Tag Archives: Belgium

139. De Dolle Arabier

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In the previous post, I hinted that a trip back to Poechenellekelder in Brussels might be on the cards, and so it happened that a very pleasant Sunday afternoon saw Threehundredbeers lumber off the Eurostar, blinking in the sunshine, and make straight for Rue du Chêne.

You may remember Poechenellekelder from such poorly-photographed beers as Pauwel Kwak and Bush Ambrée. It’s a unique place lined floor-to-ceiling with intriguing and occasionally macabre artefacts including puppets, musical instruments and various brewery-related memorobilia.

The café is a classic slice of Brussels and a cornerstone of the city’s beer tourist trail. And Threehundredbeers has a little unfinished business to which to attend regarding Poechenellekelder’s extensive beer menu.

De Dolle Arabier at Poechenellekelder

Founded sometime around 1980, De Dolle Brouwers (“The Mad Brewers”) are a relatively young brewery by Belgian standards, but their Arabier has become a bit of a modern classic. It’s classified as a Golden Ale in The Book, but it’s very much in the Belgian style, and nothing like some of the rather drab British entries.

You can tell it’s Belgian with one sniff, as that classic yeast is front and centre and, relatively unusually for a Belgian beer, there are big peppery hop aromas too.

Those hops contribute a huge, pleasing bitterness, lifting the beer clear of standard Belgian blonde territory. In fact the hop bitterness combined with the hefty 8% ABV payload means this one is perhaps more reminiscent of a Tripel than a Golden Ale, and that’s no bad thing.

There are mouthwatering grapefruit notes, and just the slightest sour hint suggesting a yeast such as Brettanomyces might be involved to a minor extent too, although it’s subtle enough that my inexperienced tastebuds couldn’t swear by it.

Either way, this is a hugely satisfying beer, complex and rich, although all of that combined meant that a second might have been a little overwhelming, at least in terms of flavour.

Instead, fed, relaxed, and pleased to be back in one of my favourite bars and favourite cities, I abandoned blogging duties for the evening and commandeered a gigantic 12% ABV Malheur 12°. But just the one: we’ve an early start and a busy day planned for tomorrow.

Facts and Figures

Brewery: De Dolle Brouwers, Esen, Belgium
Style: Golden Ales
Strength: 8.0% ABV
Found at: Poechenellekelder, Rue du Chêne, Brussels, Belgium
Serving: 330 ml bottle

138. Caracole Troublette

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Here’s a beer that’s been sat around the house, and indeed somewhat neglected for a while since it arrived in a case from Beers of Europe a year or so ago.

Whilst I’m not typically a great fan of the Belgian-style Wheat Beers, I’ll keep an open mind. I have tried one Caracole beer, their Ambrée, at Poechenellekelder in Brussels, and it was very good indeed.

Let’s give this one a chance.

Caracole Troublette

There’s that slightly murky golden colour so typical of the style, though it’s a little less cloudy than some, despite a reasonably hard pour to make sure any yeast gets in there, which appears to be the done thing.

It smells distinctly Belgian: when it comes to beer, Belgium is all about the yeast, and as expected it’s prominent here.

To my surprise, I actually rather like this one. It’s light but not as watery as the Blanche de Namur. If anything, it’s a little more like a standard Belgian blonde than any wheat beer I can remember.

There’s an interesting citrus tang in there, and I wonder if Troublette contains a hint of orange peel, which is a common addition to this style of beer. There’s a subtle but pleasing peppery hop bitterness which is a rarity for a Belgian beer, but welcome all the same.

Served chilled, this would be a thoroughly refreshing summer beer. I can well imagine myself sipping one on the terrace outside Poechenellekelder while watching the tourists go by.

You know, that gives me an idea. Stay tuned…

Facts and Figures

Brewery: Brasserie Caracole, Falmignoul, Belgium
Style: Belgian-style Wheat Beers
Strength: 5.5% ABV
Found at: Beers of Europe
Serving: 330ml bottle

126. Drie Fonteinen Oude Geuze

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Threehundredbeers is a huge fan of Cask Pub & Kitchen in Pimlico. For five years, Cask has been at the forefront of the beer revolution that has been happening in London and beyond. It was the first branch in what became the Craft Beer Co. group, and it’s basically just a great pub.

