Three reserves to make up for the lack of Westvleteren 12

While I was in Brussels I had been looking for Westvleteran 12. I did find it at Beerplanet but they do not actually sell it as per the wishes of the abbey. Instead they give it away for free as a gift if you spend €100 in the shop. Not being able to do that (no way to get it home) I had to do without. The helpful and knowledgeable staff did point me towards some aged reserve beers that they thought an excellent substitute. The first one was Oerbier Special Reserva 2008 from De dolle.
This is one of the best beers I have ever had.
It pours a dark red with a large white head
It smells a little like a lambic, sour, tart and fruity.
The lambic sourness comes through in the flavour as well followed by a strong woody quality. The malt character is very strong but fruit dominates the palette with sour cherries and plum as well as gooseberries? The finish was fabulous. Also this may be 13% but it feels like half that. A wonderful wonderful beer.

The other two were both Pannepot reserva. The Old fishermas ale 2007 is 10%. The first thing that comes to mind is how malty it is. It is also quite peppery and tastes like fruitcake. Plenty of dried fruit. You can taste the oak too. A slight hint of coffee. This is a very sweet beer but balanced with some bittering hops so as not to overwhelm. An excellent beer though not quite as interesting as the oerbier.

The 2006 version was much the same with the exception of the oaky vanilla notes being more obvious. If both are available at the same price then you might as well go for the 2006 but otherwise the 2007 tastes the same for the most part.

The Haka & Dubbel Whammy 1 week taste test

Both of these beers have been conditioning for the last week and were put in the fridge last night. Dubbel Whammy pours a lightish brown with a large head and plenty of yeast. The aroma was chocolate, yeast and toffee. On tasting it I found it started off slightly sweet with caramel standing out and then a slight sourness comes through as well as a spicy pepper thing going on. It feels quite milky in the mouth too. Interesting after only 1 week.
One thing I should point out is that the OG and FG of this beer were a lot lower than expected for some reason. OG: 1.062 and FG 1.030 making this beer only 4.3%. I am not sure why the gravity did not meet expectations but the result is a good beer that can might work as a session beer.



The Haka turned out about as expected. It pours a standard amber colour, there is currently little head but that will change from the keg and with more conditioning. On the nose there are the obvious Tropical fruits such as mango. The taste starts out tropical fruits and then peppery moving on to a nice bitterness that is not too harsh. Quite a mild finish.
I think this turned out to be nicely balanced. Perhaps not the most exciting beer I have ever made but a good session beer I think.

The recipe for both can be found in this post.

So time will tell how these beers turn out with age. It will be late January now by the time they are submitted for critique to the other ICB members at our monthly meeting.

And now for something completely different - Automatic Hand Dryers

I have been meaning to moan about these abominations of technology for a while now. Tonight is my work Christmas party so I have little else to write about today.

Anyway Automatic Hand dryers. You know the ones I am talking about, instead of pressing a nice simple button to make it come on, you put your hand under it and it magically comes on... well at least that is the idea. More often than not they fail to come on and if they do, they go right back off again as soon as you move your hands in the drying motion. Is it so hard to make one that registers your hands properly? Is it even necessary? The only reason I can think of for not having an on button is hygiene and that makes no sense as surely the person pressing the button has just washed their hands, an action synonymous with being hygienic.
The ones that do actually work either throw out cold air or else are take so long to dry that you might as well have left them wet to dry naturally.

Now they are not all bad, in recent years some new ones have come out. The Dyson Airblade springs to mind as a hand dryer built by people who know what they are doing. It is brilliantly simply. You put your hands in all the way and thin jets of warm air shoot out at you as you pull your hands up the air forces the water off your hands and you have nice dry hands in 10 seconds.
I have seen another similar concept to this but instead of a thin stream of jet propelled air, there are hundreds of tiny pin holes which give a good all round stream of tiny jets of air. I am not sure which one is more effective but they are both pretty good.
Also in a more traditional style of hand dryer is the XLERATOR Hand Dryer which is a more normal idea with a bit of modern thinking. First they make an automatic sensor that works, then they supercharge the blower motor with a jet. This is so powerful that you can see your skin being blown around and it looks like your hand is mutating just like the hand of 80's TV character Manimal when he changed in to a Panther or something.

