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Beer in Brussels!

I’ve wanted to visit Belgium ever since I had my first beer from Duvel back in 2001. The opportunity to go was unexpected this year, and as a result of the circumstances (attending the Ubuntu Developer Summit for Maverick Meerkat) I wasn’t able to spend my whole trip sampling beer and being a tourist, but I certainly wouldn’t let the primary purpose of my trip get in the way of some beer sampling while in the country where some of my favorite beers come from!

I mentioned a couple of beers I tried when I first arrived, in my first blog post about the summit I mentioned the Belle-Vue Kriek:

And that I had a Delirium Tremens:

I also mentioned the Waterloo Tripel 7 Blond and Mort Subite lambics in my second blog post about the summit – with pictures! I also snapped a picture of the back of the Tripel bottle:

But now on to beers I didn’t talk about! Wednesday night was a trip into Brussels where I committed the very strange act of ordering a belgian lager, a Piedboeuf Jupiler. It’s the most popular beer in Belgium and at the restaurant where we were at the choices were pretty limited, and I’d already had the Leffe varieties on the menu stateside. My take? I don’t much care for lagers, but it was one of the better ones I’ve ever had. Plus the glass was huge, and that was fun.

From Drug Opera Restaurant we walked over to the precious beer hall that is Delirium Cafe. I love Delirium Tremens, it’s one of my favorite beers in the world. Learning that there was a bar named after it which had over 2000 beers and was The Place for beers in that district of Brussels was so exciting.

Me at Delirium Cafe!

And inside, with my first beer!

And the Delirium bottle wall going to the downstairs bar!

I carefully selected this first beer from the menu in their upstairs bar:

It was a Chouffe Houblon IPA. Chouffe does IPAs? I’ve had their strong pale ales before, but the IPA was a new and wonderful experience. My love for IPAs and standard Belgian ales is about equal these days, I really really enjoyed this beer.

From there I went to the Mongozo Mango, which in spite of enjoying two of I didn’t get a picture of it. This was a really delicious beer! As far as lambics go it had a nice tart taste to it, while retaining an appropriate amount of sweetness, the same of which couldn’t be said for the banana lambic I had a taste of later in the evening – way too sweet! I also had more than my fair share of someone else’s Bourganel Bière à la Verveine Velay, which was just strange, green color aside it was can’t-put-my-finger-on-it mentholy-minty, or something. The strangeness of this beer kept me sampling it.

I wrapped up the evening with a good ole Delirium Tremens, you kinda have to at Delirium Cafe!

Thursday night we made our way back down to Brussels for some previously mentioned waffles and chocolate. Following that and some sightseeing we ended up back at Delirium Cafe (turns out it was a public holiday, so our choices were limited).

This night I started off with a Floris Cactus. Huyghe Brewery‘s (same brewery as Delirium Tremens and Mongozo) Floris isn’t actually all that hard to find in the US, but I hadn’t had either of the ones they had on tap and the ones that I’ve had stateside were pretty sweet – the apple was almost undrinkable because it was so overwhelmingly candy-like. I’m happy to report that the Cactus was a delight!

Then it was on to the Floris Mirabelle… which I haven’t been able to find information online about (help?). This was another delicious lambic.

Not to let lambics rule the night, I also wrapped up this evening with a beloved Delirum Tremens.

My last beer of the trip was on Saturday morning (hey, it was night in San Francisco! that means it’s ok, right?) at the airport when my flight was delayed and I had one last Belle-Vue Kriek.

I had to admit being pretty heavy on the lambics this trip, but as a “working trip” I needed to avoid beers which would land me with a nasty hangover the next morning and render me useless during the busy summit days. My next trip to Belgium I will be less delicate and more adventurous! But this was certainly a fun start.

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