De Garre Tripel in De Garre, Bruges

There were only so many beers I could write about in The Best Beer in the World and only so much space to pick out individual glasses of beer from the travels, meaning many important and wonderful beers didn’t get the space they perhaps deserved. Instead of going in the book, this begins an on-going series of some of the best beers and experiences I’ve had from around the world.

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It’s just off the Grote Markt, perhaps 40 paces from the Belfry; you take a left and then a right and then you’re there. But I still walked past the tiny alleyway twice before I found it.

Here’s a clue: find La Belgique Gourmade and La Cure Gourmade and right between them is a small gap. You could stand directly opposite those brightly-coloured shops and still not see it. But it’s there, I promise. A few meters in and there’s the well-worn steps leading through a cloistered brick doorway and that’s Staminee De Garre, the place you’ve been searching for, a tiny dark bar with just a few tables and a few taps.

Order their eponymous house tripel and what arrives a minute or two later, on a paper-doilied tray, is one of the finest-looking beers in the world. A thick whip of Swiss meringue foam on top of just-hazy golden beer, the heavy base of the glass is like a fat door knob, the bowl is as sturdy as the beer within it, a beer powerful in its depth. There’s a fragrant peppery-orangey spiciness, there’s a hot sweetness in there, it’s boozy yet refreshing with the foam giving a smooth creaminess. And the cheese. It comes with cheese. These little cubes are the most perfect little tangy-creamy mouthfuls with that mighty brew.

One beer disappears too quickly, leaving its white lace down the glass, and you immediately want another because you don’t want to leave the little bar, don’t want to go back and brave the waves of tourists, don’t want to stop drinking this beautiful beer.

Don’t miss this place in Bruges. And I mean that quite literally; don’t miss the tiny little street with the big beer at the end of it.

The Hop Press: The Weekend of Spontaneous Fermentation

I've written about the Weekend of Spontaneous Fermentation on my Hop Press blog. It really is a unique and wonderful beer festival. You can read the full post here.

48 Hours in Belgium (Part 2)

Continued from yesterday.

Saturday 29^th May

8.30am: I am woken by a loud fart. I’m surprisingly clear-headed (which might mean I’m still pissed). I try to sleep some more, attempting to ignore the man smells around me.

9.30am: Breakfast. I’m desperate for a bacon sandwich, instead I get the European equivalent: bread rolls and slices of ham.

10.30am: Leave hotel, no time for sightseeing, but time to stop at Bier Temple to pick up a couple of interesting bottles.

11.15am: To Cantillon Brewery where Pete joins us along with Dominic, Janine and John. We get a tour around the place and it’s stunning. I’m not sure what I expected, but it beats that. It’s small but it just feels like the best brewery in the world; the cobbled stone floors, the old bottles, the giant wooden barrels of beer, the brewing equipment; it feels like you need to step delicately so you don’t disturb anything, it seems like it creaks and groans and lives. There’s a real magic to the place, a soul. At the top is the Coolship (which sounds like a 70s blaxploitation film set in space, if you ask me) where the beer is pumped into a large, flat tray-like vessel which is opened to the wild yeasts in the air through slats and holes in the roof. This is what makes Cantillon, Cantillon (the Homebrew Chef has some great pictures of the brewery here).

We get to chat to Jean Van Roy, the brewer, who opens bottles for us, including a lambic aged for five years in a cognac barrel which was only bottled in April 2010 and won’t go on public sale - a very rare treat. Like a proper tourist I buy a t-shirt, a glass and two bottles of Cuvee St-Gilloise, the renamed version of Cuvee des Champions, which is delicious. Pete offers around a bottle of his own barrel-aged with cherries experiment (which he very bravely offers to a master of this type of beer) and it’s really good.

Cantillon is a rugged and beautiful place and I could stay in awe for hours. The only strange thing was the group of Dutch guys wearing bright orange cowboy hats and the coach-loads of people who arrived for tours, seemingly having never tasted beer like this before (you should’ve seen their puckered faces – what is this beer?!).

2.30pm: Arrive at De Heeren van Liedekerke for beer and lunch (we leave Dominic, Janine and JC in Brussels). This place is fantastic; a restaurant with seating outside, excellent food and a vast beer list unlike anything I’ve seen before, including a huge selection of vintage beers. A bottle of Cantillon Crianza Helena (a special blend only available in this bar) and four plates of delicious beer-soaking stodge come our way. They even inflate a bouncy castle but sadly there isn’t enough time and as much as we'd love to stay all afternoon we have somewhere to be.

4.30pm: We arrive at the Weekend of Spontaneous Fermentation and meet the others again. Lambic and gueuze in a small hall with lots of friendly people; a beer festival unlike any other I’ve ever been to. Fantastic, unique in so many ways (deserving of its own blog post). There was some excellent beer here, the pick of the lot was a 3 Fonteinen Schaerbeekse Kriek, made exclusively with the eponymous cherries giving the most delicious depth of fruit.

