#deplukker

[georgeoliver]

Aspects of Brussels/Belgian life: Drink

There's only one drink I'm going to talk about in any depth in this blog: beer. You can get other drinks in Belgium, obviously, but only beer occupies such a central place in Belgium's identity. In fact, Belgian beer was recently added to UNESCO'a list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. There are around 1150 different varieties of beer brewed in Belgium, ranging from the six certified Trappist breweries, to abbey beers, blondes, tripels, brunes and ambrées, wit beers, geuzes (blending lambics), fruit beers (gueze + fruit during the fermentation process) and lambics (sour beer made with wild yeast).

Whenever I go to a bar, café or restaurant for a drink, I try to have a new beer. Even if I managed this every time, I wouldn't have made a dent.

I like quite a wide range of Belgian brews, particularly chewy brunes and some blondes: Orval, Omer and La Chouffe are some of my easily accessible favourites.

Belgian beers are generally stronger than UK equivalents – from 5 to 10% - and served in smaller volumes (33cl is a normal size). It's very important that you get the right glass with your beer (servers at the bar are often very apologetic when they don't have the right receptacle). A handy tip for anyone visiting Belgium is that the wider the glass opens at the top, the more flavourful it is – weedier beers (standard lagers like Jupiler, Maes and Stella Artois) have narrower openings to concentrate their limited flavour in small spaces.

Last weekend, I, along with some friends, visited the shyest and most retiring of the six trappist breweries. Westvleteren, made at the abbey of Saint-Sixtus, near Poperinge, is, to put it mildly, not widely sold. It is only possible to buy the beer directly from the abbey itself, or from the visitor's centre across the road. To collect any beer from the abbey one has to reserve it by phone and each buyer is limited to 1 or 2 cases of 24 bottles every 60 days.

Just 5 monks (+ 5 more to help with the bottling process) produce only 475 kilolitres (60,000 cases) per year, which is the same as they produced in 1946. They make three beers: a blonde, the 8 (which is 8%) and the 12 (which is just over 10%). The 12 was recently rated the best beer in the world by ratebeer.com which, combined with the limited supply, resulted in even greater interest in the beer. The monks still refuse to increase their production to meet the frenzied demand, insisting: “We are not brewers. We are monks. We brew beer to be able to afford being monks.”

The abbey itself, with a stern sign directing you elsewhere (Image credit: Joscha)

So we got the train out to Poperinge, and walked to the visitor centre in the Belgian, freezing grey. There, we installed ourselves, trying all three of the beers, their cheese, and even an ice cream made with the 12. It was good, though inevitably all the hype around the “best beer in the world” meant perhaps we had built it up a lot. For those who are interested but don't have the time to make the pilgrimage to Poperinge, St Bernadus, also brewed just outside Poperinge, is meant to taste quite similar to the 12, and is much easier to get hold of.

The following day, we visited the De Plukker Brewery, where they make organic beer with hops from their own farm. We had a tour and a tasting (I had already inadvertently tried two of their 5 beers in the local Irish pub). 80% of Belgian hops are grown in and around Poperinge, and so De Plukker decided to make their own beer from their yield. De Plukker = the plucker in honour of the workers who used to harvest the hops. The brewery hopes to start using its own organic malt in the beer soon, and makes some very tasty beers.

De Plukker’s beers, and stretching Hop fields (Image credit: Radhika)

So come to Belgium, and enjoy the intangible liquid heritage of its land! (If you don't like beer.. sorry)