So it’s a bit of a surprise that not one of the preceding 125 beers has been found there. Let’s put that right by spending a very pleasant Sunday afternoon working our way through the tap lineup and rummaging around in the remarkably well-stocked fridges.

This will do nicely.

Drie Fonteinen Oude Geuze at CASK Pub & Kitchen

That’s Drie Fonteinen Oude Geuze, from the tiny town of Beersel in Belgium, not far from Brussels. You know all about Geuze by now of course, thanks to our visit to Cantillon, and that cracking Boon Mariage Parfait Kriek we had more recently.

There are three Drie Fonteinen beers to track down, and the Oude Geuze is I guess the core of the range. It’s a blend of 1, 2 and 3-year-old barrel-aged Lambics, blended and refermented in the bottle, in this case for about a year and a half, to become a classic, sour, frothy Geuze.

Frothy enough to try to escape from the bottle before we’ve even paid for it, in fact. That stirs up the yeast a little, and so the Oude Geuze pours a handsome, hazy amber colour with a characteristic mountain of white foam that fades quickly.

The aroma is of big, mouth-watering citrus sourness, underpinned with subtle woody notes which I assume to be a result of all that time spent in barrels.

That carries through to the flavour, where the sour is of course front-and-centre, but perfectly balanced by generous mouthfuls of citrus fruit and those years of aging, leading to a thoroughly complex beer. There’s the dryest, longest finish that I can remember ever coming across on a beer.

As refreshing as it is, this is a beer that’s well worth taking your time over and savouring slowly to appreciate all those flavours.

Without wishing to get all philosophical, for me Geuze has become symbolic of the beer journey this ridiculous blog has taken me on. When I tried my first ever example, the Boon Geuze, I apparently didn’t much care for it. With a lot more experience under my belt, it has quickly become one of my very favourite styles.

Fortunately there are a few more to track down, and a glance behind the bar suggests Cask may able to help us out again in the near future.

Facts and Figures

Brewery: Brouwerij 3 Fonteinen, Beersel, Belgium
Style: Lambic and Gueuze
Strength: 6.0% ABV
Found at: CASK Pub & Kitchen, Charlwood Street, London SW1V
Serving: 375ml bottle

123. Maredsous Tripel

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Let’s continue a rather productive visit to Lowlander by following the Paulaner Salvator with something slightly stronger.

This is the Maredsous Tripel, an Abbey Beer from Belgium. To clear up any confusion, it was formerly known as Maredsous 10, which is how it appears in The Book. I notice it’s not explicitly listed on the menu at Lowlander, but ask nicely and the staff may just be able to conjur one up.

Maredsous Tripel at Lowlander, London

This is a beer that resides very much in the same category as previous Belgian-style Tripels that we’ve seen, such as the La Trappe Tripel and perhaps the archetype for the style, the Westmalle Tripel.

By way of a recap, Tripels tend to be blonde in colour, but stronger and hoppier than a typical Belgian Blonde. They stand in contrast to the darker, fruitier Dubbel style, for example La Trappe Dubbel.

And so there are no surprises when the Maredsous pours a rich, deep yellow colour, with some light, white froth on top. It looks and smells almost honeyish.

All the expected Tripel flavours are there: subtle dried bananas, Belgian yeast and fragrant hops. At 10% ABV it’s a big old beer, and the alcohol heat isn’t hidden by any means. It’s balanced out by that honey sweetness, though, and the result is a very pleasant beer.

It improves as it warms, as butterscotch notes appear and the hop bitterness becomes more apparent, though that alcohol burn never really goes away.

I appear to have written “better than Westmalle” in my scribbled tasting notes. That’s a bold claim, and it’s one I’ll have to selflessly research rigorously before committing myself to it fully.