8.30pm: Back to Brussels and to Moeder Lambic. More IV Saison, confirming it as one of the best beers I’ve had in Belgium, and a Valeir Extra, a punchy blonde with big US hops. Toe-tapping jazz plays at the back of the bar while we flick through the long beer list. We continue to search for attractive Belgians but remain unsuccessful (they are, however, all lovely people).

10.00pm: Next stop: Les Brasseurs de la Grand Place (watch out, their website plays some annoying music), a brewpub directly off the Grand Place. There’s handsome brewing equipment as you go in, but the beers really disappointed; well brewed just lacking flavour (and expensive too). We leave, back into the bustling centre, made even busier thanks to the large stage set up in the middle of the Grand Place, playing more jazz – there’s nothing like jazz somewhere like this, it’s cool and relaxing, but funky and uplifting, perfect drinking music.

11.00pm: One in the Hoppy Loft, another Hornbeer, this one the Happy Hoppy Viking, which disappointed – a triple IPA but just a mess of hops (to use JC's term, the brewery seem a bit of a mine field - some brilliant, some a little less so, but I still want to try more). Still no good-looking Belgian women and we finally give up hope (further searches reveal that this is the best looking woman in Belgium).

12.00am: Back to the hotel because we have an unfeasibly early start after a weekend of drinking. Outside, below our hotel window, the party continues until we wake up.

Sunday 30^th May

6.00am: Woken up. Zombie-like we leave and Phil drives us back. I have two packs of crisps and a banana for breakfast. With four guys who have been drinking all weekend and eating junk food, the van fills up like a hideous gas chamber.

9.30am: Back in England.

11.00am: Exactly 53 hours after leaving on Friday I return home and slump down on the sofa, after carrying a rucksack, a small suitcase and a box of beer from the station to my flat. I spend the rest of the day either looking at the bottles of beer I brought home or sleeping.

A whizz-bang tour of Belgium, enough for a flavour, but giving the taste for more. We had some fantastic beers in some great places. Cantillon is a huge draw and should be a must-visit for anyone in Brussels. I need to go back now and do it all again, plus I have a feeling that I’ll be craving IV Saison all summer.

And did someone mention a Brussels Twissup?

48 Hours in Belgium (Part 1)

Friday 28^th May

5.00am: Get up, shower, dress, pack, panic I’ve forgotten something important.

6.00am: Leave house, walk to train station.

7.20am: Meet Phil and Owen in Folkestone and get the Eurotunnel.

10.00am: Arrive in France, heading for Belgium, first stop: Westvleteren for breakfast.

10.30am: Realise Westvleteren is closed on Friday (lazy bloody monks), change of plan: Oostvleteren.

11.00am: Arrive at Oostvleteren, home of De Struise Brouwers, head for their ‘school’, where they have a shop and offices. This is also closed. I begin to start worrying that we will never get a beer. Owen, who is in Europe interning as a brewer, worked at Struise earlier this year so called Urbain, the brewer.

11.30am: After arriving at Deca, where the Struise beer is brewed (they don’t have a brewery, instead they rent space where they can make, package and distribute their beers), and meet Urbain, a short, scraggy guy with stress and laughter lines etched into his skin, who speeds around like a madman, here one moment, gone the next, infectiously busy and cheery. He’s bottling, labelling and packing palates of Pannepot, as well as many other simultaneous jobs. I have never seen so much Pannepot in my life – over five palates full – and we help to lift the crates off the trolley and pack them.

12.00pm: Work done, we finally get a beer: Saint Amatus 12. We might have failed to get a Westvleteren but this is the next best thing: Struise’s ostensible 'copy' of Westvleteren 12. It was young (too young, said Urbain, as he poured and then tasted it before leaving us for half an hour while he filled in some paperwork) but it was stunning: a body like velvet, dried fruit sweetness then a super-fresh hop flavour, leaving a dry finish. They are working on a new bottle cap for this beer which is a firmly tongue-in-cheek nod to their West neighbours.

1.00pm: We are in the office/shop for the brewers, sitting upstairs in what can best be described as a bachelor pad with the best beer fridge ever, drinking bottles with the brewer: Elliot Brew, a big IPA brewed with Mikkeller, wonderfully fresh and very good; Roste Jeanne, a delicious red Belgian ale; Mocha Bomb, a blend of stouts (50% Black Albert aged on coffee beans, 25% Hel & Verdoemenis from De Molen aged in Jack Daniels barrels and 25% Cuvee Delphine – yes seriously) to make a superheroic one to kick everyone else’s arse; Black Mes, which is Black Albert aged for three months in Caol Ila’s Distillers Version 1995 casks, which is an incredibly good whisky-aged beer with the barrel adding just enough to improve the original (if such a thing is even possible); and finally a couple of Westvleteren 12s (we got there in the end). Carlo, another member of the Struise family, shares a couple of the beers and then it’s time for us to leave.

