belgian inspired,
michigan made
We’re an independent brewery in Frankfort, Michigan, inspired by the rich brewing traditions of Belgium. Our passion lies in crafting a diverse range of beers, from innovative takes on classic styles to bold, one-of-a-kind creations.
At the heart of our brewing philosophy is a deep respect for Belgian techniques—known for their expressive yeast profiles, layered flavors, and balance between complexity and drinkability. To bring that spirit to life here in Northern Michigan, we use a proprietary Belgian-style house yeast strain developed exclusively for Stormcloud. This unique yeast is the foundation of many of our flagship beers, including Rainmaker Ale, 228 Tripel, B., Sirius Dubbel, Birdwalker Blonde, Whiled Away, and Nightswimmer Stout.
Fermented warm to encourage character and nuance, our beers often feature the signature spice, fruit, and dryness that define great Belgian-style ales. But we don't stop at tradition—we push boundaries with ingredients and brewing methods to create beers that are both rooted in heritage and uniquely Stormcloud.
Whether you’re sipping a classic Belgian-inspired ale or one of our modern twists, every Stormcloud beer reflects our commitment to craftsmanship, creativity, and a deep love of beer culture—both old world and new.
Stormcloud Beer 101
What Are Belgian Beers Like?
With a few exceptions, Belgian beers tend to have two major common traits. Belgian beers tend to be higher in alcohol than most beers from other countries, and Belgian beers tend to get a lot of their character from the yeast that is used to ferment them. When drinking a Belgian beer, you’ll often notice fruity or spicy notes in the beer’s aroma and flavor. Often, these aren’t coming from the addition of fruits and spices, but from the yeast the brewers used to ferment the beer. Also, pace yourself with these beers! Many Belgian beers (and many craft beers for that matter) are around 7% ABV or higher, making their strength near that of wine, not the light lagers many are used to drinking.
Why Are Belgian Beers Higher in Alcohol?
Alcohol in beer is produced during fermentation. Fermentation is the part of the brewing process where brewers add yeast to their brewer’s wort. Brewer’s wort is the sweet, sometimes also hoppy/bitter liquid that the brewers cooked up in the brewhouse. They steeped malted barley in hot water (and sometimes other grains like wheat, oats, corn, rice or rye) to gain access to fermentable sugars trapped inside the grain. They added some hops to it and then cooled it down, making a nice sugary meal for yeast. Those sugars from the barley are consumed by yeast during fermentation, and alcohol and carbon dioxide are produced. The more sugar the yeast has to eat, the more alcohol in the finished beer.
To boost the alcohol level in Belgian beers, brewers will often add extra sugar, beyond what they extracted from the barley. They will sometimes use sugars derived from beets, and often will use straight white table sugar. These nice simple sugars get gobbled up by the brewer’s yeast and even more alcohol ends up in the finished beer.
In the old days in Belgium, this process of adding extra sugar also helped brewers escape taxation. Historically, brewers in Belgium were taxed based on the size of their mash tun, the tank where the barley and hot water are mixed. The larger the mash tun, the more tax they needed to pay. By boosting alcohol levels with sugar instead of barley, brewers could create strong beers without the need for a bigger mash tun or the associated higher tax.
MALT + WATER + YEAST + HOPS = BEER!
There are four ingredients that unify nearly all beer–malt, water, yeast, and hops. Some people new to the world of beer are surprised that hops are in all beer styles, including dark, sweet, and non-bitter beer. Remember, in Germany in the 15th century there was the beer purity law Reinheitsgebot, which declared that the only ingredients that could be used in the making of beer were water, barely, and hops–with yeast being added after its discovery in the late 17th century. Reinheitsgebot “is now considered the world’s oldest, still valid food food safety and consumer protection legislation.” Though there are a few historical beers made without the use of hops (such a Gruit), the vast majority of modern beer styles require hops. Why? Hops are the ingredient in beer that provides its “backbone of bitterness, increases its microbiological stability, helps stabilize its foam, and greatly influences its taste and aroma.”
Brewing Process
The first step of the brewing process is called mashing. This involves taking milled malt (germinated barley that’s been kilned and sometimes roasted) and combining it with hot (though below boiling) water in a vessel known as the mash tun. The point of this step is to break down starches into fermentable sugars that the yeast will eventually consume to turn into alcohol. This step also activates different enzymes and releases proteins. Here at Stormcloud, for most of our beers this step takes around 45 minutes. At this point, the liquid is now called wort.
After mashing comes lautering (separating the wort from spent grain) followed by sparging (the process of rinsing the spent grain with heated water to get as much of the sugars as possible from the remaining grain for the wort.) At Stormcloud once we are done with the spent grain, we give it to a local farmer who feeds it to his pigs.
