Cantillon Brewery: Brussels

Brussels - a party city if there ever was one, I'll tell ya! Especially if you like beer (or Absinthe - which I'll tell you about next time). We arrived by train and were able to walk from the station the few blocks to our hotel (we recommend the Aris Grand Place - fabulous location just steps from La Morte Subite, the Grand Place, Delirium Cafe, and most things that tourists want to see. Not expensive, clean, modern, has air conditioning (rare in Europe!), and big elevators (you laugh - but sometimes, Jeff & Deb and I couldn't all fit in an elevator with our luggage! - and my bags are tiny!!!!!!!!). As soon as we got settled, we headed to the south end of town to tour the Cantillon brewery - surely the highlight of any visit to Belgium!!!

On the way, we stopped for a Belgian waffle - they sell them at walk-up stands, and you carry it around in a napkin. Yum! After locating the must-see Mannekin Pis statue, we hiked through the city to the cantillon brewery. Next time, we'll take the train, I think!
The Mannequin Pis is one of Brussels' most celebrated attractions. This little guy is probably no more than two feet tall! Often visiting dignitaries bring little outfits for him, and apparently he wears them occasionally. This particular week, in August, when it was hot, he was naked:


Below is a view of the "new" part of the city from the "old" neighborhood - a couple of blocks from the brewery. Not a good neighborhood to be in after dark, by the way.
Somehow, even though we knew this brewery was in a rough neighborhood, we still can't shake the romanticized notion we had of it being out in the country, surrounded by pastoral scenery. After all, the brewery is very, very old and has been fermenting with whatever yeast is naturally hanging around in the air all these years. Somehow, I didn't picture it with car and truck exhaust!
Because of the need to not disturb the yeast, Cantillon does not use chemicals till do away with pests. This is one of their pest control specialists - my little brother (he wouldn't tell me his name). The place is musty and dusty, and they don't mess around with that too much. So it all adds to the atmosphere!
How does that yeast get into the beer? Through these slats in the side of the building's eaves:
Here's Deb, doing the self-guided tour. It's cool, cuz geeks like us get lots of information on these kind of tours. We like that! You can move through it at your own pace and actually stop and read everything. They give you a nice little booklet which explains what you're looking at. Although most of the brewing equipment is old and made of copper, we did find a few newer, shiny pieces, as you see here.


Don't fall in, Gumballhead!!!!!!!!!!!!! :0



All the beers are barrel-aged for at least three years before bottling. They pick up the wonderful, musty aroma of the place. The aroma just smacks you in the face when you walk into the brewery. Nothing like it - you either love it, or you hate it!

This old bottling machine is no longer in use. But it's cool lookin', huh? I can just imagine how noisy it was to use!
At the end of the tour, of course we sampled a couple of beers: the Kriek (cherry lambic), and a gueuze - a blended lambic. Both were really good. Lambics are naturally fermented beers (the yeast adds a unique sour flavor), produced largely in a small area (actually the Lambic region) roughly ten square miles on the southwest side of the city. Seriously. We bought three bottles while we were here, including one we'd never seen before: Iris -- a dry-hopped lambic. Usually, the lambics tend to only use dried, aged hops for their preservative qualities. They don't really have much flavor left at that stage. Dry hopping is a process of adding hops to the beer after the boil for the purpose of adding hop aroma. We didn't really find anything here that you can't buy in Chicago - although I think it's a lot more expensive in the US.





Here's a cool beer bar and street scene in the old city center, near the Mannequin Pis. We wanted to eat lunch there, but the kitchen was closed. It is fairly common for European restaurants and bars to close their kitchens right after lunch, so we often had to skip the food because we would be traveling when things were open. This can be very frustrating. I recommend packing your own lunch, and then you don't have to go hungry.

Next time, I'll show some more of Brussels and tell you all about my first Absinthe experience!

TTFN,
Gumballhead


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Brugge, Belgium, Part Two!!!

Wow! Is this town cute or what?! Day two of Brugge, we had a blast. After a somewhat mediocre breakfast in our hotel, we hit the streets, bound and determined to tour a brewery and take a canal cruise. You saw the pictures from the canal cruise on my previous post. Obviously, I hid during the whole thing, but Deb and Jeff said the cruise was great. Whatever.

I begin here with a photo of the view from the rooftop of De Halve Maan Brewery (the Half Moon, in English). Why was I there? Because during the brewery tour, they led us up to the roof so we could take in this fabulous view. Weird, but very nice. As you can see, Brugge is very medieval, churches are the biggest objects on the horizon (anywhere in Belgium), and ALL buildings are made of brick. Everywhere. A wood building is considered a slum.

Here's the sign at the entrance to the brewery. It is a nice tour and well worth doing. It's also a great spot for lunch. We did both. Do you see me in this photo?????

Below you can see the outdoor dining patio, in front of the brewery. It was nice, but we were unable to find an open table, so we ate inside. One thing I really loved was the glass awning, with the circles designed into the ironwork supports.


