Video: Valéry De Breucker and Paula Yunes of Atrium, Marche-en-Famenne, Belgium.
Brasserie Atrium has made a big splash in Belgium since they began selling their beers earlier this year. For me, their Onyx Amburana is one of the finest stouts around. Thick and spicy and with a long mouth feel, the imperial stout boasts a flavour derived from Amburana, a tree native to Brazil, as is Paula Yunes, who co-founded the brewery with her partner Valéry De Breucker, a Belgian.
What a mix! Yunes draws on her brewing career in Brazil, which included working for a distributor and importer of Belgian, American and Japanese beers. She hired De Breucker, and the two decided to start their own brewery.
First they came to Belgium to do a course in brewing, but fell in love with Marche-en-Famenne, a Walloon town about 48 km south-east of Namur and 10 minutes from Rocheford. Their dream fell in place when they launched five months ago.
They used barrels of Amburana, which she put their base Onyx stout to yield Onyx Amburana. Onyx is brewed with cacao, vanilla and orange The difference between the two beers is spectacular. Yunes is also an artist. She designed all the labels for the beer.
Their latest beer is Kofi, a 8% sweet stout with Indonesian coffee, which was roasted in Belgium. Their line-up already includes Chihuahua, which they call “our small but angry baby. It is a session IPA dry hopped with Cryo Ekuanot. Their line-up also includes a saison (The One), a pale ale (Pam!), a red IPA (Avalanche), a blanche (Clémentine), a brown ale brewed with pecan (Carya), and a double black IPA (Sombra).
Not a bad roll-out from when they launched commercially in January 2019.
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