Beer Festival in Brussels

Kari and I went to Brussels this past weekend for a beer festival. Belgium is famous for their beers and rightly so. I have now placed Belgium beer at the top of my "Best Beer Country" list.

We flew there Friday morning (1-hour flight) and the festival started that evening. It was held in the Grand Place, a plaza surrounded by buildings that used to be the homes of merchants and the old town hall. It was rebuilt in the early 1700's after the French blew it up after a dispute about bread or cheese I think. They now have restaurants on the first floor and offices on the upper floors. Anyway you buy tokens (which were bottle caps) and exchange them for beer. You got 4 tokens for 3 Euros, with most beer being 3 tokens, the rest either 2 or 4 tokens (Note: to the Belgiums the quality of beer is not affected whether it is in bottles or in casks, it is all good quality stuff). There were 30 brewers and we tried beers from about 20. All the beer is served in glasses, not kegger cups, and there is an art to the pour which they are serious about.



The whole scene was pretty mellow, even Saturday night when it was packed and people had been drinking all day. Did not see any altercations, but the occasional glass was broken accidentally. Did see Losers stealing glasses that they could buy at the gift shop (there are uncouth louts in every country; Europe is no more "civilised" than anywhere else). Also saw people outside the festival area drinking beer from cans. Why come to a beer festival to be outside drinking beer from cans?



So we drank Friday night. Then Saturday morning we had a few then went to see a church and a park that had statues that represented all the Medieval guilds. That was interesting, we walked around the park and tried to guess as many guilds as we could. Then we had lunch and drank a bit more. Then we went to the hotel (a 5-minute walk fortunately), took a nap, got some dinner and drank some more. Sunday morning we drank a few then went to the museum Musees royaux des Beaux-Arts, had lunch and drank more beer until even I did not want any more beer. We also had chocolate and Belgian waffles. So, yeah we spent the weekend eating and drinking.



There are two ways they could improve the festival. One would be if you could buy a taster set from each brewer instead of only single beers. That way you could try them all. Also, I like to eat when I am drinking. I was surprised that the restaurants did not have waiters with menus of appetizers going around. That would have been cool, you would never have to leave except to use the restroom. Unless they had a "piss boy".


Interesting note about Brussels, there are few if any public toilets, so you have to stop at cafes and have a coffee or something. Well, you don't because there is the smell of urine fairly often when you are walking around.

Okay who got the "piss boy" reference?