228: Paula Yunes and Valéry De Breucker of Brasserie Atrium Are Shaking Things Up in the Famenne

She’s a native Brazilian, beer sommelier, and former reality TV host. He’s a Brussels native who has worked in every aspect of the industry, including the brewhouse at Fantôme. Together, Paula Yunes and husband Valéry De Breucker launched a brewery in Belgium’s Luxembourg province. Now, Brasserie Atrium (https://en.brasserieatrium.be), is turning heads with fresh takes on saison and other classics while turning up the heat with trendier styles such as hazy IPA and barrel-aged stout. It’s no small task to launch a new brewery in Belgium and gain acceptance for it there. Belgian beer lovers have their established brands, and their brewing community is relatively slow to change. However, the small town of Marche-en-Famenne, near Rochefort, was the right place for them to launch—the street they’re on is Rue de Brasseurs (Brewer’s Street), after all. And grabbing a European Beer Star gold medal for their saison, The One, is the kind of thing that tends to get people’s attention. In this episode, Yunes and De Bruecker discuss: building a more expansive idea of beer in a conservative beer market their cooperative process of developing recipes together creating a local, small-town brewery with cosmopolitan influences the business-driven need to break from tradition brewing a noteworthy, award-winning saison in a country known for them using local water and yeast with glucoamylase enzyme toward the end of fermentation, to get their saison to full dryness brewing hazy IPA with the Belgian twist of house abbey yeast using high mash temperatures along with wheat and oats to build body the challenge of using Brazilian woods such as amburana and cumaru for barrel-aging breaking down the gender barrier in Belgian brewing And more. *This episode is brought to you by: * G&D Chillers (https://gdchillers.com): For nearly 30 years, G&D Chillers has set the mark for quality equipment you can rely on. G&D stands above the rest as the only chiller manufacturer that engineers your glycol piping for free. G&D also stands alone as the only chiller manufacturer with an in house team of installers and engineers, with 30 years of real world, field labor experience in breweries, wineries and distilleries. Contact the total glycol system design experts today at gdchillers.com (https://gdchillers.com) BSG (https://go.bsgcraft.com/Contact-Us) Support for this episode comes from Hop Solutions by BSG (https://bsgcraftbrewing.com/). The Hop Solutions portfolio is a joint effort between the brewers, hop specialists, and brewing scientists of BSG and the Rahr Technical Center that takes a flavor-first, application-specific approach to hops. Whether you’re seeking biotransformation in a juicy IPA or dialing in a classic West Coast profile, BSG has a Hop Solution for that. Get in touch with the hop nerds at BSG by emailing LetsTalkHops@bsgcraft.com for samples, spots, and contracts. 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BrewMonitor provides detailed insight into your fermentations that helps improve beer consistency, reduce tank-time, and increase overall efficiency–saving your brewery time and money. Get started for 30 days, risk-free. Visit precisionfermentation.com/brewing (https://precisionfermentation.com/brewing). Ss Brewtech (https://www.ssbrewtech.com): From the rotatable pick-up tube on Rogue Brewing's pilot brewhouse to the integrated hopbacks on Sierra Nevada's twin prototyping brewhouses, Ss Brewtech has taken technology they invented working with world-renowned industry veterans and made them available to every craft brewer. To learn more about Ss Brewtech's innovation list, head over to SsBrewtech.com (https://www.ssbrewtech.com) Hop Revolution (https://www.hoprevolution.co.nz): If you’re looking for a direct partnership with an independent hop grower who is as fanatical about flavour and quality as you are, join the revolution! 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