BELGIUM:
One for the beer lovers
f you’ve caught the beer bug, there’s one place you must go: Belgium. Other nations have great brewing traditions but nowhere else has such a culture of diversity. There are sour beers, sweet beers, bitter beers, beers that taste of banana, citrus peel, cloves, coriander and much more besides; there are beers aged in huge barrels, beers made by monks, beers fermented in urban attics by wild yeast. It’s a brilliant, eccentric place.
From Brussels, there are trains all over Belgium. Not that you really need to leave the capital: one of the greatest breweries in the world, Cantillon, is a 10-minute walk from Gare du Midi.
There are plenty of guides, too: Camra’s superb Good Beer Guide Belgium, now into its eighth edition, is essential. There are a few guided options too — the most wellrespected is Podge’s Belgian Beer Tours.
However you decide to travel, there’s a lot to enjoy once you’re there.
“Coming here to visit breweries and cafés is fun,” says Paul Walsh, editor of Belgian Beer and Food magazine.
“Most breweries don’t take themselves seriously as tourist destinations. The best are run by eccentrics who are welcoming and slightly bemused that people want to visit.
“You get a lot of minuscule breweries whose owners have decided to put on a weekend tour to pull in a little extra cash. The brewer gives the tour. There’s no script. Political correctness is not a priority. They don’t start on time, and they run late — and you may get pulled into an impromptu fivehour tasting session, with the brewer running down to the cellar to bring up 15-year-old vintages that he had forgotten about.”
West Flanders, a place well-known to World War 1 buffs, is a good place for a beer tourist to start. There’s lots of excellent beer here: my favourites are the Abbey beers made by St Bernardus, while Walsh recommends De Dolle Brouwers in Diksmuide. Try them and many more at Kaffee Bazaar, a lively bar close to the centre of Ypres.
The best tour is at Rodenbach in Roeselare, a town just over 16km to the east of Ypres. Rodenbach owes its delicious tartness to two years’ ageing in large, stout wooden barrels, a technique pioneered in the 18th century. “It all happens in the wood,” head brewer Rudi Ghequire says.
Antwerp, 40 minutes on the train from Brussels, has its own rich beer culture. The local drop is De Koninck, which was modelled after an English ale following former owner Modeste Van den Bogaert’s time in the UK during World War 2. The visitor centre, based in the old brewery, is a little light on content, alas; better to enjoy a glass of this dry, easy-going beer at the city’s classic brown café, Oud Arsenaal, with its tiled floor and elegantly faded décor. Be prepared to share your seat.
Founded in 1900, Cantillon is Brussels’ richest treasure. It is as much a museum and a bar as it is a brewery: you can guide yourself around before enjoying a glass of Gueuze, the vinous, complex, gently sparkling ale that is made here. It’s not to be missed. Brussels’ best bar, Moeder Lambic Fontainas, is a 15-minute walk into town, on Place Fontainas.
One of the most interesting recent developments has been the publication of a pair of walking guides, by the Belgian hiking organisation Sentiers de Grande Randonnée, linking the Trappist breweries at Chimay, Rochefort and Orval.
It can be downloaded for à10 from the organisation’s website. If you finish at the latter — and I recommend that you do — you can celebrate with a glass of Orval Vert, which is only available at À l’Ange Gardien, the restaurant that stands in the shadow of the monastery.
Then there’s Ghent and Bruges, two cities with much to offer beer-lovers. Ghent boasts a brewery, Gruut, that makes beer without hops, a throwback to medieval tradition, using herbs and spices; try it at Waterhuis aan de Bierkant. Bruges, meanwhile, has one of the best beer bars in the world, ‘t Brugs Beertje, where aficionados work their way through the vintage bottles.
From Brussels to Bruges, this is a country with an amazingly rich selection of bars and brews