Brasserie Dupont Triomf — A Hidden Beer of Belgium
We’re excited to present this exclusive excerpt from the new book, Hidden Beers of Belgium, written by Pellicle contributor and founder of Belgian Smaak Breandán Kearney and photographed by Ashley Joanna. The book will be available to buy in all good bookshops and online retailers from September 2024. We’ll certainly be picking up a copy, and we strongly recommend you do too.
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Brasserie Dupont’s Triomf is a triumph of trust forged through action, of innovation on the shoulders of generational legacy, and of two iconic institutions working together to create something extraordinary.
I. Special Mission
In 2012, Willie Verhoysen was approached with a special task.
Verhoysen was the hospitality manager at the Vooruit, a festival and arts centre housed in a grand building in the centre of Ghent. (Vooruit translates to “Onward.”) At the time, Verhoysen had worked at the Vooruit for 28 years, 15 of those managing its kitchens, concert hall bars, restaurant, and café—one of the busiest hospitality venues in the city. “It’s the salon of Ghent,” says Verhoysen.
Photography by Ashley Joanna
The Vooruit’s Feestlokaal—its “Festivities Hall” building, located in Ghent’s Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat—had been constructed in 1913 by the city’s socialist cooperative, an architectural showpiece designed to give workers a cinema, library, and theatre hall, as well as a café and restaurant. The Vooruit had also constructed a cooperative brewery there, but unable to survive in the face of a radically changing beer market and in the aftermath of two devastating world wars, it closed in 1954.
1913 was also the year of the World Expo in Ghent, a huge trade fair and civic event that attracted nearly 10 million visitors to the city. The old Vooruit brewery had released a beer specifically for the occasion: a 4% ABV Blonde Ale called Triomf (“Triumph” in English.) In its first year, Triomf was a hit, and made up two-thirds of the brewery’s sales. Moreover, for the socialists, its name solidified their “triumph.”
“The triumph was that the socialist movement would win the battle against the capitalists,” says Willie Verhoysen of the beer’s name. “That the working class would finally win, and there would be a new society—that there will be a complete triumph.”
To mark the 100th anniversary of the Feestlokaal’s construction, the Vooruit planned a whole year of festivities. As hospitality manager, Willie Verhoysen was tasked with a special mission: to produce a beer to celebrate the occasion. But he had less than 12 months to do it. The Vooruit no longer had a brewery of its own, so Verhoysen would have to find someone else to brew it.
II. Organic Collaboration
At the time, Verhoysen was working with large brewing company Alken-Maes for the majority of the Vooruit café’s beers. He approached them about the project, but they weren’t interested. “It was too small and special for them,” says Verhoysen.
His next stop was Het Hinkelspel, a Ghent family cheesemaker that produced a Belgian ale called Lousberg, which Verhoysen sold as a local beer in the Vooruit café. But they were contracting their beers at another facility and were not in a position to assist.
““People said that it will cost you a few years to develop a very good beer. We didn’t have the time.””
Verhoysen then went to Hogeschool Gent, a higher education institution that offered courses in brewing science. They had their own brewing facility, but they didn’t have capacity.
There was one more brewery left to contact. When Verhoysen had become hospitality manager at the Vooruit in 1997, he had wanted to include organic beers on the menu so that the venue could be a part of the solution to the world’s growing environmental problems.
One of the few breweries producing organic beers at that time was a family brewery in the Walloon village of Tourpes called Brasserie Dupont. In the late 1990s, the Vooruit café started selling Dupont’s organic beers. Verhoysen wondered if they would be interested in helping create the 2013 centenary beer. “People said that it will cost you a few years to develop a very good beer,” says Verhoysen. “We didn’t have the time.” He had one more chance; one more hope of success.
III. Smoke Signal
With the clock ticking down to the centenary celebrations, Verhoysen called Gust Simons, then the sales representative at Brasserie Dupont, to ask whether the brewery might be able to produce a special, one-off beer within a very quick time frame. Simons was enthusiastic, keen to create a Dupont beer for a respected Ghent institution like the Vooruit café. But he would first have to convince Brasserie Dupont owner Olivier Dedeycker.
Dedeycker did not normally like special projects, and especially those that involved brewing for others, preferring instead to focus on his brewery’s legacy brands, such as Saison Dupont and Moinette. Dedeycker is the fourth generation of his family to run Dupont, a former farm that dates back to 1759, and which started brewing in 1844.
““Everybody was convinced. It’s something special.””
To convince him, Simons took Dedeycker on a tour of the Vooruit building, “from the cellar to the top of the roof.” He explained the history of the organisation and the vision for a centenary beer that would be organic and not too strong in alcohol. He also informed him that there was no time for tests. That tour “made him understand,” says Simons, “...that it was kind of an honour.”
Dedeycker opted for a Spéciale Belge, a beer style that came into prominence around the same time the Vooruit brewery created the original Triomf. But Dedeycker also decided to add a small amount of peated malt, and he fermented the beer with the expressive Dupont house yeast.
It was certainly a risk. Spéciale Belge had once been a popular beer style, but it had fallen out of favour in the 2000s, perceived by younger drinkers as boring and old-fashioned. In addition, the peated malt flavour proposed by Dedeycker might have proved divisive, as it does in beer styles such as Rauchbier and Smoked Porter.
But Willie Verhoysen and the Vooruit were running out of time. It was already the beginning of 2013. The beer was fermenting in tank and the labels had been printed. The second incarnation of Triomf was nigh.
IV. The Salon of Ghent
In April 2013, Vooruit staff received bottles of the new beer. What they tasted was a dry, bitter, and fruity ale, certified organic, with a very soft, smoky touch. The malt flavours, thanks to Dupont’s direct-fire heater, balanced Scotch fudge and sweet toffee notes with a refined peatiness, while the Dupont house yeast—typically fermented at higher temperatures to drive ester production—delivered what it has always given to the brewery’s Saisons: esters of tangerine, peach, and passionfruit, with its subtle trademark black-pepper note.
The Vooruit staff loved it. “Everybody was convinced,” says Verhoysen. “It’s something special.”
The general public in Ghent were similarly convinced. Such has been the success of Triomf that it’s still being produced more than 10 years after it was commissioned as a one-off release. Brasserie Dupont kept brewing extra batches to meet demand, and today, Triomf is the second-best-selling beer at the Vooruit café, after only Maes Pils. It’s poured in its own Saison-style boerenglas (farmer’s glass), with “Triomf” spelled out in a bold, Art Deco, sans-serif font to match the original 1913 Triomf label.
Willie Veryhoysen retired in 2022. He still regularly pops back to visit old colleagues at the Vooruit café—now called VIERNULVIER (“Four-zero-four”). When he visits, he drinks the special beer he helped create: an organic Smoked Ale available only on draught in the majestic Feestlokaal building, produced by a Walloon family brewery for the triumphant 100th anniversary of an iconic Ghent institution.