Can I tie Hand dryers in with beer, since that is the theme of this blog? Why yes I can because alcohol being a Diuretic means you will spend a lot of time in the bathroom making yourself dehydrated and you will get to see the quality of your favourite watering hole in how it keeps the bathroom.

Cantillon Brewery - Brussels

On my last full day in Belgium I did one of the main things I wanted to do and that was visit the Cantillon brewery which is conveniently located in the city centre. A metro ride and a 10 minute walk away found us walking though a fairly dirty run down area, not quite a ghetto but similar to Talbot street or Thomas street in Dublin except much more rubbish everywhere. Still I felt perfectly safe so it is not a dangerous area by any means.

The sight that greets you on walking in. This is where you come at the end of your tour to take a taste of the beer. You get two glasses of beer, a Gouze and a Kriek and you can buy the others if you like. I should probably explain what lambic is because not everyone will have had one and even some people who have had a kriek might have enjoyed it, they might find Cantillon not to their taste. The reason is, Cantillon still brew in traditional style. A Lambic is a beer that uses spontaneous fermentation. What that means is basically that instead of introducing a human bred yeast strain, they leave the beer exposed to the elements and the wild yeasts in the air ferment the beer. The beer is then aged for a minimum of one year and up to three in wooden casks. If they make a fruit beer, such as a kriek where they add cherries, they usually take a lambic that has been maturing for over a year and add the fruit and this is then fermented again for a few months before bottling etc. Then it is aged for up to 5 months in the cellars. The point here is that a lot of time goes in to making a proper kriek and all of the sugar is turned to alcohol which means not only is this traditional kriek not in the least bit sweet, it is actually very sour. Imagine sucking a ripe lemon and you get the idea. It is very acidic and sour and if it is your first time tasting one, you will probably make a face you do not wish to have photographed.
Once you get used to it though, this sour unsweet beer is very refreshing and quite lovely.

Barrels are lifted down to the cellar from the attic, where the fermentation is done.

The mashtun is small by commercial standards but is massive compared to my converted picnic cooler mashtun.

This is where the beer gets exposed to the wild yeasts and the spontaneous fermentation begins. Although the real activity only starts after the beer has been transferred in to the wooden casks and the yeast cells have multiplied. The Beer Nut managed to get there in March for the public brewday and has a great article. He has a picture like the one above but with activity going on.


Cantillon is completely organic from the grains to the pest control You can imagine that plenty of flies will be attracted to the sweet fruit aroma coming from the attic. Thankfully Mother Nature long ago designed the perfect fly trap and they still use the loft spiders for this purpose.


This grain is just for show but there are hundreds of sacks of the stuff in the attic for use in the beer. Oh and those barrels contain young lambics fermenting.

This is where they age the beer. Long corridors of maturing lambic sitting in barrels.

Once bottled, they are left to mature for a few months before being shipped.

Well there is a lot more to the tour than I showed you here but I think that this was one of the highlights of the Belgium trip. It only costs €5 for the tour (self guided) and since you get two glasses of beer at the end it is more than worth it. I would have happily stayed longer and had some more lambic but my wife was not feeling very well and it was time for lunch anyway. I felt the brewery had given me more than I had given them so I bought a hoodie and T-Shirt. I had no way to bring back beer so I had to leave it all behind. I wanted some Gueuze though. I have never seen a Cantillon product in Ireland and my sole experience has been an introduction in Italy and the two glasses I had in Cantillon. I am actually kicking myself because I had been looking forward to Cantillon so much that I did not bother drinking any Lambics in Belgium thinking I would have my fill there. Unfortunately my wife's got ill and wanted to leave. Damn....
If anyone (TBN?) knows where to find them in Dublin then please let me know. The style has grown on me.

