I just got back from Belgium, where I had the opportunity to do a bit of beer tourism. For those who don't know, Belgium produces both the best beers in the world and an incredible range of styles. It's a place where you can see signs like this as a matter of routine:
I was in Brussels, which makes up what it lacks in charm with...beer. My first stop was a little cafe right outside my hotel in the Grasmarkt.
Here I enjoyed 2 beers from the
Trappist Brewery Westmalle. Oddly, many of the best beers are brewed by Trappist monks in their monasteries. I don't really get it, but w/e. I started with a Westmalle Dubbel (Double) which is a very traditional brown ale. Double means double the alcohol; these beers will range from around 6% to 8% ABV. It is dry and fruity at once, and is really easy to drink. Like most doubles, it looks chocolately brown.
I then switched to Westmalle Triple to have with my Steak Frites
Tripel means...triple the alcohol. This one is 9.5% ABV. It's a fantastic golden colored beer which packs more punch than the dubbel. It's fruitier & more bitter; the dubbel would have been better with dinner, but that's ok.
After dinner I moved to the Delirium Cafe, which carries 2004 beers. It's filled with tourists having a drunken good time. I spent a lot of time here. I started with a St. Bernadus Abt 12, which is truly a world class beer. Not be trifled with. A 10.5% Quadrupel, and the taste really punches you in the face.
It pours a hazy brown, and there are a ton of tastes here. Raisins, caramel, malt, and alcohol among them. This was the 2nd best beer I had in Belgium. I went home drunker than anticipated.
The next night I moved on to Les Rulles, a sweet triple.
This pours white/hazy yellow, and you can really taste the wheat and yeast. I liked it, bought a bottle to bring home, and it broke in my luggage somewhere over the Atlantic. [censored]. more on that later.
I continued the night by trying the St. Bernadus Triple, and by talking to a Japanese guy who looked just like Hiro from Heroes. We got drunk together and we ate this sausage plate.
It was as good as it looks, and we got really popular when they brought it out.
I had Saturday free, and went on a tour of a brewery in Brussels, the
Cantillon Brewery. This is an old school place where there is 1 guy selling tickets, another one answering questions, they are father/son, and they are the 2 brewers. I was able to talk to the son for a while and talk beer. They use 100% organic ingredients, and take advantage of the magical spontaneous fermentation. This means they don't add yeast to the beer, they just wait for the wild yeasts in the air to float into their open containers. Awesome, and weird. Here, they make
Lambic, Gueuze (a blend of various aged Lambics),
and Kriek (cherry flavored), as well as a few other styles.
The brewery is filled with lots of rooms that look like this, with bottles and barrels and spiderwebs
Here is the gueuze
It's blended using 5 or 6 different Lambics to achieve the desired taste, and like wine will taste different every year. It's a sour beer that is very crisp.
Next I tried a kriek, and then a Rosé de Gambrinus (Raspberry):
They use real fruit for their beers, unlike most breweries who these days use syrup. They taste amazingly fresh and crisp. Trouble is that they have run out of beer (!) and will cease exporting until the next brewing season can start in September. they gave me their importers contact info, who happens to live in Mass. I will look him up.
I then moved on to the Bier Circus, a small restaurant who specialized in a large vintage beer list. Not all beers age well, but Belgians which undergo secondary fermentations in the bottle often will. Fresh from the Cantillon visit, I opted to start with a 1998 Iris.
You've probably noticed by now that all self-respecting Belgian restaurants will serve beers in their own glasses. For Cantillon they take it a step further by making a beer for this one style!
I'm just going to link to their description of this beer, b/c it was awesome but confused me.
Link.
You'll note the bottle is soaked b/c it exploded when it was uncorked, so I got 1/2 off. sweet.
with dinner I had the Rochefort 6.
This was a very drinkable beer from the same monks who produce the outstanding quadruple Rochefort 10. At this point I couldn't down any more quadruple, I had had it. Just wasn't used to it.
I also made a couple stops to retail stores while I was there, so I could bring home beers that are impossible/cost prohibitive in Boston. Trouble was that my eyes were bigger than my suitcase, and I bought too much. Not wanting to get dinged by the airline for overweight luggage (and I already had 2 bags), I made the heroic decision to down a bottle in my hotel room.
I didn't have a fridge in my room, so I grabbed bowls of ice from the hotel and soaked the bottle in my sink. This was a really easy to drinks, crisp, and thankfully regular 5.5% ABV.
With that bottle gone, I packed up 17 bottles to bring back with me.
Here are the 33cl bottles
I grabbed 2 quadrupels from Rochefort, 2 from St. Bernadus, and 1 triple from St. Bernadus. Those other unlabeled bottles? Well, they don't look like much, but they are probably the 2 hardest beers to find in the world. The monks from the Westvleteren Brewery have a vow to produce/sell only what they need to live. In addition they have no distribution deals, and sell the beer only at their monastery - sometimes. They have sued many people who resell it, so few "officially" do it.
The Westvleteren 12 is the one with the gold cap, and is often called the best beer in the world.
The Blue Cap is the dubbel, and is usually ranked the #1 dubbel in the world and the top 10 overall.
I haven't tried either yet. Will update thread when I do.
Here are the 750ml bottles I brought home.
Most notable is the one in the middle, from our old friend Cantillon. This is their best beer, made with cherries, rasberries, and a blend of 2 YO lambic. This one is a 2004 vintage. They didn't have any at the brewery, and I was lucky to get this bottle.
in sum, Brussels is really heaven for the beer lover. You'll be able to find some of the above at specialty liquor stores, and if not Duvel and Chimay are widely distributed in the US. Lots of other great Belgian are too. But not the Westvleteren [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]