Gouden Carolus Classic: The Beer of an Emperor

A Beer Named for a Coin, and a Coin Named for an Emperor

Most beers are named for a place, a saint, a founder, or a style. Gouden Carolus is named for money: specifically, for a gold coin. The gouden carolus, or "golden Charles," was a gold coin struck during the reign of Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor who, in the first half of the sixteenth century, ruled an empire so vast that his contemporaries said the sun never set on it. To name a beer after that coin is to make a claim: this is currency, this is value, this is a beer with an emperor's name on it. It is a bold thing to put on a label, and Brouwerij Het Anker in Mechelen has been backing it up for a very long time.

The claim is not just marketing. The connection between this brewery, this city, and this emperor is real, and it runs deep. Charles V was not born in Mechelen, but he was raised there, sent as a small boy to be educated at the court of his aunt, Margaret of Austria, who governed the Low Countries from Mechelen and made the city, for a brilliant few decades, the political and cultural capital of the Burgundian Netherlands. The boy who grew up in Mechelen would become the most powerful man in Europe. And the brewery that would one day bear his coin's name was, at that time, already brewing beer a short walk from where he was learning to be an emperor.

This is the story of that brewery, that beer, and the improbable thread that ties a modern Belgian dark strong ale back to the imperial court of Renaissance Mechelen.

Mechelen and the Beguines

Mechelen sits on the river Dijle, roughly halfway between Brussels and Antwerp, in the Flemish province of Antwerp. Today it is a handsome, mid-sized Flemish city best known for the great tower of its cathedral, Sint-Rombouts, a soaring late-Gothic tower that was designed to be even taller but was never finished, leaving it with a distinctive flat top that has defined the city's skyline for five centuries. For a brief, glittering period in the early 1500s, though, Mechelen was much more than a provincial city: it was the seat of government for the entire Burgundian Netherlands, home to a splendid Renaissance court, and one of the most important cities in northern Europe.

The brewery's own history begins not with a commercial brewhouse but with a beguinage, a walled community of Beguines, lay religious women who lived together in a semi-monastic community without taking permanent vows. Beguinages were a distinctively Low Countries institution, little self-contained neighborhoods of pious, independent women who supported themselves through work: weaving, lacemaking, caring for the sick, and brewing. Het Anker traces its origins to the Beguines of Mechelen, who were brewing beer on this site as far back as the fifteenth century. A document from 1471 records the Beguines receiving a tax exemption on their beer from the city, which the brewery today points to as the beginning of its long history.

Brewing in a beguinage was practical as much as it was commercial. Beer, brewed and boiled, was safer to drink than much of the available water, and it was nourishing: "liquid bread," as it was often called. The Beguines brewed for themselves, for the poor and sick they cared for, and for sale, and their brewery grew into one of the fixtures of the neighborhood that still bears the beguinage's name.

The Emperor Who Grew Up Down the Street

Charles of Habsburg was born in 1500 in Ghent and, orphaned of a functioning parent early, was raised largely in Mechelen under the guardianship of his formidable aunt, Margaret of Austria, regent of the Netherlands. Margaret's court at Mechelen was a center of art, music, and learning, and the boy who grew up there inherited an astonishing collection of titles: King of Spain, Archduke of Austria, Duke of Burgundy, ruler of the Low Countries, of much of Italy, and of Spain's vast new empire in the Americas and, from 1519, Holy Roman Emperor as Charles V. He was, for a time, the most powerful ruler in the world.

The legend (and Het Anker leans into it happily) is that Charles was fond of beer, and specifically fond of the beer of his boyhood city. Whether or not the emperor personally raised a glass of the direct ancestor of Gouden Carolus is impossible to prove, but the association is historically plausible and irresistibly good, and the brewery has built its identity around it. When Het Anker's flagship dark ale needed a name worthy of that heritage, the choice was obvious: name it for the emperor's own coin, the gold carolus. The beer became "the emperor's beer," and the label still carries the imperial connection.

There is a nice symmetry to it. The coin represented the wealth and reach of an empire. The beer, dark and rich and layered, was meant to feel equally lavish: a beer of substance, brewed in the city that raised the man whose face was on the money.

From Beguinage to Het Anker

The brewery passed through many hands over the centuries, as breweries do, but the modern story of Het Anker, "the anchor," really takes shape in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when the Van Breedam family took over and modernized the operation, giving it the name and the anchor emblem it carries today. Through the twentieth century's brutal consolidation of Belgian brewing (two world wars, the disappearance of hundreds of small breweries, the rise of industrial lager), Het Anker survived as an independent, family-run brewery in the heart of Mechelen, one of a dwindling number of historic Belgian houses that never lost their independence.

In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, under the stewardship of the Van Breedam family and their successors, Het Anker did something many old breweries failed to do: it modernized without losing its soul. It renovated the historic brewery, opened a hotel and restaurant on the site so visitors could stay in the beguinage neighborhood where the beer is made, and even branched out into distilling, producing a single-malt whisky matured in barrels, Gouden Carolus whisky, that extends the imperial brand into the spirits world. Through all of it, the flagship beer remained the anchor of the range, the beer everything else revolves around.

Today Het Anker is one of Belgium's most respected mid-sized independent breweries, its beers exported around the world, its Mechelen site a destination for beer travelers. And Gouden Carolus Classic (the deep, dark, spiced ale at the center of it all) is one of the most awarded beers the country produces, a regular medalist and, on more than one occasion, a winner of the title "World's Best Dark Ale" at international competition.

What Goes Into It

Gouden Carolus Classic is a Belgian dark strong ale, the family of rich, malty, higher-alcohol brown-to-black Belgian ales that includes the great abbey dubbels and quadrupels, though Het Anker's beer is its own particular expression rather than a copy of any monastery's recipe. It pours a deep reddish-brown, almost mahogany, with garnet highlights at the edges and a fine, tan head.

