When I open a bag of hops, there is always a moment of silence.
Today, hops arrive as pellets. We choose them for bitterness, for oils, for perfume. At the start of the boil, they give bitterness; later, sometimes cold, they keep the aroma. It is a technical ingredient, but fragile. Well placed, it gives length to the glass.
In Durbuy, hops are not only a raw material. Old notes speak of the Haie Himbe, said to have served as a hop yard until the end of the nineteenth century. In 1659, a plot beyond the mill was given to the Récollets to become lupularia, a hop yard. The Récollectines appear through their walls, their convent, their gardens.
Of Philippe Marckloff, around 1560, we know neither the recipe nor the hops. But a beer brewed here likely already knew that bitterness, that way of holding the grain.
The link remains modest. We do not brew as he did. We brew in the old stables of the Château de Durbuy, with technical sheets, numbered lots, and present-day gestures. But hops return in the hand, in the tank, in the warm scent of the wort. They do not prove a perfect continuity. They offer something better: a trace.