Facts and Figures

Brewery: Abbaye de Maredsous, Denée, Belgium
Style: Abbey Beers
Strength: 10.0% ABV
Found at: Lowlander Grand Café, Drury Lane, London WC2B
Serving: 330ml bottle

120. Boon Mariage Parfait Kriek

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Oh BrewDog. You mischievous bunch of pseudo-anarchist yet ruthlessly commercially driven scamps. Stop winning me over by actually being really nice guys who genuinely know and care a great deal about good beer.

And stop tempting me back to spend all of my wages at your fancy new Clapham Junction bar with its magnificently cornucopial supply of rare and delicious beers, such as Boon Mariage Parfait Kriek.

Actually don’t stop: this would have been a difficult one to get hold of otherwise.

This is a very special sour Gueuze from Lembeek in Belgium, brewed with no less than 400g of overripe, sour cherries per litre of beer, and then aged in oak vats for many months before being expertly blended and then refermented in bottle for a minimum of two years.

Boon Mariage Parfait Kriek at BrewDog Clapham Junction

Here we have a bottle of the 2011 vintage of Boon Mariage Parfait Kriek. It’s presented in a smart 375ml bottle with a sexy little champagne cork arrangement on top. Full credit must go to the barman for trusting the customer to open and pour this one themself.

It pours a rich, wine-dark red colour with a big frothy pink head which fades almost immediately. The aroma is light and delicate, with modest, fragrant hints of fruit and sourness.

That lightness and delicacy carries over to the flavour. Despite the respectable 8% ABV payload and the huge amounts of fruit, wood and time that have gone into this it’s such a subtle beer. You can taste the cherries for sure, but to call this a fruit beer would be to miss the point entirely.

There’s almost entirely no sweetness there at all, just a huge long dry finish that has you reaching for the next sip immediately. For all that dryness, it’s surprisingly refreshing, and as with the Cantillon Kriek, it’s sour, complex and just truly special.

It may well sound pretentious, but this is a real connoisseur’s beer, and in no way could my clumsy tasting notes and affectionate digs at BrewDog do it justice.

Apparently the Mariage Parfait should age beautifully over quite literally a matter of decades, and so now I’ve enjoyed this one, that bottle of the 2012 I found at BottleDog a couple of months ago can be put aside for a special occasion many years into the future.

Facts and Figures

Brewery: Brouwerij Boon nv, Lembeek, Belgium
Style: Lambic and Gueuze
Strength: 8.0% ABV
Found at: BrewDog Clapham Junction, Battersea Rise, London SW11
Serving: 375ml bottle

100. Westvleteren Blond

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I feel under a certain amount of pressure to come up with something a bit special for beer number 100. I hope this will do, as it’s a bottle of something rather rare which I brought back from Belgium when I visited in February.

Westvletern Blond - cap

Westvleteren Blond is one of three beers brewed by the Trappist monks at The Abbey of Saint Sixtus of Westvleteren somewhere deep in the Flanders countryside. The Blond is perhaps the least famous of the three, and the lightest in terms of alcohol, at a sensible-by-Belgian-standards 5.8%.

The beers are officially only available at the monastery, and even then only after you jump through some pretty draconian hoops. The reason is that the monks have no desire to become a commercial brewing operation, instead preferring to sell just enough beer to pay for the upkeep of the monastery, and to allow them to carry on with their monky business undisturbed.

So they’ve rather shot themselves in the foot, then, by brewing what many consider to be some of the very finest beers in the world. The combination of lack of supply and huge demand mean they’re also some of the rarest and most difficult to find.

Fortunately for 300 Beers, there’s a small, shall we say, grey market in Brussels, and you can get hold of them if you know where to look, at least if you don’t mind parting with a few extra euros.

Westvleteren Blond

As you can see, the monks don’t even feel the need to do anything so pretentious as to put a label on their bottles, instead squeezing all the required information onto the cap.

There’s a hefty dose of loose yeast in the bottle, making it impossible to pour without getting a little in your glass, which doesn’t matter. As such, the beer pours an attractive, cloudy, deep golden colour with a modest amount of tenacious white froth which coats the glass beautifully.

