Another wonderful Belgian tradition: Christmas beer. During the darkest days of the year all those breweries present their best brews to sip sitting by the fireplace, while outside the snow keeps falling and inside little angels hang in the Christmas tree. Most Belgian Christmas beers are dark and heavy, although there are light-coloured exceptions like Avec les bons voeux by the Dupont brewery. But where does this tradition come from exactly? That’s what I wanted to find out. (more…)

We need to talk about Stella Artois. This pilsener-type lager is the flagship beer of AB InBev, the world’s biggest brewery. A beer of which the makers want it to ooze quality, which is why in English-speaking countries it was often advertised as ‘reassuringly expensive’. In Belgium itself, it has already lost its splendour long ago. Anyway, because every beer needs a marketing story (and because lager has become such a bland product), for Stella they will often tell you that it originally was a Christmas beer, when it was introduced in 1926. But was it?
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