Flemish red and oud bruin

According to the BJCP, Belgian brewers see Flemish red and oud bruin as one family. The distinction was only made when the British beer writer Michael Jackson began describing beer styles.

Beer historian Roel Mulder looked into where 'red' comes from. In the old Belgian beer literature he found no red beer. The word turned up in Jackson's World Guide to Beer of 1977. In 1991 Jackson divided the beers into 'brown' (around Oudenaarde) and 'red' (West Flanders). Rodenbach, for many the example of Flemish red, still called itself a 'fresh little brown' on the label until about 1990.

The flavour does differ: Flemish red is fruitier and more sour, oud bruin maltier. That is why the BJCP keeps them apart, while the Brewers Association puts them in one category. The new European protection speaks of 'Vlaams roodbruin bier'.

The European product specification for 'Vlaams roodbruin bier' (2026) calls the book by brewing engineer Georges Lacambre from 1851 'the oldest known description' of red-brown beer from the area. Even so, the same specification states that the tradition goes back 'even to the Middle Ages'. For that it refers to a beer book from 2016.

Beer historian Roel Mulder searched the archives and found almost nothing before about 1850 that points to aged Flemish brown beer. One of the earliest hard pieces of evidence is a fatal accident in a brewery in Geraardsbergen in 1877. Only in the late 19th century did the beer really become well known. The idea that the Scheldt already formed a border in the Middle Ages between the sour beers of Flanders and the rest of the country, Mulder calls 'utter fabricated nonsense'.

Mulder does consider it plausible that the beer existed in some form in the first half of the 19th century: in 1837 beer 18 months old was auctioned in Bruges. But that it is medieval has not been shown.

The BJCP describes Flanders oud bruin as a malty, fruity, matured and lightly sour brown beer from East Flanders, with notes of caramel, toffee, chocolate or raisin and often a sweet-and-sour profile. The guideline explicitly adds that it has nothing to do with the dark, sweet Dutch beer of the same name. It is also something different from lambic: Flanders oud bruin is not fermented spontaneously and contains no wheat.

In the Netherlands 'oud bruin' is even a legally defined designation. Under the Warenwetbesluit Gereserveerde aanduidingen (art. 7e), that name is reserved for sweetened, dark-coloured beers with an original gravity extract of 7 to 11%.

A Dutch oud bruin is therefore something quite different from a Flanders oud bruin, even though they share a name.