Below are some shots from the brewery tour. Deb was just having fun with her cheap camera - so nothing extraordinary here, but you could tell there were some art-minded people working here. The first picture shows different kinds of barley, a main ingredient in beer. Two-row barley, so called because the grain grows in two rows, pictured closest to the playing cards, produces a fatter kernel, which is going to give you more fermentable sugar than a six-row barley, which looks prettier on the stem but produces less sugar. Sugar converts to alcohol when the yeasties are introduced during the fermentation process. Therefore, if you see beer made with two-row barley, it's probably a better beer. Or so goes the theory.
Hops are, of course, important to the brewing process, too. The display below shows where most of the Belgian hops come from. As you can see, Poperinge (where we were before we came to Brugge) is an important hops producer. The jar contains some dried hop cones.

Below is the attic space where the beer goes to chill after the barley, water and hops are boiled. For some beers produced in this region, spontaneous fermentation occurs when the beer is exposed to the natural yeast spores found floating in the air around the brewery. This is controlled by opening the slats in the walls to varying degrees. Note the brick roof - not made of wood. Seriously.
Here, you can get a sense of the scale of this giant cooling tank, which Jeff is standing in!!!! You have to walk through it to get to the roof deck. I hope they clean it well between uses!!! :)
A homebrewer's dream: a huge pile of flip tops!!!!! I thought it was just a nice texture shot. You never know when you're gonna need a photo of a texture, right?
The brew kettles were huge. I thought they were kind of interesting, so here's a couple of pictures of a brew kettle. The second one shows beer "wort" boiling. This is the process where the malted barley, water, and hops are cooked to make a "tea," which is then strained and fermented with the addition of yeast. Beer making is a lot of work!
This is a batch of Zot(a beer they make here at De Halve Maan), boiling away.

Near the end of the tour, they walk you through this room where they have set up old stuff that they no longer use, such as this old bottle filler. Annoyingly cutesy.

Finally, the good part - the restaurant. This is where we discovered Flemish stew! Loved that! The beers available on draft after the tour were a dark (dubbel) and a light (trippel) - both called the Zot. Available bottled in the U.S., it's a pretty good beer. However, you can only get the unfiltered version on tap in the brewery, which we enjoyed. The restaurant was light and airy, with really cool architecture: high ceilings, lots of brick (of course), dried hop vines hanging everywhere, and huge murals. Very fun.

View out window from brewery: I just loved the colors of the tile roofs throughout Belgium. Sometimes red, sometimes pink, sometimes orange, sometimes blue-violet, and when moss grows on them, green. I imagine a watercolor painting of Belgian roofs in my future.
The last thing we enjoyed in Brugge may very well have been the best beer bar we've ever visited (though it is arguable that t'Brugge Beertje has an amazing selection, this place also exudes atmopshere). It is called t'Poatersgat, or Peter's Gate. Located in the basement of an old church near the heart of the Old City, it was recommended by the locals, even the guy behind the bar in t'Brugge Beertje. We only had two nights in Brugge. The first night, we obviously had to spend at t'Brugge Beertje. But the second night was the night they were closed. So, we asked the folks there where we should go for our second night. This is the place they recommended. After our tour of De Halve Maan and our obligatory canal cruise, we sought this place, which wasn't easy to find. One of the people we met here was the person who had conducted our brewery tour - a sure sign that we were in a great beer bar!

The entrance was below street level, down a precarious looking set of worn stone steps. The doorway is so low, even short folks need to duck (maybe "bend over" is a more accurate way of putting it!) . Note the unassuming sign, that's small and easy to miss:
Being in an old church basement, the place has a unique character - including arched vaults, necessary to support the massive building above. It creates a series of small rooms, separated by low archways, perfect for decorating with dried hop vines. The vines create a nice atmosphere, and are very aromatic. However, the guy tending bar told us they are a bit of a pain, because they constantly drip a powdery debris, which has to be swept up daily. Still - charming. It has marble floors, Persian rugs, comfy furniture, marble-clad columns, and an amazing beer selection despite its upscale look. The music was kept at good levels for conversation, and the candles and statuary lend a somewhat dark, but cozy atmosphere. The bartender seemed very knowledgable and friendly. Address: 82 Vlamingstraat, just north of the Grote Markt a few blocks, on the main street that goes through it.
Some of the niches in the walls contain icons - statues of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, which were used to enhance prayer experiences. Today, they quietly overlook the goings on in the bar, illuminated mostly by candle light.


Jeff and I really enjoyed some great beers here. So did Deb. We especially enjoyed the Rodenbach Grand Cru (in the red glass - this beer is barrel aged in oak), the Rodenbach Vin de Cereal (in white paper - a limited release brewed in 2004, aged at least three years, a wheat wine, about 10% ABV), and the Rochefort Trappiste 10 (in the brown bottle - arguably one of the best beers on the planet, and often available in Chicago!!!!). Thankfully we were able to walk to our hotel from here!!!!

Overall, we loved Brugge/Bruges, and hope to go back someday. It is a beautiful, charming city, with lots of great architecture, beer, food, shopping, and the kind of quiet you only get in Venice.

Our next stop: Brussels!!!