The nose is all grapefruit, honey, delicate floral hops and Belgian yeast. The mouthfeel is interesting for a blond, as it’s so velvety smooth, and the beer is really quite full bodied.

To taste, that honey is there in spades and is joined by banana fruit courtesy of the malts, and big pepper and clove spice notes from the Northern Brewer hops.

The spices are present right through to the finish, which is surprisingly bitter for a blond. In fact it’s distinctly salty, in a way that’s reminiscent of an unaged Orval, which in many ways I guess is quite a similar beer.

The saltiness is a little odd at first, but soon becomes mouthwatering, and combines with the slightest of sour and farmhouse notes to provide an overall effect that’s a great deal more satisfying than many Belgian blonds.

Whilst it was always going to be hard for the Blond to live up to the high regard afforded to the two other beers in the Westvleteren family, in particular the Abt, there really is a very special quality to it: a real balance and refinement that only the finest beers ever achieve.

Facts and Figures

Brewery: The Abbey of Saint Sixtus of Westvleteren, Flanders, Belgium
Style: Trappist Beers
Strength: 5.8% ABV
Found at: De Biertempel, Grasmarkt, Brussels, Belgium
Serving: 330ml bottle

87. Rodenbach Grand Cru

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Since we’re in the West End, let’s pop into Lowlander, a super little specialist beer café on Drury Lane.

Threehundredbeers is a big fan of Lowlander: with friendly, efficient table service, a very impressive range of—typically, but not exclusively Belgian—beers, and a sophisticated yet relaxed atmosphere, it’s as close to being back in Brussels as one can get in London.

Of course, you’ll pay exactly twice as much for a given beer as you’d pay in, say, Poechenellekelder, but hey, this is London, and if you can find this range of beers cheaper elsewhere, well done you.

And this beer certainly is something a little out of the ordinary. Indeed, Rodenbach Grand Cru is in a chapter all of its own in The Book: it’s categorised as a Belgian Sour Red Beer, which describes it rather well—it is all four of those things—though the style is often known as Flanders Red.

Rodenbach Grand Cru

Rodenbach Grand Cru pours a lovely deep reddish brown colour, with a modest layer of tan foam sat nonchalantly on the top. The first sip is both sweet and sour in equal measure. Those flavours are followed by a smooth malty body full of tangy dried fruits, pepper and musty wild yeast.

If you concentrate, you can also detect the woody edge that results from the beer having spent the better part of two years ageing in oak barrels before bottling.

As someone whose experience of sour beers has been limited to things like Gueuzes from Cantillon, and The Kernel’s hugely refreshing London Sour, this one comes as quite a surprise. One doesn’t expect sourness from a beer of this colour, or as full-bodied as this.

And yet it works remarkably well: with a Gueuze it can sometimes be hard to taste anything beyond the sourness, but as a red beer, this is so well-balanced, with its malty sweetness complementing the sour beautifully.

Lowlander Grand Café

This is a deeply complex beer. There’s so much going on that the experience of drinking it is closer to enjoying a fine wine than to knocking back a pint or two of lager in your local. It’s even served in what appears to be an oversized wine glass.

Rodenbach Grand Cru really is special. It’s a fine beer, though as with other sours, I can’t imagine wanting to drink more than one or two in a session. That said, this is definitely one beer I’m glad that the blog has introduced me to, and one that I’ll be enjoying again as soon as I can.

Facts and Figures

Brewery: Brouwerij Rodenbach, Roeselare, Belgium
Style: Belgian Sour Red Beer
Strength: 6.0% ABV
Found at: Lowlander Grand Café, Drury Lane, London WC2B
Serving: 330ml Bottle

84. Bush Ambrée

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Let’s continue on our mission to sample our way through the impressive Poechenellekelder beer menu, this time with a daunting 12.0% ABV Belgian amber beer, Bush Ambrée.