In Bruges - more than just a hangout for depressed hitmen

We arrived in Bruges on another very wet day. It is a good 10 to 15 minute walk from the train station to the city centre and it did not take us long to be charmed the closer we got. Bruges is breathtakingly lovely. It is the sort of place that would bring a tear to your eye if it was snowing. There is also a good canal system running through and around the city. Venice of the North? Perhaps but I always thought Amsterdam was a better fit to that term, even though I have yet to visit. Unfortunately it was way too wet to go boating, a few hardy souls were up for it though and looked a combination of Awed misery.

Well first thing is first, Lunch time and some beer. We found a spot in a little Italian place and had a reasonably priced 3 course meal. Mrs Taleofale had the local beer, Brugse Zot Blonde which I have mentioned before. I had the Brugse Zot Brown, more on that in a moment.

Ah the wonder of modern technology. I had mapped out on my GPS App on the Iphone the only brewpub in Bruges which is De Halve Maan where they make Brugse Zot. Of course I was going in the wrong direction because in order to get the little blip to register your direction, you have move. By the time I realised I was heading away from my destination I came across this little gem of a bar called De Kuppe. I was attracted by the 100 different beers sign. OK so 100 different beers is not a mind boggling amount and probably the same or less than The Bull and Castle in Dublin, it was enough to make me go in.

I have to say I enjoyed my time here. Inside it is nothing special, a typical bar it seems. They are trying to accommodate the younger crowd by mentioning their twitter and facebook pages on a big chalk menu wall. Fair play to them for having a proper website as well, I can't read most of it but it is more impressive than many a brewery website, Well apart from the fact a lot of the links are broken at the time of writing this. They also have a TV screen showing a looped video on local brewery De Halve Maan and photo's from people at De Kuppe events as well as informative beer menu's.
On the downside, they do not serve food and it is a very smoky bar.
The sooner Belgium becomes a no smoking country the better for smoke hating beer lovers like me.

First up was the Brugse Zot Dubbel for me. This turned out to be exactly the same beer as the Brown I drank with my lunch. This is a dark brown citrus smelling beer. It tastes of citrus too and has some bite. Also dark chocolate and some caramel. It was also quite spicy. This beer was not sweet like most Belgian beers and I absolutely loved it. It is one of the more drinkable Dubbels I have had in Belgium. The fact it was not sweet meant it went down easy.
The other beer this round was a Cuvee des Trolls. This reminded me of a Caramel Apple at Halloween. Sweet, apple, caramel. There was also some Orange and coriander in there too. This was rather pleasant actually and my wife enjoyed it.


OK I am seeing a pattern here. The next two are from another nearby brewery. The Steen Brugge Beer from Palm-Rodenbach Brewery in Roeselare near Bruges. The pattern is, and this may be just me but it seems the beer I have had from this region is not the super sweet beer I have come to associate with Belgium and I like this a lot. It is closer to what I would consider "normal beer".
I started off with the Brown/Dubbel. At 6.5% it is high in alcohol but not as high as many others but is still high enough. I got a fizzy/sherbety brown sugar followed by chocolate and plum. It was very tasty I thought.
The Blonde was crisp, peppery and not sweet either.


Bourgogne Des Flandres was up next and it was dominated by Prunes along with Brown sugar sweetness. Very little else actually, not bad just not interesting and certainly the least interesting dark beer I have had in Belgium. It was soured though by the ingredients listing E300 & E150 in the list. OK perhaps I am being picky as its only vitamin C and Caramel colouring but I don't put them in my own beer so I don't see why they should. It was not a bad beer to be honest but it was not all that great. It was only 5% too.
The Slaapmutske Blonde is a somehwat standard if more spicy than normal wit with a little lemon in there for good measure. A good beer if a not very exciting one.

Nothing to do with beer but how cute is this little chocolate place? The chocolates here turned out to be the best I had in Belgium which I had in my hotel room along with some aged reserve beers.

I never made it to the Halve Maan brewery but there was little need as I had tried all their beers except Straffe Hendrik.


Next port of call was the Cambrinus Bierhaus and after going the wrong direction again, I figured out quickly enough where it was.