2.30pm: Hungry – need food!

3.30pm: Arrive in Roeselare for a Rodenbach Foederbier (the unfiltered and unpasteurised version of Rodenbach) and lunch (over-dry croquet monsieur) in the busy square. I don’t really like Rodenbach so this wasn’t my thing (it’s the aceto that I don’t enjoy, that vinegary harshness at the back of the throat). The question of attractive Belgian women is first raised: are there any?

5.30pm: Get to 3 Fonteinen in Beersel, meet Armand the blender and (former) brewer, tour the cool, aromatic cellar, lined with chalk-marked casks of different beers ready for blending. We try the last batch of lambic brewed on site, straight from the barrel, which is young but delicious (of course it is, we’re drinking it in the cellar, surrounded by giant barrels of lambic – there’s something to be said for context) then drink their kriekenlambic in the bar, a bright blush of pink with a wonderful cherry depth. Did you know they used 10-year-old challenger hops to brew with here? 3 Fonteinen is a great place.

8.00pm: Arrive in Brussels at hotel after driving around looking for parking for ages. The hotel (hostel) is best described as cheap, cheerful and cosy, overlooking a very busy and noisy street, with four single beds lined up side by side, perfect for four drunk guys on a budget...

8.30pm: Eat something disgusting (half a baguette stuffed with two burgers and fries) to prepare me for an evening of drinking. Brussels is lively, busy, jazz music plays all around because we arrive during a Jazz Marathon.

9.00pm: Meet Dominic from Marble Brewery, Janine, girlfriend of Dom and brewer at Ashover, and John Clarke at Moeder Lambic. We sit outside, in the warm evening, and drink. Taras Boulba is light, dry and hoppy, just what I needed after imperial stouts, quads and sour beer all day. A IV Saison is just about the best beer I drink all weekend, packed with tropical fruit and just so bloody tasty. We continue to look for attractive Belgians without success.

10.30pm: To Poechenellekelder, opposite the lamest national landmark I’ve ever seen: the Manneken Pis. A bottle of year-old Orval (because I couldn’t not have one) and various others, including a 2008 Cantillon Zwanze, made with rhubarb. A great evening just chilling outside drinking and talking.

12.15am: To Porte Noire, a dark and grungy underground bar, filled with smoke and people (the non-smoking section is empty when we arrive, in fact they have to turn the lights on for us). It’s salubrious, the walls are bare, the tables wobble too much to be safe, but it’s a great place to drink late at night. The Hercules Stout was very good.

1.30am: To Delerium’s Hoppy Loft, a smelly, hot, smoky place with a decent selection of taps and bottles, including a new brewery to look out for – Hornbeer (Black Magic Woman is fantastic, their IIPA is delicious and their bottles look great). Dom also thought buying a bottle of Sam Adams’ Triple Bock was a good idea. It probably wasn’t.

2.30am: Chips and mayonnaise. Still searching for good looking Belgians and even at this time of night with beer-blurred vision we are unsuccessful.

3.15am: Bed.

Hopping to Belgium

Back from Belgium and I had some fantastic beers in some fantastic places. I managed to drink a few of the recommendations from last week and IV Saison from Brasserie Jandrain-Jandrenouille was probably my favourite beer from the weekend (or, at least, the beer I’d want to drink most of, most regularly). 1001 Beers tells me that the brewers have day jobs of working for Yakima Chief, the Washington state hop producers, based in the Belgium office, and that sure shows through in this beer – fruity, citrusy, tropical flavours on top of a full and smooth body, with hints of Saison spice and zest, the sort of beer you guzzle down because it’s so delicious and effortlessly drinkable for its 6.5% abv. Sitting inside or outside the excellent Moeder Lambic in Brussels, this beer, poured on draught, is perfect.

A draught Taras Boulba also went down very well after an afternoon spent drinking imperial stouts, quads and lambics. A Valeir Extra followed the IV Saison perfectly with a great whack of US hops, making a Belgian Blonde into something so much more interesting (Belgian Blondes bore me in the same way as Brown Bitters). These three beers, with their liberal use of hops, were exactly the sort of beers I was hoping to find. Another discovery was Hornbeer from Denmark, with fantastic looking bottle (except for their choice of font) and great beer inside, they are one to look out for, particularly their Black Magic Woman and the Imperial IPA. Of course, we also drank a lot of other excellent beers, including visits to De Struise, 3 Fonteinen, Cantillon and the Weekend of Spontaneous Fermentation, but more on those in later posts...