Bokkereyder in Hasselt is a fresh face on a traditional beer scene, blending lambic beer with fruity new flavours – and other young blenders are following his lead

The 2016 cherry growing season in Belgium was nothing short of a disaster, according to Raf Souvereyns. “We had a wet and stormy spring, and a lot of trees were damaged,” he says. “And the summer was so-so. There wasn’t much fruit at all.”

The poor season meant Souvereyns was short of the 40,000-plus Schaarbeekse krieken – sour cherries native to the Schaarbeek district of Brussels – that he and his friends would usually handpick.

The 32-year-old needed those cherries for his Pinot Kriek, one of the many beers he makes at Bokkereyder, the lambic blender he founded in 2014. Without the cherries, Souvereyns (pictured) was forced to develop other blends to take Pinot Kriek’s place.

And so came a series of raspberry blends, some fermented with vanilla pods, others aged in used Cognac barrels. For Souvereyns, a cherry crisis meant a chance for creativity.

“In every beer I make,” he says, “I want to honour the noble character of the base lambic, but I use different techniques and different fruits. Traditional, but with a modern twist.”