by Jim
Simpson
My first impression of Brussels was a bit fuzzy. We arrived at 8:30AM local
time, which felt like 2:30 NY time. The flight was bumpy, so we didn't sleep
much. Upon arrival, I was thrust into driving
a manual car on streets that were unfamiliar and with names that did not
correspond with any map
provided by Hertz. Needless to say, I got lost trying to find the hotel.
When we finally found it, it was close to 12:00. We checked in and our room
was gorgeous. Instead of sleeping, we walked around the City (like zombies)
and found a place to eat and then took a bus tour of the city. Our hotel
was literally around the corner from The Grand Place or Grote Market which
is the "heart" of the city. We found a restuarant which had a nice beer list.
I ordered a crock of Belle Vue lambic and Iggy had the Kriek.
Now I've been told that straight lambic is supposed to be extremely sour
and flat. It was definately flat
but the sweetness overpowered any sourness. It didn't have the characteristic
horsey, leathery taste that I know and love. The Kriek was a little better.
The high carbonation cut some of the sweetness. I found out later that Bell
Vue ages their lambics a full three months!, instead of the traditional 1
to 3 years.At this point we were extremely tired, but we took the bus tour
anyway. After the tour we wandered around aimlessly and found a nice cafe.
I tried Tongelo, an abbey beer resembling a double, on draft.
The aroma was fruity resembling raisins and plums. The taste was somewhat
spicey (clove) with fruit and carmel malt. The hops play a small role, providing
some dryness to the finish. By 9:00 PM we finally got some sleep. We had
been awake for well over 24 hours.
The next three days were spent site seeing and cafe hopping. Each beer list
had to be carefully
scrutinized so as not to have the same beer twice. Two cafes that stand out
were Falstaff and Cirio's.
If you've read Michael Jackson's Great Beers of Belgium, he describes them
in detail. They didn't have an extensive list, but they were impressive.
We had Westmalle double and tripel. The double has a beautiful bouquet of
malt and fruit and
the same is in the taste with additional spicey-nutty flavors. The tripel
has a more spicey-alcohol floral nose. The bitterness is mild and there is
some hop flavor which dries out the finish.
Rochefort, another Trappist brewery, not available in the U.S., comes in
two strengths based on Belgium's old style of degrees plato. The 80 is any
extremely malty brew. The yeast strain gives off a uniquely spicey aroma
and flavor. Hops are only in the background. The 100 is once again a very
malty beer. It is extremely sweet with just enough alcohol to dry out the
finish. Other beers included Hoegarden's Verbotin Vruct (Forbidden Fruit)
malty and alcoholic and Aerts 1900.
While in Brussels we visited the Gueze Museum, which is the Cantillion Brewery.
If you've
heard any stories about lambic breweries being dirty, musty and full of spider
webs they are all true.
The tour is unguided, but a pamphlet provides information on each room. I
ventured into the attic
where the beer is pumped and let to cool in a shallow copper pan (coolship).
The roof tiles have gaps in them to let the air in from outside to insure
proper inoculation. Old used barrels are stored in the attic along with the
open bags of old aged hops. Dust and dirt is everywhere! The mash tun and
kettle are at least 70 years old, but they make one of the best Guezes.
After the tour they let you taste their products. I asked for a taste of
lambic straight from the
cask and got a strange look. They obliged my request and before I tasted
it I took a yeast sample. The aroma reminded me of dough or bread (diacetyl)
with some lactic sourness. The taste was amazing.
The sourness was very refreshing and along with some fruitiness had a nice
balance. The Gueze, Kriek and Framboise were more refined. Gone were the
overwhelming breadiness. The horsey-sweety-sourness struck a nice balance.
All three were extremely dry and not sweet at all. The fruit flavored ones
had more color than fruit flavor, which is how I prefer it.
After buying as much junk as we could carry we got in the car and it wouldn't
start. We were
stranded for 2 hours before we got a new car and drove back to the hotel.
We had to leave the next day to go to Amsterdam. So I surprised Iggy and
planned a side trip to Westmalle.
Our trip out of Brussels was uneventful. The new car we picked up was bigger,
and Iggy commented that it wasn't making any weird noises. I had mapped out
the trip to Amsterdam to
include a side trip to the Abbey at Westmalle.
We had no problem finding Westmalle, but finding the Abbey took a little
Flemish translation. If had planned this brewery visit, it would probably
not have happened so smoothly. We drove up a
semi-paved road, along this long, tall brick wall. We parked near this gate,
where a man in a white
lab coat was standing. I asked him in Flemish if he spoke English. Luckily,
he did. He happened to
be the head brewer, Jan Andriaensens. He was waiting for someone who would
be by in 20 minutes, but would be happy to give us a 15 minute tour. As we
walked through the gate, there were cases upon cases and kegs upon kegs of
Dubbel and Trippel! (If only I had a forklift and a tractor trailer!)
They were unloading a grain shipment, so we got to see the extremely light
Pilsner malt going into
a chute. He took us into the control room and showed us the computer-automated
brewhouse. He said he an control how much grain, sugar and hops are added
to the kettle, and adjust the
temperature of the two steam-jacketed boiling kettles, check grain and sugar
levels in the respective silos, and the status of the clean, in place (CIP)
system. An extremely modern brewery with some old equipment.