Bush Ambrée at Poechenellekelde, Brussels

The deep, rich golden beer certainly looks the part, and as with every single beer I tried at Poechenellekelder—and indeed anywhere in Brussels—it’s served in the correct glassware, in this case a rather nice looking Bush-branded chalice with a pleasing cracked glass effect.

The bottle claims this to be “The Strongest Belgian Beer”, which is a bit of a stretch since the same brewery makes at least two stronger ones, but still, as only the second beer of the evening, I’m already wondering if I’ve peaked too early.

One sip is enough to reassure me that this was a good choice. Sure, it’s boozy, but the warming alcohols are balanced out with a rich, spiced-honey sort of sweetness and a smooth, full body full of delicious sappy malts.

Bush Ambrée is reminiscent of a Barleywine, and while similar in style to Pauwel Kwak, it’s a little lighter and less sticky, making it even more easy-drinking. Which could get dangerous.

But having said that, I really enjoy the culture and civility around beer drinking in Begium. While many of the beers are hopelessly strong, the emphasis is always on quality over quantity. Table service and slow, measured enjoyment of the product are the norm, rather than a fight to the bar and necking as many pints of lager as you can before the bell rings, which is more the British approach.

I rounded off the visit to Poechenellekelder with a delicious, dark St. Bernardus Abt 12. That one isn’t The Book, but it’s probably a good job, since my notes start to become a little less legible at this point.

Facts and Figures

Brewery: Brasserie Dubuisson, Chaussée de Mons, Pipaix, Belgium
Style: Old Ales, Barley Wines and Vintage Ales
Strength: 12.0% ABV
Found at: Poechenellekelder, Rue du Chêne, Brussels, Belgium
Serving: 330ml Bottle

83. Pauwel Kwak

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Beer number 83 is one of those ones that you really do have to travel to enjoy properly. Pauwel Kwak obviously has to be served with its unique glass and wooden stand, and quite frankly you’d feel a bit daft sitting in a boozer in South London with one of these, even if you could find it.

Fortunately, in Brussels no one bats an eyelid, though I suspect this may be more as a result of the number of tourists who order a Kwak just for the glass, rather than the number of Bruxellois who would regularly drink it.

Pauwel Kwak

I ordered this one at the rather wonderful Poechenellekelder—“the puppet cellar”—in Rue du Chêne, an instant favourite bar lined floor-to-ceiling with masques, marionettes, ventriloquist’s dummies and all sorts of black and white photos and assorted historical memorobilia.

Helpfully for 300 Beers, it also has a truly impressive beer menu running to something like 130 beers, almost all of them Belgian.

Poechenellekelder, Brussels

The legend behind the glass, by the way, is that it was designed in the early 19th century by innkeeper Pauwel Kwak—”Fat Paul” to his mates—to be served to coachmen to slip into their stirrup as they rode away on horseback. That’s plainly nonsense, of course, and the truth seems to be that it was invented in the 1980s as a marketing gimmick.

Which is a bit of a shame really, because the fame of the glass tends to overshadow what is in fact a rather wonderful beer.

Pauwel Kwak is a warm, deep, reddish ambrée colour with a big foam head that froths all over the place when poured, but quickly calms down.

It’s thick, rich and a little sticky, and is quite reminiscent of a Barleywine. It’s low on hop bitterness, but full of treacly malt sweetness and warming alcohols.

Kwak is pleasingly strong at 8.4%, though admittedly that’s only the third strongest of three beers I tried in Poechenellekelder that night, thus making the delicious, restorative black coffee I enjoyed there the following day particularly welcome.

All in all, a lovely beer, and one I look forward to trying again some day, perhaps even as part of a return visit to Poechenellekelder before long.

Facts and Figures

Brewery: Brouwerij Bosteels, Buggenhout, Belgium
Style: Extra Strong Beers and Bitters
Strength: 8.4% ABV
Found at: Poechenellekelder, Rue du Chêne, Brussels, Belgium
Serving: 330ml Bottle

A Visit to Cantillon Brewery

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For the beer lover, no trip to Belgium is complete without a visit to the venerable Cantillon brewery, home to some of the world’s most famous Lambics and Gueuzes, sour beers that are certainly an acquired taste, but have the tendency to make serious beer geeks rhapsodise for days.

