April 2016 – Page 2

Rondje Roodbruin

Oh yea! The biennial ‘Rondje Roodbruin’ or Red-Brown Tour. The tour is an open house at each of the four breweries in West Flanders who manufacture the Flanders Red and ‘Oud Brune’ beers. Rare and very special.

All the facilities are quite interesting. Rodenbach and Omer Vander Ghinste are large, modern operations. Verhaeghe and de Brabandere and smaller shops with fun, local character. Each of the breweries provided a tour, samples, food, and entertainment. All used what looked like forests of huge, oaken foeders (French oak) for aging. Many were over 100 years old. Amazing!

pics are: Verhaeghe foeders; Ryan, Shaun, & Mike at Omer; Omer band; food truck

Gooik, Zythos

Today is the Zythos beer festival. On the way we stop at the ‘Volkscafe’ in Gooik, pronounced ‘Hoyk’, a traditional cafe and cultural center in the heart of the beautiful Senne valley. The cafe is a favorite with cyclists and beer tourists alike. In the men’s room, a beer glass holder is conveniently located abive the urinals. A very civilized culture.

Across the yard from the cafe is one of the premier lambic blenders, de Cam. While there, another local brewer arrives, selling beer out of his trunk – gotta love it.

Zythos is Belgium’s premier beer festival, held in Leuven, a major university town. Very popular. Over 80 breweries and 500 beers. Nice.

Zythos!

I find Belgium very interesting, in that it reminds me a lot of where I grew up in northwest Indiana, with its generally flat land and smaller communities. I’m also taken by the ancient brick dwellings side-by-side with modern abodes. There are also a lot of Chinese restaurants, which may require further investigation on a future visit.

Saturday was the least structured day, but one of the busiest. We visited the Volkscafé De Cam in Gooik. Although none of their own beers were available at the time, the café did have several lambics for our perusal. The lambic blending is done across the yard, and the brewer appeared towards the end of our visit and sold some bottles out of his car, which several in the group bought.

Then it was on to Belgium’s national beer festival, Zythos. Held at the Brabanthal outside Leuven, the festival has more than 80 brewers and more than 500 beers. A modest sum gets one a glass and 5 tokens; most beers cost one token, although barleywines and other heavier products can cost two. Additional tokens can be bought at any time, and CAMRA members such as myself get an additinal two tokens for free.

I sampled many of the offerings and enjoyed everything I tried. The food, which for me was currywurst and frites, was quite good as well. This is a festival that absolutely drawfs my local events, and is definitely an opportunity not to be missed.

Lambics Abound

Friday started with a visit to the Lambic Visitors Centre in Beersel. The museum featured a film that explained lambic brewing and blending, followed by a guided tour with the director. The process is an absolutely fascinating one; it takes about four years for lambic to be ready. Afterwards, we sampled several lambics in the bar.

Our next stop was the nearby Den Herberg café and brewery in Buizingen to try their beers. The blonde, amber and tripel were all quite delicious.

Lunch was at the Café-Restaurant 3 Fonteinen in Beersel. In addition to an excellent Flemish beef stew, I was able to try the Beersel Blonde and the Oude Geuze, and enjoyed both very much.

Oud Beersel was our next stop, for a tour and tasting at the geuze blender. I found it interesting contrasting the aged look of the blending and barrel rooms with the modern design of both tap rooms.

The night finished with a visit to the biannual lambic festival known as The Night of the Great Thirst, held this year in Itterbeek. A large tent held Belgium’s lambic producers, as well as a few others such as Allahash Brewing in Maine offering similar products. The group was able to try several, thanks to bottle-sharing.

It was a late return, but we were able to find a restaurant and get something to eat before turning in.

Payottenland

A pretty full day in Payottenland, home of lambiek and guezue, in the Senne valley. This is beautiful country with rolling hills, orchards, and small farms.

Beersel is a short drive from our hotel in Aalst. Our first stop is at the Centre de Lambiek – a museum and visitor center dedicated to lambiek brewing and blending. Also in Beersel is the wonderful 3Fonteinen restaurant and brewery. Armand Debelder, the famous and legendary father of the modern lambiek renaissance is at his shop – very cool! We dined in the restaurant – rabbit stewed in guezue for me, Flemish stew for Ryan.

Just down the road is ‘Oud Beersel’ a guezue blender brought back to life and now considered one of the most respected of the ‘Geuzestekerij’.

We finish at the beer festival with the best name ever – ‘the Night of the Great Thirst’, the international geuze and kriek festival of the Payottenland. All the lambiek angd gueze blenders are represented. The festival quickly desends into a communal sharing of purchases – great fun!

pics: the ‘Great Thirst’, friends in a foeder, Oud Beersel tour, Armand

Oostveleren, Ichtegen, Aalst

Early start to the Podge ‘Beer from the Woods’ tour with a 6:15 pickup at the Woolpack Pub in Chelmsford. First time going through the Chunnel – a very interesting process. ‘Richie’, our driver, asked the group to inhale as he threads the bus onto the carriage – a tight fit! We got a small view if one of the refugee camps outside Calais. This one, at least, was quite orderly.

