I have now returned to the United States following 11 months in Belgium, the lovely and peculiar country in between France and the Netherlands (and Germany and the United Kingdom). Brussels and Belgium do not sweep you off your feet, but they contain multitudes of treasures cultural and historical, located as they are in a major crossroads of Europe. It became home, and Belgium is in my thoughts today after the terrible grenade attack in Liege. One of the more conspicuous treasures of Belgium is that this little country, the size of Maryland, has the best beer in the world. It's part of a common culture that unites Flanders and Wallonia. From frites to waffles to chocolates to beer, Belgium takes its food seriously and takes the time to deliver a well-crafted product.
For me, Belgian beers were already the best before I ever visited the country. Germany perhaps does "normal" beer best, with quality standards enforced by its early 16th century Reinheitsgebot, or purity law. But Belgian brews tend to be more interesting, more flavorful, and more to my taste. Third place among the nations is more up for grabs. (The Czechs deliver pretty consistent quality... Britain and Ireland have some classics... Mexican beers, at least the ones I've had, are consistently refreshing if a bit watery... the United States would probably be my winner though, as a growing and entrepreneurial microbrew scene makes up for the banality of the many of the major brands).
Wishing to make the most out of my opportunity of living in Belgium, I endeavored to sample as many different Belgian beers as possible. There are roughly 1,000, so it was simply a matter of time and effort, trying the readily available in Brussels and finding rarer ones in shops and bars. Before I left the county at the beginning of December, I managed to try 135 different ones.
A few introductory notes about the types of beer are worthwhile. Belgians actually drink crappy beer all the time - I would rate the ever-popular Jupiler as worse than Budweiser. The good stuff isn't much more expensive, but it tends to be heavier and have a higher alcohol content. Belgian beers can be divided into categories of quality and type. Trappist beers are made by monks, six abbeys within Belgium and one just outside are producing beer. The best known and easiest to find of these is Chimay. Westvleteren, made by the monks of Saint Sixtus Abbey, is not even distributed beyond the abbey's cafe, and its rarity has helped delicious Westvleteren Bruin 12 be hyped as the best beer in the world. Abbey beers (Bieres d'Abbay or Abdijbier) are based on the recipes of monks. Leffe, for example, is mass produced by Anheuser-Busch InBev from one of these old recipes. Many of the best Belgian beers fall into one of these two categories, which contain different styles. Dubbels (doubles) are dark beers of about 6% alcohol, tripels golden beers stronger than dubbels, quadrupels dark beers even stronger than the tripels.
Another specialty is lambic beer. Lambics are produced by spontaneous fermentation. They are known for fruity flavors - kriek, or cherry; framboise, or raspberry; pecheresse, or peach - but gueuze, a sour lambic, is quite popular within Belgium, and faro is made with brown sugar, sweet but not fruity. The Belgian white beer or witbier, exemplified by Hoegaarden, has entered the American microbrew lexicon as a style producing beers like Blue Moon. Flemish red ales are another popular local style. And Belgium also produces pilsners and other less extra-ordinary beers.
I kept a list for the year, but not notes. However, most of my favorites were beers I tried on multiple occasions, not rarities, so I am able to produce an annotated list of some of my top favorites without too much difficulty:
1. Westvleteren Bruin 12
2. St. Bernardus Abt 12
Honorable Mention - St. Bernardus Christmas
Westvleteren 12 is the holy grail of Belgian beer. I discovered it in a Brussels beer shop by April or so, but I still waited. The monks of Saint Sixtus Abbey do not distribute their highly sought-after beer, except on site on the western edge of Flanders, near Ypres. You can try to call and give a license plate number to reserve a time to pick up a case at the abbey, or you can get the beer at the abbey's cafe, In de Vrede. I had made up my mind to make the pilgrimage along with a trip to Ypres and its war memorials, and this finally happened at the end of November. A few weeks earlier, the monks actually did sell Westvleteren 12 in stores across Belgium - one supermarket chain that is, for one day until it sold out, and you needed a coupon to get the six-pack with two glasses for 25 euros. 93,000 of the packs were distributed. It was a one-off fundraiser for repairs for the abbey. My boss gave me a coupon, but I arrived at the store too late. Still, I made it to In de Vrede with my friends on a late Sunday afternoon, and enjoyed the deliciousness of Westvleteren 12, a highly complex, sweet, dark brew. Their other beers, a darker but less strong Bruin 8 and a blonde, are good but not essential.