The complexity in the glass starts with the grain bill. The beer is built on a blend of malted barley and wheat, with a range of caramel and darker malts layered in to give it its deep color and its cascade of caramel, toffee, bread-crust, and dark-fruit flavors. The brewery describes the beer as brewed with a variety of grains and spices, and it is those spices, used with restraint, that lift Gouden Carolus above a simple malt-bomb. There is a warm, subtle spicing that reads as clove, a little nutmeg, and a lift of orange or citrus peel, woven through the malt so that no single spice announces itself; they simply add a layer of warmth and complexity, an echo of the mulled, spiced character that runs through so much of Belgium's dark-ale tradition.

Fermentation is where the beer picks up much of its dark-fruit and vinous character. A characterful Belgian ale yeast, fermenting warm, throws off the esters that give the beer its notes of raisin, fig, plum, and dark cherry: the "dried fruit" impression that makes a good Belgian dark ale taste almost like it has fruit in it when it does not. The result is a beer that drinks far bigger and more layered than its 8.5% alcohol would suggest, and one whose sweetness is always framed and balanced rather than allowed to run away into syrup.

Like the great Belgian strong ales, Gouden Carolus Classic also rewards patience. Cellared for a year or two, the beer deepens and mellows: the alcohol integrates further, the fruit turns more toward port and sherry, and the whole thing takes on a smoother, more contemplative character. It is a beer built to keep, which is exactly the point of naming it after a coin.

What's in the Glass

Pour a Gouden Carolus Classic into a goblet and it settles into a deep, glowing brown-red, the color of old furniture or dark cherry wood, under a creamy tan head that leaves lace down the glass. It looks, immediately, like a serious beer: rich, dense, a little regal.

The aroma leads with caramel and dark toffee, then opens into an orchard of dried dark fruit (raisin, fig, plum, dark cherry) lifted by a warm thread of baking spice and a faint, port-like sweetness underneath. Take a sip and the beer delivers on every promise of the nose. Caramel malt and dark bread lead, generous and sweet, before the wave of dried fruit rolls through, braided with brown sugar, a whisper of chocolate, and that gentle, well-integrated spice. It is unmistakably sweet, but never cloying: there is just enough bitterness and just enough warming alcohol to frame the richness and keep it moving.

The body is full and velvety, carried by a soft, fine carbonation that keeps a beer this big from feeling heavy on the palate. The finish is long and warming, gently drying, with the dark fruit and caramel fading into a subtle boozy heat and a lingering spiced sweetness. The 8.5% alcohol is present (you feel its warmth) but it is remarkably well hidden behind the malt and fruit. This is a beer to sip slowly and think about, not to gulp.

The Proper Glass

Gouden Carolus Classic is a beer for a goblet or a chalice, a wide-bowled, stemmed glass in the tradition of the great Belgian dark ales. The wide bowl gives the beer room to breathe and gathers its complex aroma up toward the nose, so that every sip is preceded by that swirl of caramel, dark fruit, and spice. The stem keeps the warmth of your hand off the bowl, which matters for a beer meant to be served cool rather than cold.

Het Anker offers its own branded goblet, and it is worth using if you have one, but any good Belgian goblet or tulip will do the job. What matters is the shape: a beer this aromatic deserves a glass that shows it off. Poured into a straight pint or, worse, drunk from the bottle, Gouden Carolus loses half of what makes it special: the aromatics simply have nowhere to gather. The glass is not a formality here. It is part of the beer.

What to Eat With It

A beer this rich and this sweet wants food with weight and depth to meet it. The most natural match, as with so many Belgian dark ales, is Belgium's own carbonnade flamande, beef braised slowly in dark ale, where the caramel and dark fruit in the glass echo the same flavors in the pot. Braised short rib, beef cheek, and roast game like venison or wild boar all work on the same logic: the beer's sweetness and warmth stand up to rich, deeply savory meat and cut through the fat.

For cheese, reach for the big flavors: aged Gouda, nutty alpine cheeses, and strong washed-rind styles all find their match in the beer's malt and dried fruit. And because of all that caramel, chocolate, and dark-fruit character, Gouden Carolus is a genuinely great dessert beer: it is close to perfect alongside a dark chocolate torte, a sticky toffee pudding, a slice of fruitcake, or anything built on dried fruit and brown sugar. Few beers move as gracefully from a beef stew to a chocolate dessert. This is one of them.

How We Serve It at Mort Subite

Gouden Carolus Classic is the beer we pour when someone wants something with weight and story in equal measure. We serve it cool but not cold, around cellar temperature, cool enough to be refreshing but warm enough that the caramel, dark fruit, and spice open up and bloom in the glass. Served ice-cold, a beer this complex closes up and hides its best qualities; give it a few minutes and it reveals itself. As with every beer we pour, we serve it in a proper goblet (clean, cool, and dry, never frosted) so the aromatics have somewhere to gather.

It is a beer we love to talk about at the bar, because the story is almost too good. The deep-red ale in your glass comes from a brewery in Mechelen with roots in a fifteenth-century community of brewing Beguines. It is named for a gold coin struck under Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor who was raised in that very city, at the glittering court of his aunt, before he grew up to rule an empire on which the sun never set. It has been named World's Best Dark Ale, and it drinks like a beer that earns the title: rich, layered, warming, regal without being heavy.

It is a beer for a slow evening: for the second half of a long dinner, for a rich dessert, for the kind of conversation that a strong, contemplative ale is meant to accompany. Order one, let it warm a few degrees in the glass, and drink the beer of an emperor.

Check the draft menu, or ask the bar what is on today. Come raise a glass to the boy from Mechelen who grew up to rule the world.