They were brewing at the time, so we got to see the wort being cooled in
a plate heat exchanger.
From there it was pumped over to the fermenting room. The tanks are hidden
behind tile walls. The
tile enables them to hose down the entire room after the tank blows off for
a day. Yeast is harvested manually. A guy opens the top hatch and shims the
yeast into a trough. It is then collected in an open tank, to be pitched
into the next batch.
After the tour, I gave Jan a club T-shirt, and he gave me some Westmalle
goblets with gold
lettering and cut glass. I must have thanked him a hundred times. We went
across the street to the
Westmalle Cafe, which is owned by the Abbey. We had Trappist cheese sandwiches,
and Westmalle Dubbel and Trippel on draft to wash it down.
After we ate, we got into the car and drove to Amsterdam. I wish I could
say nice things about
Amsterdam, but we were sorely disappointed. Besides all the sex shops, the
whorehouses, the
"coffee" shops (hash bars), and drug dealers on the street, it was filthy,
dirty and smelly. The canals are picturesque, but water in them is green
and smelly, with garbage floating in it. In the "red light" district, there
are metal stations that look like telephone booths, but when you walk by
and someone is in it, you realize he's taking a local call from mother nature.
It's a wonder there aren't more widespread outbreaks of disease. On a lighter
note, there were a few good beer bars, and one brewpub. The brewpub had a
Roggen, a Dubbel, and a Trippel, along with some standard pale and amber
ales. I tried the Roggen, and it was similar to the German version, using
a wheat beer yeast strain.
After three days in Amsterdam, we were happy to be leaving.
Part 3
The drive from Amsterdam to Dusseldorf was uneventful, except for getting
lost trying to find
the hotel. Dusseldorf is a very pretty city. Situated on the east bank of
the Rhine, you can hang
around the many bars and cafes and watch the sunset, and in this part of
the world the sun doesn't set until 10:30 PM. My first taste of Alt beer
was very pleasurable. At one of the cafes along the river, they had a Bier
Garten. Ordering beer was no problem, you asked for either Alt or Pilsner.
Ordering food was more of a problem. In Brussels and Amsterdam most people
spoke English, but
not here. I tried to learn some German from a tape and booklet, but I was
not prepared for anything
on the "spiessecarte" (menu).
But back to the beer. Alt is served in a small .33l straight sided glass.
The beer is amber to light
brown, the aroma is of malt with a hint of fruitiness, the taste is exquisite
going from malt to bittering hops. The aftertaste is extremely dry from the
intense bitterness. A lot going on for a 1048 original gravity. Zum Uerge
was a little too bitter for the style. The malt fades quickly behind the
60 IBU bitterness. Im Shiffen (the boat) and Shlosser Alt are more typical.
We took a side trip to Koln, the city that gives us Kolsch. This city is
larger than Dusseldorf, but its beer is blander.
Kolsch is very pale top fermented beer resembling cream ale except corn can
not be used in the
mash. It has a subtle malt character with hops providing a little bitterness.
The beer is so
clean tasting that it is extremely hard to distinguish it from brand to brand
and from some bland German Pilsners.
On our trip back to Brussels we took a side trip through Aachen, a Roman
German city on the
boarder with Belgium and Holland. This is where Charlemagne had his throne
during his reign as
Holy Roman Emperor. Nothing impressive, just a couple of slabs of marble
on the balcony of a
church. After retrieving our car from the lot, I made a turn down some narrow
street. Guess what,
Aachen has a red light street! Another block of whores. Well needless to
say, we had enough of that.
On our way back we stopped off at Lovain, about 25 miles from Brussels and
had a couple of Wit beers. At this pint I'm not sure which brand! We walked
around for some time and had a few more beers. I tried Ginder Ale, an amber
fruity Belgian ale and a few others not tried before. On our drive back to
Brussels we were feeling no pain.
The next 4 days in Brussels was a blur. Between picking up souvenirs, sight
seeing and buying beer at different stores. We went to Lindemans. Lindemans
is around 5 miles southwest of Brussels in the town of VleeZenbeek. Once
you go outside of the Brussels ring, all you see are barley and wheat pastures.
It's real serene, rolling hills of yellow and amber. I called ahead so our
guide Derek Lindeman was expecting us.
He was happy to show us the newmodern brewery, which is along side the old
musty looking one.
They still use old coolships to inoculate the wort. He showed us all the
cob webs and old wooden
barrels before letting us have a taste. We started off with one year old
and two year old lambics
from the cask. This was a treat. The one year old still had some residual
sweetness, while the two
year old had completely soured. These two beers would be blended together
to make Lindemans
Gueuze and Curvee Rene. Derek was kind enough to give us a bottle of Curvee
Rene and a small
bottle of tea beer. This was a Lambic that had fermented over tea leaves
for one year then bottled
with sugar to give an iced tea like drink. It sounded better than it tasted.
This was the last brewery
we visited, but we kept on drinking.
The last memorable place to drink was Morte Subite, where they serve the
beer with the same
name. I tried the Gueuze and Iggy the Kriek. Both were excellent, tart and
refreshing.
Our last day in Brussels was depressing. We had to catch an 11:00 AM flight,
which meant getting to bed early to check out at 9. The only regret was not
being able to stay longer.