Once the wort is transferred into a vessel called the kettle, the next step is boiling. This step is often where the majority of hops are added. Typically, hops added at the beginning of the boil are responsible for bitterness, mid boil for flavor, and late boil for aroma. Sometimes people get confused and think yeast also gets added during the boil. This is not the case, largely in part because the hot temperatures would kill it—remember, yeast is a living organism.
Following the boil comes the whirlpool, which clarifies the beer by removing hop matter and proteins. Then the wort goes through a heat exchanger to lower its temperature. At this point it is time for fermentation, when the yeast can truly shine. The wort is transferred into a tank and the yeast is added, or “pitched.” The yeast then proceeds to eat the sugar and convert it into alcohols and carbon dioxide.
What Is Special About Belgian Yeast?
Belgian yeast strains are special in that they tend to have a high tolerance for alcohol and they produce a lot of flavor compounds during the fermentation process. Belgian yeast strains are of the ale species, meaning they prefer warmer temperatures and ferment more quickly than lager yeast. Their tolerance for alcohol is important, as they will be producing a lot of it. Other yeast strains could create enough alcohol that they would die, leaving the beer unfinished. Belgian strains can often handle 10% alcohol solutions and some even higher.
But, the flavor compounds produced by these yeast are truly special. During fermentation Belgian yeast strains are known for producing fruity compounds called esters and spicy compounds called phenols while they work on gobbling up those sugars and creating alcohol. These esters and phenols stick around in the finished beer and tend to remind the drinker of things like pears, bananas, figs, cherries, cloves and pepper. This yeast character is what makes Belgian beers really stand out when compared to beers from other regions!
More on Yeast
Chris White, author of the book Yeast: The Practical Guide to Fermentation shares that many historians believe that civilization itself developed because of yeast/fermented beverages. We as humans went from hunter-gatherers to farmers to grow crops to make fermented beverages. Yeast remained a mysterious, near magical element for a long time—people didn’t know it existed until we had microscopes, they just knew “something” was turning their beverages carbonated and alcoholic. For example, the 1516 Bavarian Beer Purity Law, called Reinheitsgebot, said the only thing beer could be made out of was water, hops, and malt. This is because they didn’t know yeast existed. In 1680 Anton van Leeuwenhoek was the first to observe yeast through a microscope, but didn’t really know anything about it. It wasn’t until the mid-1800s that Louis Pasteur established that yeast was a living microorganism.
“It is not exaggerating to suggest that Pasteur made the greatest advances of anyone in the history of beer, and that these breakthroughs and others led to some important advances for the whole of civilization. His studies into beer and wine fermentation paved the way for his later work on anthrax, rabies, cholera, and other afflictions, which led to the development of the first vaccines.” —Chris White, Yeast: The Practical Guide to Fermentation
Types of Yeast
There are an exponential amount of yeast types in the world, but we’ll talk about a few we use here at Stormcloud. Generally yeast used for brewing can be divided into two main types—ale yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) and lager yeast (Saccharomyces pastorianus.) Ale yeast ferments at the top, at warmer temperatures for a shorter amount of time. I remember the difference between the two using alliteration: Lagers ferment lower in the tank at lower temps for a longer amount of time.
Under the categories of ale yeast and lager yeast comes many subcategories, for example the Belgian house yeast we use. This yeast strain from Belgium falls under the category of ale yeast. There are quite a few varieties of Belgian yeast strains, but are typically known for their esters (fruity character, often reminiscent of pears, plums, citrus fruits, roses, strawberries, other berries and banana) and phenols (spiced, black pepper, or clove.)
As part of our Lakehouse Ales Project, we also use what is known as wild yeast. One example of this is a yeast known as Brettanomyces, or “brett” informally, which has historically been a part of brewing for a very long time.
“Brettanomyces grows naturally on fruit skins, which means in a brewery environment, which historically might have been very much in proximity to a farm or produce, there’s brett aplenty. Which is why back in the day, before sanitation methods were as extensive, brewers often ended up with a partially brett-fermented beer.” —Emily Bell, VinePair
Beer fermented with Brettanomyces is known for its distinct flavor profile—funky and tart, as well as what is known as “barnyard” or “horse blanket”—which may sound strange but can actually be quite an appealing flavor.
Another type of yeast you’ll find we use at Stormcloud is something known as Kveik, which simply translates to “yeast” in Norwegian. Kveik yeast strains are relatively new to the brewing world outside of Norway, and its use is really taking off due to the fact that it can ferment at warmer temperatures, it takes a shorter amount of time to ferment, and it imparts some very unique flavors. Some of the unique flavors you’ll get with Kveik, depending on the strain, are a fruitiness reminiscent of gummy candies, red berries and citrus fruits, orange peel and spice, banana and melon. This has given brewers a whole new, fun flavor palate to play with in crafting their delicious brews. A few of our beers that use Kveik are our Cool Cat Kitty Face Juicy IPA and our SUNRUNNR Ale.