This place started out very promising from the moment we walked in. It looked great, was very lively and best of all it was smoke free so I could enjoy beer all night. There are over 400 beers available they say. It also became apparent that like the Bull & Castle in Dublin, this was a Gastropub where they not only combine beer and food, they use beer in the food making process such as sauces etc. I was pretty excited I must say but this unfortunately changed to one of abject horror and this was a shame as I loved the place. The service is what let this place down. First of all, unlike everywhere else I have been there is no beer menu on the table. The beer menu is incorporated in to the food menu, which you can not keep as there are only a few of them. Not so bad, but it slows down the ordering process as you do not know what you want when it comes time to order unless you write down a list of stuff to eat. And then comes the worst part, the service from the waiting staff was bad enough when ordering drinks but when it came to actually getting food it was a horrible experience. The food itself was excellent and I can not fault it. The girl who took our order, which was a set menu took it down eventually and everything seemed fine. The problem came when we were done with our main course, we were waiting for close to an hour before we managed to flag someone down and ask where are desert was? It is not that no one came near us, it is a case that we were invisible. Even if a waitress came to the table beside us, her face was always pointed away from us so I could not make eye contact. Eventually we got our desert and asked for the bill, eventually the bill came as well and it was €35 or so, which only listed the drinks. I was sorely tempted to pay the bill as it came and leave but me being honest I went up to the till and said you are missing our dinner. Needless to say there was no tip.


No was to the beers, well the Moinette Brune 8.5% was a pretty good beer to start with. Plenty of Brown sugar and Caramel sweetness but it was not overly sweet. Some toffee and spice but it was also a little bitter and had a nice sourness to it.
The Belgoo 6.6% Magus was incredibly yeasty looking with caramel evident. It was also spicy and I found it like a cross between a German Wheat and a Belgian Wit.


Next up I had an Imperial stout called (when translated in to English) Catherine the great. This was a big 10% dark ruby beer with a massive head. It smelled of Prunes, sweet/burnt Caramel. I tasted a little coffee, a lot of prune & other dry fruit, plenty of alcohol and overall it was pretty damn good but just lacking something to live up to the name and make it great.
The Saison Dupont was a pretty good Wit but that is about all I can say about it.

Lastly comes one of the best beers I have ever had. I have heard many a tale of Westvleteren 12 being the best beer in the world. In fact, in Brussels I went in to a beer shop called Beer Planet and was happy they had it, However as it turned out they did not sell it and only gave it away free as part of a promotion like spend €100 or so. Since I was flying Ryanair there was no way I could bring back any beer let alone €100 worth. I was happy to see Westvleteren 12 on the menu at Cambrinus Bierhaus but alas they had none so I settled for its little brother Westvleteren 8 and what a beer this was. It is hard to describe this beer properly. On the face of it, the beer is just like any of the many Abbey beers I have had in Belgium this trip. It was Dark, there was a some slight cherry, somewhat play-dough like but fruity, woody and all-together fabulous. Somehow they have married all the characteristics a Good Abbey ale should have perfectly. So if Westvleteren 12 is supposed to be better than this, it must be something other worldly.

Thankfully the good people at Beer Planet recommended a few other beers to me which I will talk about some other time.

I do recommend Cambrinus Bierhaus to anyone going to Bruges though, perhaps we just had a terrible waitress, although there were several floating around ignoring us. Service in Belgium seems to be universally bad, eating out is a two to three hour ordeal at any time of the day anyway. Some day I will go back to Bruges and go back to Cambrinus Bierhaus so with luck it will be a better experience. Perhaps during an afternoon would be a better time.

