What can be more fun than just driving around Belgium and see wat you bump into? That’s the way I ended up in Aarschot, a town of about 16.000 inhabitants on the river Demer, in the east of the Flemish Brabant province. A historical town, with a large church and a beguinage, though unfortunately the two world wars have left a trail of destruction. Another thing that has affected local built heritage is neglect, if the way the historical Duke’s watermills were left to fall into ruin is anything to go by. Only in 2010 have these been renovated and modernised. In any case, I wouldn’t be writing about this if Aarschot didn’t have its own beer: the ‘Aarschotse Bruine’, or Aarschot Brown. (more…)

Last time, I wrote about my first impressions of Belgian Beer World. This costly tourist attraction opened in 2023 right in the heart of Brussels, capital of beer country Belgium. It cost 90 million euros to renovate the old stock exchange building and set up the exhibit on the nation’s most popular drink. Most of this money was coughed up by the government, as the Belgian brewers themselves only contributed less than 6 million.[1]

Let’s just see how well this money was spent. After all, Belgian beer culture is on Unesco’s protected Cultural Heritage list, Belgium is home to the world’s biggest brewery, AB InBev. Belgium is rightly known for the great variety and quality of its beers, including a few respectable types that have been around for centuries, such as white beer, gueuze-lambic and Flemish old brown, and newer beers that found their way into drinkers’ hearts such as abbey beer, saison, Belgian strong pale ale, fruit beer and spéciale belge.

This should be a no-brainer, right? All this should logically result in a high-end top-quality visitor ‘experience’, not in the least because so much old and new material is available, and because so much wonderful history has been recorded, so many fantastic stories to tell? As might be expect from the united Belgian Brewers, who have a reputation to uphold? How difficult can it be to brew something worthwile out of that?

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The tourist season is here again, and for a beer tourist, there’s no better place than Belgium. Therefore I recently visited three ‘beer experiences’ in and around Brussels. What do they offer, and is it worth spending your hard-earned money on a ticket? Let’s look inside the Abbey beer museum at Grimbergen, the Beer museum on the Grand-Place, and the Belgian Beer World at La Bourse.

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Congratulations to Jopen in 2014: it was exactly thirty years ago that this brewery released its first beer, and the taps are still running, in their home town Haarlem. An occasion to celebrate! However, where does that name ‘Jopen’ come from? From the Medieval 112 litre barrels in which Haarlem beer was shipped, as the story goes. So let’s fact check that. (more…)

A typical beer tradition of the Netherlands: bock beer. This dark, malty and slightly sweet brew, usually about 6,5 to 7,5% ABV, is released every year in autumn. When the leaves start falling, head out through mist and rain to your bottle shop or local pub for this seasonal delight. There was a time, not long ago, that every Dutch brewer was making it, and though today the tradition is slightly obscured by all the other beer events going on in Holland (collabs, tap take-overs, barrel aged editions…), there still are lots of bock beer festivals that attract enormous crowds. That’s why a new book has hit the stores: Het Bockbierboek, ‘The Bock beer book’. In it, beer writers Marco Daane, Rick Kempen and I describe past, present and future of Dutch bock beer (in Dutch). To summarise its contents here would lead a bit far, but let’s have a look at these two questions: how old is the Dutch bock beer tradition? And was it always an autumn beer?

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Recently, I was invited by Christopher Quinn and Mike Schallau of the Chicago-based Beer Temple podcast to join them to talk about saison history and on Belgian and Dutch beer history in general. In fact, I had been doing additional research on saison this year, so I had some new stuff to tell as well.
Why don’t you give it a listen, it goes on for one hour and a half or so, after which Chris and Mike continue without me talking on American saison (which is something I don’t know very much about). (more…)

It will happen someday: my book on the history of Belgian beers. Already I’m working on a timeline, not unlike the one featured in my book on lost Dutch beers, published in 2017: an overview of which beer types existed from when, and in many cases, when they disappeared. Therefore, I keep on looking for the earliest (and latest) mentions of certain beers. Since when have we known white beer, grisette, Flemish old brown and saison? That’s why I was happy as a pig in muck last week, when I found a new starting date for one of my favourite beer types: lambic. And it has everything to do with a magic lantern.

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Time to look another long lost Belgian beer, this time from Lier, a nice old little town on the Nete river. It has quaint little streets in the beguinage, a beautiful old town hall, and a Medieval tower with an astronomical clock. Currently, it does not have its own brewery. It does however have a story to tell about historical beers.[1]

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Studying Belgian beer history can be overwhelming. Even I have a huge pile of books and articles that are still waiting for me to read them. But what if you’d just like a manageable introduction by going through some of the most relevant literature available? It’s the summer holidays, so brush up your knowledge reading on the beach, at the campsite, under a tree or in your tent. And brush up your Dutch and French, because sorry, English speakers: the world doesn’t revolve around you this time. (more…)

Saddened by the emptiness its passing leaves in our lives, but deeply thankful for all the great moments we  shared together, and shocked that the end was more sudden than we expected, we now say goodbye to… Wieckse Witte. The Heineken brewery is killing it off. In September 2021 this white beer will disappear from the Dutch market. It has reached the respectable age of 31, a quiet funeral service will be held. In short, it’s time to look back on the life of a beer that may be a symbol of a specific era in Dutch beer history.

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