Our route through West Flanders passed through a series of small villages with names familiar after years of beer label examination. We lunched at a very special cafe, the Malenhoff, in Oostveleren. After a short dive to Ichtegen, we visited the De Struise Barrel shop with its 600+ aging barrels, then on to the family-owned Strubbel Brewery. Marc Strubbel, the 7th generation owner, gave a nice presentation on the history of the brewery. Strubbel is one of only 5 brewers still brewing the Flanders Red style.

We are staying in Aalst for the next few evenings. Alst is a regional market town in East Flanders with a famous and bizarre festival. A statue in the town square commemorates one of the festival traditions where the men parade through town in high heels & fishnet stockings. The wikipedia entry on the story of the festival is amusing.

Pics: Malenhoff Cafe, Grote Markt in Aalst, Struise Barrel shop, good location.

Belgium: Day One

Podge’s Beer Tour has begun! After an early start and a trip through the Channel Tunnel, we found ourselves at the Mulenhof Café in Oostvleteren. The café is a beautiful old building with a giant windmill outside and beer-themed décor inside. I had a lovely meal of tajine with pork cheeks and chicken wings, followed by the Black Albert Sabayon, a whipped dessert consisting of egg and Black Albert beer.

Our next stop was the De Struise Brouwerij barrel room, where the brewer explained the workings of barrel-aging and lambics, followed by tastings of a couple beers.

We then went to Ichtegem to visit Brouwerij Strubbe, passed down from father to son for seven generations. The brewer focused more on history than technique, but it was still a fascinating talk. Again, tasting commenced, and I heartily recommend trying Ichtegem’s Grand Cru if you can find it.

We then reached Aalst, our home base for the tour. A lovely tapas restaurant called Tapasco provided dinner and another beer, followed by a last round in the hotel bar. The town square was fairly quiet, but I expect that will change with the weekend coming up.

On to Chelmsford

After another great breakfast at the Earl, we are headed out for Chelmsford. The ‘Greater Anglia’ route runs back into London (Liverpool Street Station), then transfer to the Ipswich line. Both trains are nice – fast & clean. There is a member of the ‘Presentation Team’ (as it says on their jackets) that passes through the car every few minutes.

Old friends Steve and Mara meet us at the hotel and guide us to the ‘Hop Shop’, Chelmsford’s CAMRA pub of the year and the city’s first ‘micro pub’. Pretty much all local real ales. Mara and I share a birthdate – she’s holding up much better than I!

Later, another good friend Shaun joins us after work and hauls us all to Maldon where Carol joins us for dinner and a crawl of the villages pubs. Interesting changes to the beer scene since Mary and I were here a few years ago. Micro Pubs are all the rage now – small, intimate settings in old village storefronts.

Pics are: the Smith’s at the Hop, the Hop, the Queen’s birthday, the Woolpack.

Sunny day in Cambridge

An absolutely georgeous day in Cambridge. Staying at the Earl of Derby was a good decision. Ryan and I both had the ‘Full English’ today – really special, and popular. There’s been a steady stream of workers and locals stopping in to eat.

Today was museum day. The main reason we decided on Cambridge as a destination was to see the special exhibit at the Polar Institute in honor of the 100th anniversary of Shackleton’s Endeaver expedition. Very cool and my favorite stop. The famous Scottish restaurant ‘Loch Fyne Seafood’ is located across from the Fitzwilliam and made for a nice lunch stop.

Pubs, pubs, and pubs. They are everywhere and uniformly good. Fine selections of real ales & nice menus. Most have pleasant garden areas that are quite popular on a sunny day like today. Alas, we’ve exhausted the supply of CAMRA rated pubs so it’s time to move on. Chelmsford in the morning.

Pics are: Elm Tree, Scotch Eggs, Polar Institute, Cambridge Blue

Some Culture!

Let me start by saying this: the Full English Breakfast is a wonderful way to start your day. There’s enough food to keep you going for quite some time.

After breakfast, we took a tour of several museums. The first stop was the Polar Museum, celebrating those who ventured to both poles in the name of discovery. The exhibit includes a lot of artifacts, and a lot of information on the crew, some of whose storied I’d not heard before. The exhibit includes a replica of a lifeboat Shakleton used, as well as a memorial to the various dog teams.

The Fitzwilliam Museum is worth seeing just for the architecture, but it had a number of interesting exhibits, including a special feature on Egyptian funerary customs entitled “Death on the Nile.” This is a museum I’d like to spend more time at on a future visit.

After lunch, we visited King’s College Chapel, a beautiful 500-year-old church. Once again, the architecture was amazing. The chapel includes a museum showing the construction of the edifice.

Our last stop was the Archaeology and Anthropology Museum. Although small, the collection was laid out very well, and offered insights on cultures from every corner of the planet.

The rest of the evening included a return to The Mill and a few new pubs: The Elm Tree, The Free Press, Cambridge Blue, Kensington Arms and Live and Let Live. Many of these are tucked away on side streets in generally nondescript buildings, making them feel like they are neighborhood secrets. But it was clear from the traffic we saw they were anything but.