A gustatory journey through the sites of «L'Improbable».»

Microbrewery Fridays - Jonas Follonier

Prepare your palates for yet another journey into the land of craft beer. L'Improbable, in Lausanne, is a microbrewery that focuses on the lightness and finesse of its various beers. We met up with one of its staff, Hugo Claude Lopes, who showed us around the premises and gave us a taste of some of its unique suds.

Like many craft breweries in Switzerland, L’Improbable was founded by a group of friends who discovered a shared passion for hoppy beverages. Founded in 2013 by Ken Katanishi and Noé de Preux, the brewery was joined shortly thereafter by François van Ouwenaller, who helped develop the microbrewery. Hugo Claude Lopes, who opened the door to the building on Rue de la Tour for us, is the newest addition to the team. Friendly and enthusiastic, he showed us around all the rooms and highlighted the brewery’s unique features, while also answering our questions.

Jonas Follonier: You have plenty of space and a lot of equipment; your brewery seems to have already become quite prominent—am I mistaken?

Hugo Claude Lopes: At first, L’Improbable beer was brewed in one of the co-founders’ garages. To accommodate the brewery’s expansion, we opted for larger facilities better suited to our operations—in terms of temperature and equipment, for example. We currently share these facilities with another microbrewery, Le Lance-Pierre, which is also run by young people—but unlike us, they hope to make a living from their passion.

So *L’Improbable* isn’t intended to be a business venture?

No, for each of us, it's a side activity that we do for fun and as a challenge. That doesn't mean we don't all have our own little personal projects.

What's yours?

My dream would be to open a brewpub where only people with disabilities work—people who might otherwise have trouble finding a job: people with autism, blind people, and so on. My girlfriend is an occupational therapist, by the way; she likes this project.

What is the profile of the majority of Improbable's customers?

These are bars and shops in the cities of Lausanne and Vevey. We have a presence at the legendary La Mise en Bière bar, as well as at the Café du Pont, the Chez Ernest bar, and the Folklor.

If you had to name one thing that sets your microbrewery apart from all the others, what would it be?

We never rest on our laurels: we’re never satisfied with just one beer; we’re constantly searching for new methods and ingredients from all over the world. In short, we try to be unexpected.

Despite all the different options you offer, do you follow any guidelines?

We try to brew beers that are fairly light and not too complex, so that they will appeal to consumers. If a beer is strong, its flaws will be less noticeable. So we don’t take the easy way out.

What's your favorite hop?

A hop with a slight citrus note.

Following this question—which had already whetted our appetites—we moved right on to the tasting, kindly arranged by our host along with Simon from the Lance-Pierre microbrewery. My curiosity was piqued by their sour beers, which Hugo had mentioned during our conversation. For the first one, the color—if I may say so—spoke for itself: with its purplish hue, the beet beer turned out to be a rather surprising taste experience. Hugo summed up perfectly what the three of us experienced on the palate: «The beet beer—a journey of flavors.».

Simon, for his part, even went so far as to call it a paradox: «At first, the beet flavor is so pronounced that the beer strikes you as something absolutely bizarre, but then the acidity counterbalances the vegetable’s strong presence and brings out the flavors on the palate, ultimately resulting in a very interesting balance that strips the beer of its initial strangeness.» The lack of competition between the two microbreweries is evident here. So is the shared joy that comes with tasting the second sour beer, whose aroma I’m now invited to guess. After a moment’s mental blank, the words came to me: passion fruit! A fitting conclusion to these brewing adventures, which are truly the fruit of a passion.

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Photo credit: © Jonas Follonier for Le Regard Libre