I guess this is where I reminisce about beery Belgium. First of all, it was amazing, amazingly amazing. I made a list of beers to find and I found almost all of them, particularly the sour ones. Everyone was extremely nice, almost every beer place we visited and started a conversation we were blown away by generosity. But here is the million dollar question, what was best. Was it the metropolitan Brussels, or the touristy Brugge, or maybe Antwerpen with its famous Kulminator. Well, if I could only visit one region on a follow up trip it would be the countryside between Brussels and Brugge, or better known as the Lambic region/Pattojenland. The flat meadows, small two way roads, and the out of the way places are amazing. We drove by the now defunct Eylenbosch brewery which was so cool. And the one place that blew my mind above all was De Heeren van Liedekercke and here is a nice write up by John White.

Here are some pictures that say a 1000 words.

So I just got back from my beer pilgrimage to Belgium, 8 days and 7 nights. It was wonderful in many respects, particularly the beer part. At the moment I want to cover some of my non-beer observations.

I visited Brussels, then drove through the Pajottenland (lambic region) to Brugge and finally one day in Antwerpen. Was supposed to visit Ghent but we were just to tired and loved Brugge to much to leave. There are some very stark differences between these places.

Brussels seems to be what we normally consider a capital city. The weekdays are packed with traffic and suits. On the weekend the whole thing just shuts down. I am a bit biased because I stayed in the European Quarters, the area where the NATO, European Union, and such things are placed. However, I got this impression from the whole city. While there is obviously a large tourist faction of the city its contained within a very small area. The rest is like walking through an empty old city. So basically, what I mean to say is Brussels is a large business city that happens to get tourists.

On the other hand, Brugge is a small city that gets all its business from tourists. I got the impression that Brugge is there for tourists only (and I do not mean to at all take away from the rich history and people of Brugge). It is understandably so, I read something close to 100,000 thousand people live in Brugge while the city sees over 2 million tourists a year, a tradition that started a long time ago when the Brits would come over all the time. This is still evident, I am pretty sure I saw more Brits than natives. These differences are most evident when entering any bar, restaurant, or store. In Brussels, everyone would always assume you speak French and engage you in that tongue. In Brugge, you are always engaged in either 2 languages at once or just straight English. I was amazed and of course being an American this made me feel much more comfortable. The city is built to maintain the "old" feel, almost akin to Disney Land, and of course as any tourist I really loved it. And while Belgium has its share of antiquity it does not seem like its forced upon the people. In Brussels there is a hustle and bustle of everyday life, in Brugge its just for a hustle to do all the touristy stuff.

Now the most dazzling places I saw were on my drives through the lambic region. To see this beautiful green fields with cows everywhere, I mean everywhere, while you are drive down a road that barely fits your car. Driving through these little, clean, beautiful full of farmer workers and townspeople, I could see myself living there. Just opening up a little bar, open 5 random hours during the week, that I could see for myself, something I did not want from either Brugge or Brussels.

Antwerpen, well, it felt like a smaller version of Brussels, like LA to NYC, one might say.

I am moving to Kansas soon so my beer adventure will take on a whole new direction. Recently been brewing with my friend Boris Zee on his set up.

Been drinking a lot and got more new nips, will try to keep this updated.

Finally got around to bottling my cranberry cider a few nights ago, it only took me almost 2 months to do so. But it seems to be coming together very nicely. The O.G was 1066 and the FG was straight 1000, so that was nice. For those that do not want to do the math that means a abv of about 8.7%, very nice. I used a Trappist Ale yeast, which really did a number on the cider. It's really not sweet and became nutty but the cranberries were wunderbar. Very acidic and tart, no alcohol presence at all. I ended up with 3 gallons of straight cider and I bottled half still and primed the other half with more cider.



I also did a little experiment I burrowed from someone on the ratebeer website. Got half a gallon of unpasteurized cider from a local orchard and added the dregs (the settled yeast) of a nicely sour beer (Jolly Pumpkin Oro de Calabaza). It took a bit of time for activation to start but then it EXPLODED with fermentation. Depending on how this works out I have a few possible routes to take:
A) take what happens and drink it
B) add more sour yeast, particularly from a geuze
C) and possibly if it is going well get a whole 3-5 gallons of unpasteurized cider and use this as a starter

The great thing about beer hunting is visiting breweries in small cities and Keegan Ales happens to be one of this small cities. Located in Kingston, NY it is over two hours north of New York City and about an hour south of Albany, pretty much making it in the middle of no man's land. I finally decided to drive out there because of some special treats the brewery's restaurant had on tap, but I will get to that later.