Carlow makes the foray in to Supermarket own brands

**Just another quick post before getting back to Belgium**

Aldi recently started selling its own brand beer. The bottle states Specially Selected on the top and then below says Traditional Irish Ale. It comes in a 4 pack of 330ml bottles and on the back of the box it has a picture and a bit of spiel from their "head brewer" who is in fact Seamus O'Hara, founder and head brewer of the wonderful Carlow Brewing Company. They make the fabulous O'Hara's Irish stout and the O'Hara's Red.
The Beer Nut already did a side by side with the O'Hara's and the Aldi brand to see if they are the same beer. Well no need for me to do that then, they are slightly different beers.
This is certainly worth a try. The one criticism I have, and this is not about the beer itself is that it is the same €5.99 now as it was before the budget when 12 cent was knocked off the excise duty on beer. Shame on Aldi, hopefully they will drop the price.
Tesco are advertising that they have dropped their price on beer, which is true for the most part but I think some of them are still the same price.

We three kings of Orient are, Bearing beer from Cork yes we are...

A Quick post before more from Belgium.

Yesterday I went in to Dublin to get a few more pub notes and pictures for the "some time in the future" Pocket pub Guide - Dublin. First port of call had to be The Bull & castle to get lunch. I had the new Sierra Nevada Celebration Christmas Ale. This was not much of a Christmas beer in the sense that it was no more spiced with spices that make you think of Christmas than Guinness is. However as an IPA style beer, this is fantastic. It is perhaps a little overly bitter, just a little, without a sweet backbone to even it out. Overall I would rather drink a Big Daddy IPA but this is a good one and there is no hint of the fact this is almost 7%. The B&C got a load of them in priced at €4.50 which is very reasonable for such a strong beer (in Ireland) and Geoff (the manager) thinks people were giggling to themselves at such an obvious steal when walking away from the bar with trays of the stuff.

By the way, fair play to the Bull & Castle for not only reducing their prices in line with the budget reduction but actually adding on a few cent to make it 15cent off each beer. That means the normal €4.50 price for Pints of Irish Craft Beer like Galway Hooker has been replaced with a price of €4.35. They also have a clever poster advertising the fact outside and inside the pub with a made up newspaper article about the budget and a 15 cent reduction at The Bull and Castle.

It seems Declan has left the B&C and in his place is a nice young man from Longford who I believe is called Dave. Since there are now two Dave's there, they have to refer to one of them as DaveC. Anyway the new Dave suggested 3 Kings which I had forgotten was available at the B&C. I was told The Beer Nut did not think too much of it but I was confident that I would enjoy it anyway.
Well the beer came and it poured a Dark brown with a slightly off white head.
It smelled of Smoked Gouda Cheese and not much else.
Now the beer came far too cold due to some odd cooling issue where beer lines have even been freezing. Still the beer was packed full of flavour and the smokiness hits you instantly from the first sip. The taste reminds me of a camp-fire in the woods and tasted a lot like a Scotch. I love scotch so this was a good thing for me. As the beer warmed up to room temperature it evened out nicely with the smokiness muting a little and the caramel sweetness of a Red Ale came through.
Imagine O'Hara's Red smoked like an Islay Scotch and this is what you have.
Overall I loved it and am pretty psyched for my next brewday where I will be making a smoked beer myself.
I am not sure if The beer nut simply did not like this Franciscan Well offering or if he was disappointed it was not a little more complex but different people appreciate different beers and I loved this. Had I not had to go off doing pub research I would have happily stayed and had a few more 3 Kings.

**By the way, in the image above I stole part of The Beer nuts image on his blog to stick in the Logo for three kings because the Tap was upstairs in the Beer Hall and it was not open yet. Hope that is ok Mr Nut**

In Antwerp I had an abomination of a beer

It was raining very heavily in Antwerp and we were getting wet so we ducked in to a restaurant for some food. I ordered a Leffe Brune which I had before, though it is not what I wanted. I was trying to indicate the Christmas leffe I saw on the bar. My wife ordered a Hoegaarden Citron and it is a Travesty of a beer, an absolute abomination. It is not even fair to categorise this as being like an alcopop as that would be unfair to alcopops around the world. Image an ordinary hoegaarden with some sort of lemon artificially sweetened flavouring added in and you have the right idea. This does not work on any level. Even my wife was not impressed. She said if it was just lime soda it would be fine but the fact it was beer was just "not ok".