I've only tried Westvleteren 12 this one time, but I feel like I can rate it the highest because I've been drinking its cousin all year. St. Bernardus Abt 12 is an abbey beer made in nearby Watou, based on the Westvleteren 12 recipe, and it is the only easy to find beer in Belgium that I would rate above the classic Chimay Blue. Westvleteren 12 was great, but not surprising - basically a slightly more interesting tasting St. Bernardus Abt 12.
As a side note, on my third night back in the US, I had dinner at Pizza Paradiso in Washington, and discovered St. Bernardus's Christmas brew on the drinks menu. It was lovely, just as good as either version of the 12, and I found a bottle of it in an Annapolis liquor store a few days later. So that's one of my Christmas gifts to myself.
3. Chimay Blue
Chimay produces more beer than the other Belgian Trappist brands (Westermalle, Rochefort, Orval, Achel, and Westvleteren). Its blue label is my favorite of its three, darker and sweeter, my favorite Belgium beer before I went to Belgium. You can find this one pretty much anywhere in Belgium and its not hard to find in the States either. And though I sampled plenty, I did not find much that was better.
4. Gouden Carolus Cuvee van de Keizer - Blauw
Mechelen brewery Het Anker's Gouden Carolus Classic is a very good beer which I wish I ran across more often, but this special version of it is even better. It is produced one day a year, February 24, in honor of the birthday of Charles V, the Ghent-born and Mechelen-raised Holy Roman Emperor who ruled most of Europe and South American in the 16th century and spoke Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to his horse. It only comes in large bottles and you can keep it in the cellar for years. Fruity, complex, dark, and very good (you get the picture of what kind of beer I prefer). I actually was given a bottle by a friend before my departure for Brussels, but drank it before I left and liked it so much that I had it a few more times in Belgium.
5. Tripel Karmeliet
One of Belgium's best rated, for very good reasons. This is the best tripel I've tried.
6. Papegaei
The name means parrot, and it has a cool bottle and glass. The beer is light, yeasty, and a little fruity, though strong at 8%. It was the hundredth beer I tried on the year, and one of the keepers.
7. Leffe Brune
8. Leffe Blonde
If gentlemen prefer blondes, then perhaps I'm not a gentlemen. Nevertheless, my relative estimation of Leffe Blonde grew in the year that both were readily available to me. I still give the edge to the Brune however. Both are excellent, reliable beers, although in one of Belgium's quirks, more reliable when served from the bottle than the tap.
9. Lindemans Pecheresse
The peach beer with the sexy bottle (the name pecheresse plays on the French words for peach and "sinner") is my winner in the lambic category.
10. Kasteel Rouge
My first taste of Kasteel Rouge in Belgium (I may have had it a few years ago in New York) was a shock. I had thought it to be a red ale, but it was a cherry beer twice as strong as most krieks. I also prefer the taste to most krieks - sweet but not light, darker and thicker, almost like a liquor. And delicious.
11. Barbar
Another sweet one. Barbar is a honey beer far tastier than any mead I've tried at renaissance fairs in the US. The James Joyce near Schuman always has it, otherwise I usually had to buy it in a beer store.
12. Kwak
The best thing about Kwak is its ridiculous serving glass, bulbous at the bottom and fitting into a wooden holder. It was the carriage drivers' beer, designed so they could drink it while driving. The reddish beer is pretty tasty, too.
13. Rochefort 6
The 6 is probably the least celebrated of the three Trappist Rochefort beers, and the weakest, at 7.5%. But I was disappointed by the others, and when I tried this one I thought it was delicious. We called the Rochefort glass "the chalice" in our household.
14. Lindemans Faro
Faro is the brown sugar lambic. This is the only one I ever tried, but it's quite good - and cheap, and available in my local Carrefour.
15. Pannepot
Pannepot is one of the more unique Belgian beers. It's thick and chocolaty with no carbonation at all. It's made by De Struise (the Ostrich) Brewery near De Panne, on the south end of Belgium's coast. In this case, my trivial beer knowledge enabled me to read the word "Struisevogel" on a menu and enjoy some ostrich medallions at one of my last meals in Brussels. The beer isn't too easy to find in bars, but I split one three ways with my sister and her boyfriend at the legendary Delirium, and picked up another at the Beer Temple soon after.
16. De Koninck
I feel like this amber beer is more easily found in New York or Washington than in Brussels. It's essentially the official beer of Antwerp, Belgium's second city (and coolest city). Thus the hand on the glass - the legend of Antwerp is that a hero cut off the hand of a mean giant who collected tolls at the river, then threw the hand in the river. Antwerp basically translates as "hand throw." And it's a great place to have a few drinks with friends and catch the last train back to Brussels, round midnight.
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