Hops
Hops are the flower of humulus lupulus, which is a climbing plant classified as a bine (yes, with a “b”). They are members of the Cannabaceae family, which makes them the cousins of hemp, marijuana, and hackberry. One thing that makes the hop plant unique is that, “unlike most plants, individual hop plants are male or female'' and “the best quality hops come from unpollinated female plants.” They are native to the Northern Hemisphere, and are believed to have originated in Mongolia at least six million years ago.
Originated in Mongolia? How’d they get all the way here? According to beer journalist Stan Hieronymus, a European type of hop diverged from the Asian group more than one million years ago and a North American group migrated from the Asian continent approximately 500,000 years later. In his book The Story of the Pint, Martin Cornell calls the fact that we may never know how brewers discovered the importance of boiling hops “the greatest unanswered question in the history of brewing.” Before hops were used in beer, brewers used gruit, an herb mixture created to provide flavor and bitterness. The use of gruit was gradually phased out in favor of the use of hops in a slow sweep across Europe between the 11th and late 16th century. In the American colonies, in addition to being used for brewing hops were used in salads, dyes, textiles, basket and wicker-work, and livestock feed. According to Michigan State University's College of Agriculture & Natural Resources, the first commercial hop harvest in the United States was in 1791 in Massachusetts. By 1859 seven‐eighths of the nation's hops were harvested in New York State. As people moved westward, so did the production of hops. Hops began to be grown in California in 1857, Washington in 1866, and Oregon in 1880. At present, the major hop producers are Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.
Inside the hop flower (or “cone”) is a yellow powder called lupulin powder, which contains the key compounds that bring flavor to beer - resin and essential oils. According to the Cicerone Brewing Ingredients and Process Coursebook, “Bitterness comes from the resins; aroma and flavor come from the oils.” In hop resin you’ll find alpha acids, which in natural form won’t dissolve in wort and aren’t very bitter. It takes the heat and agitation of the brewer’s boil to transform them into bitter iso-alpha acids. When brewers use hops for bitterness, they are typically added at the beginning of the boil and are referred to as “bittering hops.” Outside of bitterness, every other hop trait in beer (like aroma and flavor) comes from the oils found in the lupulin gland. The Cicerone Brewing Ingredients and Process Coursebook also states, “hop oils typically constitute less than 2% of the weight of dry hops, and yet they contribute substantial flavor to the beer.” When you leave hops in for an extended time during a boil, most of the hop oils evaporate–this is why brewers add “flavor hops” roughly 30 minutes before the end of the boil and “aroma hops” roughly 10 minutes before the end, instead of adding them all right at the beginning.
Malt
“Malz ist die Seele des Bieres” - translated from German as “Malt is the soul of beer.” Without malted barley, which provides fermentable sugars that lead to the production of alcohol, we would have no beer. To take it a step farther–without maltsters, we’d have no malt!
Recall that malt is one of the four key ingredients in nearly all beer. Most brewing malt is made from barley and wheat, though other grains like oats and rye can also be malted. According to Thomas Kraus-Weyermann of Weyermann Specialty Malts, “malt varieties range from very pale and sweet to amber and biscuit-like to almost black and coffee-like.” This range of malt varieties accounts for not only the different amounts of sugar turned to alcohol, but also the different colors, flavors, and mouthfeel of beer.
The malting process has three primary phases: steeping, germination, and kilning. During steeping, the maltster submerges barley in water on and off for two to three days. The hydration of the grain (with intermittent periods of aeration) initiates a reaction that will start the growth of a new barley plant inside the kernel. During germination, the maltster removes the barley from the steeping water, and keeps it moist for three to five days, allowing the barley seed to begin growing. The kernel produces little rootlets, called chit. Sprowt Labs explains the importance of chit, saying, “maltsters use lab analysis after malting to ensure quality, but, as a big or small malthouse, they rely on chit counts and other sensory analysis during malting.” The final phase in malting is kilning, where the sprouted kernel is loaded onto the perforated floor of a kiln, and fans drive heated air through the floor. First the fans blow warm air to remove grain moisture, and then fan air temperatures vary, depending on what type of flavors are desired in the finished malt.
The art of making malt has been around for thousands of years. Though some form of malt existed before recorded history, there is a legend that early Egyptians were creating malt by lowering baskets of grain into wells to steep, then raising it above the water to germinate, and drying it out in the sun. Throughout history, the making and selling of malt was often tightly controlled. In Nurnberg in 1290, only barley was allowed to be malted, while in Augsburg between 1433 and 1550 beer was only to be made from malted oats. In England malt carried a tax for many years until 1880. By the 17th century, beer was predominantly brewed with malted barley, and it was done on the tiled floor of a large kiln–and maltsters had to constantly be turning it with wooden shovels. The modern malting tools we know today (such as aerated boxes) were first introduced in the late 19th century.
Credit to our amazing Beer Educator emeritus, Amy Martin. For more information on our brewing process, check the blog!