I was able to order the right leffe as I noticed a sign for it on the wall. The Leffe Kerstbier was a Christmasy version of Leffe Dark. It was hard to tell a real difference but it was a little lighter in feel/body than the brown and also had some Christmas spice, pretty much what you would expect. I preferred the brown but this was a decent enough beer. The rain finally stopped so it was time to go to a real destination.

T' Pakhuis is the only brewpub in Antwerp and is a little bit of a walk away from the city centre. We headed straight out of the centre towards the river, to see what it was like and found it was not a nice river stroll like you would get in Paris, London or Prague but it was nice enough. Eventually we came near our destination which involved us moving away from the river and back behind the line of buildings facing it into a sort of residential square of flats/apartments with a green space in the middle with children's playground etc. I could almost have been on Mountjoy square from the look of the place. On the other side of the square we found our destination. You have to go through the arch and in to a door on the right, sort of like the Franciscan Well in Cork.


I have to say I love the inside of this place, the layout and decor is fantastic. Above you see doors leading in to the smoking room, where smokers are closed off from the rest of the populace.

A set of concrete stairs, perhaps the only ugly part of the building leads upstairs to another dining area and downstairs to the bathroom. Brewing equipment is both downstairs and halfway up the stairs.

Behind the bar there is yet more brewing equipment. I wonder what the place is like on Brewday and if they brew on a normal day with people in drinking & eating?


This is what you can see at the bottom of the stairs when heading to the bathroom. Coincidently the bathrooms are very large and pleasant unlike most bar bathrooms.


We did not eat here as we were forced to eat earlier when hiding from the rain but the menu looks interesting. I don't know what most of it says as Antwerp is a Dutch city so my limited French was pretty much useless when reading menu's here. This place is massive though, there is seating for at least 300 people. The only disappointing thing was the beer. Not the quality mind, just the lack of choice. There are only three, a Blond, A brown and a Golden Ale.

First up was the Blonde which was a nice German style wheat beer with Belgian With characteristics. It was a little spicy if a little bland and thin on body. My wife enjoyed it so the target audience was happy.
The brown is a little better and interestingly is only 5.5% making it very drinkable for Belgian beer. Sweet/Burnt caramel is the backbone here with some brown sugar on the finish. I found it reminded me of a glass of sherry.

Lastly the Golden ale is called Nen Bangelijke and I think it was possibly the best of the lot, though I did enjoy the brown for its drink-ability. At 9.2% this is not that drinkable although you could make a bit of a dent in a pitcher. Oh did I mention they serve pitchers of their beer? Well they do. Imagine the damage a pitcher of this 9.2% beer would do to you.
Anyway the beer was a clear yellow with a fluffy white head and was pretty sweet with caramel, honey and rock candy coming through. The alcohol was obvious too and warmed my insides. There was also a balanced bitterness to it.
The Beer Nut found Almonds in it but he has better tastebuds than me and I did not notice them.

Overall I am glad I went there but it is just a little out of the way to bother with if you are only there on a day trip like we were. By the time we got back to the city centre it was late and to be honest we were not too impressed with Antwerp and much preferred Brussels which is odd because I have heard the opposite from many people. Perhaps these people say that because Antwerp has a better nightlife as in clubs etc? I am not sure. All I know is that I was looking forward to Bruges the next day.

Brussels part 3 - Poechenellekelder

This is the second spot I had mapped out to go to. Like Delirium, this has a large range of beers although no where near as much as Delirium. One thing I should mention is the location. As we were walking we came across a little fountain with a little statue of a boy pissing and he was dressed up as a fireman. Had I done any real research on Brussels other than beer locations I would have known that this was one of the most famous Brussels tourist attractions. The image above was taken at the fountain and so our destination of Poechenellekelder is right beside it.

It was not until we were inside and seated that we figured out the name of the fountain. There is a chocolate shop across the street that had the name Manneken Pis on it and on looking around the decor inside Poechenellekelder we saw all sorts of references to Manneken Pis.