Ask brewers at the height of their profession, such as Evin O’Riordain of London’s The Kernel, who they’re inspired by, and the answer is Cantillon.

And so it was that a beautiful spring afternoon saw 300 Beers make something of a pilgrimage to 56, Rue Gheude in Brussels. Here’s the brewery itself, complete with matching van:

Cantillon Brewery

The brewery appears closed at first glance, but be brave and open the door, and you step into a time capsule full of evocative sights, sounds and, in particular, smells. Cantillon have been on this site since 1900, and it shows in the accumulated dust and cobwebs. The brewery remains resolutely family-owned, and brewing methods and equipment are virtually unchanged in generations.

You pay a few euros for the visit, including a self-guided tour and samples of two beers. After a brief orientation you’re handed a detailed pamphlet which explains the workings and history of the brewery, and then you’re left to wander around at your leisure.

You can take all the time you want, and even—as I did—go around twice if you wish. I was lucky enough to have the entire brewery to myself, apart from a couple of Cantillon workers manning the bottling line, and another chap studiously washing kegs. The latter task is perhaps one of the least glamorous yet most vital parts of any brewery’s operations.

The brewing process begins with the mash tun, where malted barley, wheat and steaming water are combined to make wort, a thick, porridgy stew full of fermentable sugars and other tasty goodness:

The Cantillon Mash Tun

After being separated from the spent grain—known locally as “Draff”, which is used as animal feed—the resulting wort is pumped upstairs to the copper kettle, where it’s boiled with aged hops to sterilise and condense it, and to fill it with delicious hop resins:

The Cantillon Copper

After several hours of boiling, the wort is pumped up to the attic, where it’s left to cool overnight in a giant copper tray called a “coolship”. This is a crucial and unique part of the Cantillon process, as the attic is open to the elements, allowing the wort to become inoculated with wild yeast from the Brussels air. No yeast is added manually, and the wild yeast is what’s behind the distinctive sour flavour.

The Cantillon Coolship

The next day, the cool, yeasty wort is drained into the stainless steel fermenter where, over several days, the sugars are turned into alcohol by those magic little yeast bugs, and the liquid starts to resemble beer.

The Cantillon Fermenter

I can’t for the life of me figure out how they got that wooden cart up into the attic.

Once fermented, the beer is transferred to decades-old wooden barrels and left to bide its time in the barrel store, where it is aged for up to three years before bottling. The smell in here is fantastic:

The Cantillon Barrel Store

The barrel ageing produces a still, wine-like beer named Lambic, which is the base of all Cantillon products. You’ll have to come to the brewery to try it, though, as almost all of the Lambic is used to make Gueuze. This is a blend of one, two and three year-old Lambics, which are then refermented in the bottle in the brewery’s cellars to become the beers that are sold to the public.

Given the amount of time the beer needs in the barrel and subsequently in the bottle before it is ready, the biggest limiting factor to Cantillon’s output is storage space. The whole place is packed floor to ceiling with dusty bottles laid down. Every nook and cranny is utilised.

Bottles of Saint-Lamvinus in storage at Cantillon

Finally, to the bar for a tasting. Visitors are given a taste of the still Lambic fresh from the barrel (left), and then allowed to choose a further beer to sample. I opted for the Kriek, a Gueuze in which sour cherries have been soaked for around six months, and then bought myself a glass of the classic Gueuze (right):

The Tasting Rooms at Cantillon Brewery, Brussels

The Lambic is reminiscent of a high quality apple juice, albeit an unsweetened one made from sour apples, while the effervescent classic Gueuze is full of zesty grapefruit flavours.

If that isn’t enough sour beer for you, the brewery will happily sell you individual bottles or whole cases to take away with you, at prices significantly lower than you’ll find Cantillon products elsewhere, if you can find them at all. All told, a visit to Cantillon is a fascinating experience and quite a treat for the beer lover.