2011 was our sixth trip to the annual Belgian Beer Weekend beer festival in Brussels.

Brussels always delivers, but every year the festival itself gets more and more crowded, and it’s generally more relaxed to go have a drink in a bar than fight through the crowd.

The one good thing about the festival, however, is that there are so many beer lovers in town that you’re bound to meet someone interesting.

I remember one year we were at Cantillon, and the staff was working feverishly to take extra good care of an American guy.  It was hard to complain because they were opening up all kinds of bottles for him to taste, and then bringing the rest of the bottle over to our table afterward.  We ran into the guy later in the weekend at Delirium, and he turned out to be Tom Peters from Monk’s Cafe in Philly.

Not much from the outside

The good old prices...

Prepare for overload

After running into David from Brouwerij Huyghe year after year and night after night on these trips, we took him up on his offer of a brewery tour one year.

Delirium Bottling Line

What's Brewing?

Get me a straw

I could go on, but on a typical night out in Brussels any other time of the year,  you’re not as likely to run into such interesting beer lovers.

But hour long queues to buy tokens for the beer festival?  Waiting at the entrance for people to leave so that additional people can be let in?  Drinking at a bar is so much more civilized … and thankfully Brussels has some great places to choose from.  Here is a guide to some of our favorites…

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If I grew up on a farm, and was retarded, Bruges might impress me.  But I didn’t, so it doesn’t.

Or so one of the characters from the movie “In Bruges” famously said.

't Brugs Beertje (photo from 2001)

I hadn’t been back to Brugge (the proper Flemish name for the town) since well before the release of that movie, so I was curious to see how things had changed.  We had always had fun in Brugge in the past, but it was basically a one decent bar town.  Plenty of good places to eat … the best fish soup in the world … but only one world class bar, ‘t Brugs Beertje.

Now that said, ’t Brugs Beertje is one of the best beer bars in the world.  In fact, it’s legendary.

But it’s closed on Wednesdays.

And guess what day we rolled into town?

Straffe Hendrik Quadrupel

I knew that when I was planning the itinerary for this year’s trip.  But we had to take the chance that Brugge was more than ’t Brugs Beertje.  And we also had to at least see a canal.  My friend ColaniAL has probably been to Brugge 6 or 7 times and had yet to see a canal.  That’s mainly because there weren’t any on the path between the Hotel Acacia and ’t Brugs Beertje, which was the only sightseeing we had done on any of those trips.

I’m happy to report that Brugge now has at least 2 additional world class beer bars, and a scattering of other fine establishments. (more…)

De Wildeman

It is with great pleasure that I look back on another successful European fall campaign by the WDT. The first leg of the tour was Amsterdam.

It’s a pretty bold statement to start in Amsterdam.

First Westmalle of the trip

After taking the train into the city from the airport, the festivities always start at In de Wildeman. Why? Well, In de Wildeman may very well still be the best beer bar in Amsterdam, but it’s best quality is that it opens at noon. I love Amsterdam, but let’s be honest, it opens late, or at least the decent beer bars do.

It is customary to start with a Westmalle Tripel, and then gradually get more adventurous. On this recent visit to the Wildeman, I did take the opportunity to try a few Dutch microbrews.  Two that stood out were the Jopen Fokkerbier (especially the way the bartender pronounced it), and the Emalisse Black IPA.

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