wars, much has changed in French farmhouse brewing. Making beer is of course an all-year-round occupation now, and no one is really quite sure what the original bières de garde must have tasted like. There are no amateur farmer-brewers anymore; serious, commercial breweries have grown up in their place, and they are making beers that are good, consistent, and certainly less quirky than the farmhouse brews of an earlier age must have been. But these modern descendants of the farmhouse brewers have revived the tradition of Bière de Mars and Bière de Printemps. These are usually beers that are a little heavier on the malt, and/or heavier on the hops, than the year-round bières de garde.
This Bière de Mars comes from Brasserie Duyck, in the tiny agricultural town of Jenlain, in the northeast of France, quite near the Belgian border. The brewery was founded in 1922. The current brewer, Raymond Duyck, represents the third generation of brewers in the family. His office is in the little brick building attached to the brewery, where he was born.
The Bière de Mars that Raymond Duyck makes these days is a unique take on the style. It is – like the Jenlain Blonde Bière de Garde, highly refreshing and very easy to drink. It shows more malt and more hops than the Blonde, with acrobatic balance. It is a perfect beer for Spring – hearty and satisfying, with a touch of warming strength to ward off the lingering chill of winter, yet brisk, with a champagne-like spritziness that provides an appropriate segueway into the warmer months . . .
The wildly colorful label – full of bright promise – was obviously painted by an artist with a bad case of Spring Fever.