First beers up were Caracole Amber (7.5%) & Blanche De Bruxelles. The Caracole was unfiltered with a massive white head. It smelled of Sherbert fizz, orange and quite spicy. In the mouth there was plenty of citrus, corriander, orange and a spicy/peppery thing going on. The finish was warm alcohol and I thought this was an excellent beer.
The Blanche De Bruxelles on the other hand was your average Belgian Wit, though more of a lemon wit than an orange wit. It was quite good but nothing to make it stand out.

Next up I ordered a Rochefort 10 and a Brugse Zot. The Rochefort I ordered for two reasons, one it is like the name of my town - Rochfortbridge. And the other, it is easy to say in my limited French. This is a strong 11.3 % Belgian Dark with plenty of caramel, brown sugar, and plums. Spice shows through in plenty and this was a great winter warmer. Very sweet though so I could only handle one though as a sipper it would last quite a while.
The Brugse Zot Blonde was a very citrusy Wit. Quite tasty and peppery. My wife described it as "Zippy" which pretty much sums it up.

In the Delirium beer cave I had seen people ordering so I gave it a go here. It came in a little swing top which I brought home with me. The head was massive and it was quite citrusy with lemon being very evident. It tasted of Alcohol and sweet caramel and at 8.3% is yet another big Belgian beer. I was more excited about the bottle than the beer to be honest. It was not bitter at all and while it was a perfectly good beer, I think it was just a little odd and overcarbonated. My wifes choice was a St Barnardus Wit which was a crisp but standard wit. I wonder is there such thing as an outstanding wit? This was lovely but I just can't get overly excited about Witbiers, though they are fantastic session beers.


I was drooling at the crates of Westvleteren 12. Unfortunately all empty.

One thing I should point out is the image above. You see the table and the railing? The entrance is just there to the left. A group of English people came in and ordered a massive cheese plate and about 10 minutes later the woman in the chair pictured realised her bag was gone. Someone had walked in and swiped it from the ground in between the railings. So be careful in Belgium in general but especially so if you are sitting by these railings.


I decided to be swayed by some beer mat advertising. As you can see, the beer mats provided were Gouden Carolus. I had the hopsinjoor which is a Belgian IPA. This turned out to be a rather delicous 8% beer. I was certain there was cascade in here from the aroma but it turns out not to be the case according to the website. It was a little like a double IPA and I got grapefruit and orange while tasting. I thought this was lovely if a tiny bit lacking in body. The Tripel seems to have been lost as I have no notes on it for some reason? I am sure it was a perfectly good beer as I only had one bad beer on the whole trip which I will talk about another time. It was truly awful though.



On the way downstairs to the bathroom you will find this picture displaying Manneken Pis dressed in various outfits. By the way, downstairs there is further seating and while it looks like a restaurant, the place does not serve much in the way of food (they do serve food though) so this is just part of the Bar that must open up later when it is busier.

So that is it for Brussels. There are plenty of bars to go in Brussels that have great beer but these are the two main places for beer lovers who want extensive beer menu's.
During my 5 nights we took two day trips. One to Antwerp and the other to Bruges and they will get their own blog post.

Brussels part 2 - The Delirium Café - A Beer heaven

In Brussels there is a destination that can not be missed for any beer enthusiast called The Delirium Café which sits down a side street (easily missed) off Rue Des Bouchers. In fact Rue Des Bouchers is hard to miss as you might as well call it restaurant street. It is a long narrow street packed full of restaurants. All the restaurants are the same, with the same menu and the same idea of how to rip people off1 although the food is excellent.
Delirium is not just one bar though, it is four different bars in one and I tried three of them.

First has to be the Beer cave down in the basement. The reason it has to be the first is quite simply the staggering number of beers available.

There are always at least 2004 beers available and up to 2500 beers. When you walk in you will find on your table a cardboard menu listing the beers on tap, beers in bottle, price and abv. This list is impressive enough but there is also a massive folder containing the full list that floats around the bar if you are looking for something a little bit harder to find.

I started off with a Lucifer to ease me in which was quite fruity.

