Beer Hunting in Brussels

In suburbs and cities, on farms, mines, in offices, even on boats, right across Australia there are serious beer lovers lurking and lingering over rare and hard to find ales and lagers.

If you are one of them, then like us you will know that one of the greatest trips a serious beer lover can make is to the Belgian heartland of beer - Brussels.

As part of running the BeerMasons beer club we are duty bound to make the occasional overseas trip to source rare and interesting beers. We know it's a tough job and all....  And being duty bound, not only do we bring you back awesome beer, we often write about our adventures.

Enjoy this tale of our near death experience in this mecca of better beer!

NEAR DEATH IN BRUSSELS  (and feeling pretty okay with that...)

 
The first port of call for the beer lover in Brussels, Belgium, is Grand Place – the city’s central square and home to its guild halls, including the brewers guild. Constructed in the 12th century, it is one of the most beautiful places on the planet to enjoy a beer or two, maybe three... on second thoughts make that five.
 
Our recent visit however took a very strange turn. 

While we were slowly trawling through the shelves of a beer store just off the square – laden with a meager few thousand indigenous Belgian beers, a loud gunshot went off in the alley outside.
 
A quick glance over to madame shopkeeper confirmed our fears, as she calmly locked the door and moved to the back of the store.
 
Our thoughts leapt immediately to a sweaty madman hell-bent on extracting revenge from one of the diplocrats that call the city home. Jason Bourne-style espionage also sprung to mind. Clearly others had similar fears – peering outside, we could see the formerly teeming alleyway was now deserted.
 
Strangely, tranquility settled upon us when we looked at the shelves of the beer store and realised that the cool temperature of the room meant refrigeration would not be necessary. We started being tempted by the array of fine brews available, while bottle openers on the counter were within easy reach. 
 
Seriously fellow BeerMasons, if one has to be hiding out somewhere waiting for the madness to disperse, surely there are worse places? 

The delicious brews in that room alone would keep us merry for a very, very long time, and any crazed lunatic who decided to bash down the door could surely be placated with any number of the spectacular beers in the selection: “Come in mate, sit down, it’s not so bad, here, let’s share this Oud Beersel Old Gueze and put all of this behind us.” However, if that tack fails, what better place to meet your maker? 
 
Earlier in the day, we had visited the Cantillon Brewery – Brussels’ last remaining Lambic brewer. Many visitors to the brewery have been enthralled by this living, breathing, micro-environment of a museum dedicated to spontaneous fermentation. An inscription on a plaque says it all... Le temps ne respecte pas ce qui se fait sans lui – Time does not respect he who does without it.
 
How perfectly this sentiment matches the traditional philosophy of craft brewing and how appropriate when you face your imminent demise surrounded by some of the world’s best beers!
 
Beer appreciation is a journey and time spent on its pursuit is its own reward – along with the final product, of course! For brewers it is the investment they make in themselves, their knowledge and skill, their palate and imagination. For beer lovers it is also an investment – solidly at the consumption end of the spectrum. For both, it is about opening up to how spectacularly tasty and seriously interesting beer can be while retaining its intrinsic sense of humour – much like life.
 
For Cantillon’s brewer Jean Roy, time has rewarded his patience; not just in his creation of lambic beers, but also in his determination to preserve a timeless institution in his nation’s brewing culture. Until recently, this culture came very close to extinction. Who would have imagined that the citizens of the world’s brewing epicentre would turn their backs on their artisanal ales and be infected by the global, lifeless lager epidemic? 
 
In part it was the late, great American beer hunter Michael Jackson’s writings on the likes of Cantillon and Jean Roy that ignited international interest in the delights of Belgian brewing. This created export markets, breathed new life into Belgium’s craft industry and contributed to the emergence of new microbreweries. More importantly many of its own people have been reminded of how seriously good their national beers can be. Perhaps there is a lesson in that for our Australian craft brewers, in that it might just take the acknowledgement of foreigners to give it a serious local boost? 
 
We were deep in this whispered contemplation of beer, time and life when a second shot rang out that nearly resulted in the destruction of the chalices we were sizing up for our first pour. Outside the window, we saw a gaggle of emo-esque, black-clad, wayward youths* taking obvious delight in letting off the remaining firecrackers from Chinese New Year and spooking the tourists. 
 
With a gutteral ‘humpf,’ madame shopkeeper returned to the front of the store and unbarred the door. With our fractured French and her broken English, and with eyebrows raised, we discussed our near miss. We shared with her that we would have been honoured to have died in her establishment or at the very least spent a few weeks in there sustained by her beer. She winked and said, “there’s a tunnel to the chocolatier in the basement.” Lock the door and bring on the Belgian madman….
 
Until next time here’s to better beer.
 
The BeerMasons
www.beermasons.com.au

 
PS: So we are pretty sure madame shopkeeper was barring the door against the ‘gaggle’ and did not want them in her shop and we admit to rather active imaginations. Brussels is an inspiring, charming and friendly city that should be on the dance card of all good BeerMasons. 
 
* Okay – so we were all wayward youths and roamed in a gaggle at some point in time. No disrespect intended.
 

PPS: And always remember "A fine beer may be judged with only one sip, but it is best to be thoroughly sure."