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The great master of Orval
Click here for the video interview:
Sylvia Kopp talking to Anne-Françoise Pypaert
"Orval means everything to me," says Anne-Françoise Pypaert, "my career, my life, the chance to work as a woman in the male-dominated brewing industry, which seemed impossible at the time." The 55-year-old has worked at Brasserie d'Orval for 31 years. At the time, she was the first woman to work at the Belgian Trappist brewery run by monks - and one of only a handful to have entered the brewing profession at all. She also marked the beginning of a new era at the monastery brewery, one marked by many innovations: "I was lucky to be able to accompany and implement many projects," says the brewing engineer. She has been in charge of production since 2013. She took over from Jean-Marie Rock, a master brewer highly respected in the international craft beer scene. She owes her employment largely to him, because at the time he was generally open and willing to work with women. "It was quite unusual," says Pypaert. Jean-Marie Rock became her mentor.
Her first Orval: Tasted on site
But she didn't even know Orval when she applied after graduating with a degree in biochemical engineering with a focus on malting and brewing. "I just applied everywhere," says Pypaert. At the time, Orval wasn't that popular. It wasn't until the craft beer movement that it became a celebrated icon in the beer world. What makes it special: Since its introduction in 1931, it has been distinguished by two unique brewing techniques: cold hopping and bottle fermentation with Brettanomyces (Brett) yeast. The "Gout d'Orval" - proverbial in Belgium - stands for floral and herbal aromas from cold hopping in the young beer, and leather, tobacco and stone fruit notes from the Brett fermentation, which develop slowly in the bottle and only really come to the fore six months after bottling, while the intensity of the cold hopping aromas gradually diminishes. In fact, Pypaert tasted her first Orval on site after the interview. "It tasted unusual. The sharp bitterness and intense dry-hopped aroma weren't as common then as they are now," she says. As a student, she'd mostly drunk pilsners or the sweet-and-sour fruit beers from Belgium's big breweries.
A new task: cheese making
During the 21 years that Pypaert brewed with Jean-Marie Rock, she worked in quality control, production and bottling at the brewery. During this time, the open fermenters were replaced by cylindroconical fermenters and the brewing process was automated. Production doubled to 70,000 hl. In 2002, the cheese-making process was brought under the control of the brewery, and Pypaert took over the task previously performed by the monks. "It was a completely new field for me," she says, and one that she had to carve out for herself. Later, as production manager, her first major project was to completely modernize the cheese dairy. Today, 450 tons of the semi-hard varieties "Traditional Orval", "Beer-aged Orval" and "Oude Orval" are produced under her direction.
Autonomy for the employees
Pypaert cultivates her own leadership style. "I believe it is important for people to work independently, focusing on their area of activity and shaping it autonomously," she says. That's exactly what she sees in the management team of the Brasserie d'Orval. Together with the general manager and the financial director, she develops the brewery's goals and strategies. All three report to the monastery's administrative delegate. "We have our freedoms," she says. The monks rely on her expertise, especially in production, where they have no experience. As a result, Pypaert has just completed two major projects: the construction of a new hall to store the bottles for four weeks, and the purchase of a new bottling line that, at 40,000 bottles per hour, fills almost twice as many bottles as the old one. Next up is the installation of a new malt receiving system. The existing system dates back to 1951 and still uses mechanical shovels to move the malt.
Dry-Hopping in two phases
Probably the biggest change in the brewing process that she implemented in 2015 is the optimization of the dry-hopping dosage. As she explains, cold hopping with Strisselspalt, Styrian Goldings and Hallertauer Mittelfrüh, or Hersbrucker depending on availability, is done in two stages using different techniques. First statically, during the second fermentation in the tank: hop pellets are added, then the young beer is poured in and left to mature on the hops for two to three weeks. Then dynamic: just before bottling, the beer is run through an external extraction vessel for another day. "The external vessel allows us to extract the herbal and floral aromas more efficiently," says Pypaert.
The beer color challenge
The most important thing in brewing Orval is to maintain high quality, she emphasizes. This is also dictated by the brewery’s membership in the International Trappist Association (ITA), an association of 19 producing Trappist monasteries around the world. To ensure high quality batch by batch, Brasserie d'Orval has its own well-equipped laboratory. But the biggest challenge, according to Pypaert, is the color of the beer. "Because the brewing malts come in different color qualities, sometimes lighter, sometimes darker, we have to be very careful to match the typical Orval color," she says. And that is not easy. Pypaert shares her diverse experience in the field of quality assurance at the ITA as president of the Quality Committee.
The succession is female
While Belgian beer connoisseurs like to debate which Orval tastes best after three, six or twelve months, Pypaert has long since chosen her favorite. She prefers a young Orval, but also praises the mouthfeel of the older one, which benefits from the increase in CO2. She still feels at home in the Brasserie d'Orval. Her brewery now produces 80,000 hectoliters per year. Although demand is high, rapid growth is not in the spirit of the Trappist order. They place much more emphasis on good company. That, she says, is more important than competence and growth. "It is nice to work in a monastery," says Pypaert. She is happy to have found an assistant in Sylvie Deckers, a brewing engineer with a PhD, to whom she can hand over the reins when the time is right. And who knows, maybe the great brewmaster of Orval will realize her own brewing projects in Togo, where her husband and some of her family live. She could imagine living and working there with her husband after she retires.