Keegan Ales shares a lot of history with Long Island, particularly the name of a beer. Keegan Ales makes an American style IPA called Hurricane Kitty, which also happens to be the name of an IPA made at the BrickHouse Brewery, a small brewpub in Patchogue, NY. A little more than a year ago I stopped by there and ordered the Kitty and as I did a man next to me said "nice choice." Long story short, I was sitting next to Tom Keegan, the son of Hurricane Kitty, the craziest driver in Patchogue. Also, his son Tommy was the Keegan of Keegan Ales.

Now back to the point, I made a slight trek to Kingston to visit a recently opened restaurant and bar at the Keegan brewery, but more importantly they had 2 beers on tap that are not easy to come by. First and most important was the Super Kitty, a supped up version of the regular Kitty that weights in at 12% abv, is hand bottled, and released in a super small quantity during the holiday season. I got to try a draft version and, as a nice bonus, a brand new beer, a White Ale, the first Belgian style beer from this brewery.

The experience was a ball and I fully enjoyed both beers, reviews can be found here. The bar is beautiful decorated to fit the old town and the youthful brewery. The free peanuts were a kick. Outside of the house beers there were also 2-3 guest taps. The restaurant is original, not really a sit down order kind of place but more like order at the counter and the lady will bring it over to your picnic table or couch. But the food was great actually. Live music on the Saturday I was there, think hippie (the name of the band is IS, yeah, I know). Definitely recommended for anyone in the area.

I recently held a small impromptu blind Flanders Red tasting for a few people. If you ask, what is a "blind" tasting, well its when individuals sample beer without knowing what brand/brewery it is (and in this case also rate it). What is Flanders Red? Well the BJCP has it's own way of describing it but basically I will say its a Belgian red ale that is barrel aged with bacteria for a long period to provide sourness and acidity and is often blended with an older beer to cut down the sour aspects. The most famous and widely available example of this beer is Rodenbach Grand Cru. This also happens to be one of my most favorite styles of beer. So, I decided we needed to have a blind tasting to see what people really think is the best, unfortunately I played host and poured all the beers but the other four people had no idea. I was also able to acquire various Flanders Red from America and Europe, in all i believe I was able to serve a nice array of takes on the style. Actually, I serves 10 different beers (3 of which were provided by another person) . The list:

American:
New Holland Moxie - New Holland Brewing Company, Holland, Michigan
New Glarus Unplugged Enigma - New Glarus Brewing Company, New Glarus, Wisconsin
New Belgium La Folie - New Belgium Brewing Company, Fort Collins, Colorado
Russian River Supplication - Russian River Brewing, Santa Rosa, California
Jolly Pumpkin La Roja Grand Reserve - Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales, Dexter, Michigan

Belgian:
Rodenbach Grand Cru - Brouwerij Rodenbach (Palm), Roeselare
Bios Vlaamse Bourgogne (labeled as Monk's) - Brouwerij Van Steenberge, Ertvelde
Zoetzuur Flemish Reserve Ale - De Proefbrouwerij, Lochristi

Other:
Mestreechs Aajt (5% ABV, unsweetened) - Gulpener Bierbrouwerij, Gulpen, Netherlands
Friend's homebrewed, 5 year old, straight from the barrel, uncarbonated, Flanders Red

All 10 were served blind in a random order, 1 person knew of 3 of the beers otherwise no one even knew what beers are being served, the results were interesting.

The Rundown

4 Blind raters + me
La Folie 3.98

RR Supplication batch 2 3.92

Rodenbach GC 3.82

Zoetzuur 3.76

homebrew 3.625

La Roja GR 3.56

Moxie 3.4

Monks 3.32

Mestreechts Aajt 3.22

Enigma 3.2

Minus 1 "against the grain" rater

La Folie 4.15

homebrew 4.03

Rodenbach GC 3.975

RR Supplication batch 2 3.925

Zoetzuur 3.725

Moxie 3.35

Monks 3.325

Enigma 3.125

Mestreechts Aajt 3.1

OVERALL: Either way you cut it La Folie scored best, it was also the one most recognized. No other beers were recognized except one person narrowed down the Rodenbach to 3 choices. The homebrew was spectacular outside of the one rater who hated it extremely (the HBers ratings were never used to calculate these numbers). The Enigma consistently scored badly, the La Roga was consistently just average and the Zoetzuur was consistently above average. All in all the RR was most globally liked.