My wife was on a mission to try every Blonde beer in Belgium, She failed of course but she made a respectable dent and started her mission with St Idesbald Blonde which was a very nice beer indeed. It had a nice bitter finish. It was crisp and refreshing with plenty of citrus and some pepper but interestingly it was woody as well.

Next up was a La Rulles Belgian Triple. It was packed full of citrus, grapefruit. Very malty sweet and strong at 8.5% but with a nice bitterness to balance the finish. I wrote in my notebook that it was an IPA, it's not but to be honest it tasted just like an American triple IPA to me.
Beside it is my wifes beer called pink killer. This was a rather unappetising alcopop like beer. The only thing going for it being a grapefruit and lambic sourness. My wife enjoyed it, I went back to my Triple.


After a pause for some food around the corner at one of the many seafood restaurants, we went back and this time stayed on ground level and went to the tap room which boasts 25 beers on tap. They also have a large range of bottled beers too and if you still need something special you can pop downstairs to the beer cave and grab something.

Next up was another La Rulles beer. This time the Blonde which was tasty and very similar to my own Blonde Beggar, which in turn is similar to Blarney Blonde. Also in the picture is my wife's Mongozo Mango which I am sure is in fact an alcopop. OK a bit harsh but it really tastes like one.


We also had two Delirium beers. I had the Delirium Xmas beer and at 10% is quite strong. It was a dark ruby with a little citrus and a nice lambic sourness. I enjoyed this a lot. My wife had the 9% Tremens which was another Blonde beer. Tasty enough but nothing noteworthy after a long list of other blondes, though this is a fabulous beer.


The next day we tried the third part of Delirium called The Hoppy Loft and it is located upstairs as you might guess.

The decor is a mix of Belgian beer paraphernalia but it has an American feel to it. This combined with the plethora of Americans in the place, as well as the huge list of imported American beers meant that it became our favourite of the three as the other two were a little too busy.


The tables are made from wagon wheels, Brilliant. Anyway the first three beers we had here were Snake Dog IPA for me which was an excellent American style IPA. Very very refreshing
My wife had a Floris white (middle) which she did not like and I ended up drinking. It was a little too sour for her, it was drinkable but nothing impressive about it. She then had a Quintine Blonde which was more her thing. Boring enough but tasty.

Some beer photography of the random blonde beer I can't remember anything about.

After this we popped out for some dinner to the mexican tequila bar next door. There is a great Mexican restaurant there and the food was quite good. For the most part it was empty and I think this is their own fault because the only indication they serve food is a tiny note in the window and a mention in the Delirium flyer I had picked up. I can't see it doing much business but hopefully it will last. As beer goes I had my favourite Mexican beer, Negra Modello.

Back in to the Hoppy loft for some drinks. We were full so only had one each. I had the XX bitter which was a Belgian/American IPA and quite good. Mrs TaleOfAle had a very good Rader Blonde which had fizzy sherbert thing going on and plenty of orange and other citrus with a sweet finish. We were too full from Mexican food for any more so we went back to the hotel.


The following day we popped back to the hoppy loft for the last time. I had an Urthel Hopit IPA and it was fantastic stuff, perfectly balanced hop and sweetness with a little spice thrown in.
My wife had Loterbol Blonde which I found is a good beer but a little sweet for me. A little honey and sherbert stands out. I also had a Hercules double IPA and that was lovely. Strong malt backbone and plenty of caramel / honey in the finish.

So there it is, over the course of three days we spent time in the fantastic Delirium playground. We never went in to the Floris bar as it seemed more geared towards mixed drinks etc, though I know they have beer there too. In between the three days and on subsequent days we visited Antwerp, Bruges and another fantastic bar in Brussels but they are for another post.

1. By ripping off I mean they have signs with €15/€20/€20 set menu's outside but when you get in you get a normal expensive menu. I asked one waiter is this the only menu? He said yes and walked off and came back a few moments later with the €25 set menu. I was a little pissed but ordered a single meal from the normal menu, an actual Belgian dish which I can not recall the name of but it was some sort of creamy chicken. It was very good actually, however if you are attracted in because of the set menu, make sure you get it from the waiter.