Dear all, this weekend I did not stray too far from my new home but instead ended up in downtown Brussels. Belgium is known for chocolate and beer and this week the latter of the two took center stage. The 10th annual Brussels Beer Weekend exceeded mine and my fellow interns expectations. The interns and I planned on being at the Grand'Place at ten o'clock in the morning when the gates opened but did not manage to really get beer caps and get started until around eleven. Forty breweries were present this year with over 250 different choices including InBev, the recent purchaser of Anheuser-Busch and the largest beer conglomerate in the world. It was definintely not my first choice but interesting to see at a venue that markets smaller and slightly more obscure labels. Entrance was free and then all that was needed was a handful of bottle cap tokens. At a euro a piece for a bottle cap, a maximum of four bottle caps for a beer, and gates opening at ten o’clock in the morning it made for a pretty good Saturday.

As luck would have it, we had a great day by Belgian standards with occasional sprinkles but mainly blue sky. Not only was there beer but there were Belgian beer ceremonies, people dressed in costumes, traditional Belgian clothing, a Manekinpis float that sprayed the crowd, a troop of people on stilts, horse drawn carriages full of kegs of beer, bands, and everything else that goes with a beer festival. I ended the day around five and ended up selling my beer caps to the poor fools who waited until five to get their beer caps. My roommate stayed until 9 o’clock for a total of ten hours of beer drinking, that is beer love.

Belgium takes beer very seriously; there is currently a coalition that is trying to get the restaurant industry and brewers together to do more beer-food pairings and beer related tourism. Wine and food are natural partners but in Belgium beer is being paired with the special of the day and whatever else you can imagine. Belgian beer is unique in that it breaks the mold when compared to most domestic beers. I am not much of a beer drinker but Belgians have invented a fairly sophisticated culture around drinking and enjoying beer. It has something to offer even most non-beer drinkers or at least reluctant beer drinkers from a purely cultural point of view. We are definitely not talking about kegs and red plastic cups but glasses designed to optimize taste by controlling the amount of interaction the beer will have with oxygen, beer glasses designed to keep the beer cooler longer by not actually touching the glass but instead holding it with the help of this wooden contraption, beers served out of coconut shells, and the list goes on. The glasses run the gamut and provide for some terrific collecting opportunities; my favorite is covered with tiny pink elephants but that has more to with the glass than the actual beer.

I am partial to a wonderful Belgian concoction called lambics. Lambics are the first step in the fermentation process then fruit is for a second round of fermentation. I have tried coconut, mango, ninkeberry, apple, and my recent favorite, apricot. The great thing is that it is beer but does not even taste like beer. I did not completely ignore all of the other beers but branched out a little and tried a couple more but I always go back to the fruity lambics.

According to the Belgian Tourist Office the breakdown of beers is as follows:
Blanche or White Beers
• Sometimes called a wheat beer - it is light, cloudy, and with a hint of citrus. Example: Hoegaarden.
Lambic
• A non-malted wheat beer naturally fermented by wild, airborne yeasts. A draft beer specific to the Brussels area.
Gueuze
• A blend of two or more Lambic beers to create a secondary fermentation and a Champagne-like sparkle.
Faro
• Lambic light, if you will. A sweetened variety with some of the flavor but less intensity of other Lambics.
Kriek
• A Lambic beer in which further fermentation is brought about with the addition of cherries or raspberries - refreshing in summer!
Brown Beers
• These beers interplay caramel-like malty sweetness and a sourness gained from several months of maturation. Example: Goudenband
Red Beers
• Produced from red barley, these beers are aged in oak. Fruity, sweet & sour, very thirst-quenching! Example: Rodenbach.
Golden Beers
• These beers are similar to Pilsner lagers using very pale malts and hops, while retaining ale yeasts. Example: Duvel.
Trappist Beers
•Among the dozen or so surviving abbey breweries in Europe, six are Trappist and located in Belgium, all established in their present form by Trappists who left France after the turbulence of the Napoleonic period. Rich dark ales produced solely by monks according to centuries-old methods in the six following monasteries; Chimay, Orval, Rochefort, Westmalle, Westvleteren and Achel.
Abbey Beers
•These are strong ales similar to some of the famous Trappist brews, but not made in monasteries. Some have names indicating a business relationship between an abbey and a commercial brewery. Several of these monasteries did brew in the past. There are several other religious institutions that license breweries, and other beers that are simply named after an abbey ruin or local saint. Some names to remember when sampling abbey beers are: Leffe, Grimbergen, Duvel, Affligem, Karmeliet, Kwak and Corsendonk.

The weekend was fun and I discovered a couple more flavors I just have to try. If you are ever in Brussels or Belgium I encourage you to go to the tourist office website because there is always a beer festival going on somewhere in the country. I won a t-shirt too, can you believe it?