A Beegrimage to the 2017 Bruges Beer Festival

By Eric Van Vleet

While it is nearly impossible to overestimate the greatness of French wine, aperitifs, digestifs and drink in general, good beer, inventive craft beer is hard to come by, at least in southwest France. Many ‘craft’ breweries each trot out a line that consists of a white beer, a blond and brown beer. The most daring local beer is a shandy. While Cahors wine is a many splendored thing, after months in the UK, the land of delicious low gravity cask ales from traditional brewers and cutting edge craft beers, made us accustomed to great beer. While at some point we will write about those experiences in different posts on this blog, we were getting thirsty in the beer desert of southwest France. Instead of relying on a limited selection of some of Belgium’s most common beers to quench this thirst, we decided just to travel to Belgium instead. Ryan Air had $11 Euro flights. Trains to Toulouse are more expensive. So, we decided to go on a beer pilgrimage, nay a beergrimage that would have us attending the 2017 Bruges Beer Festival. Lili and I had been to Bruges a year and a half earlier and found it to be, as they say over and over in the film In Bruges, “a fairytale” city. Bruges unquestionably deserves a visit, beer festival or not. World class beer is flowing nonstop. Le Trappiste is a beautiful cellar bar with a selection that usually includes some of Belgium’s heavy hitters, international selections and some less known Belgian craft breweries. Another great bar is 't Brugs Beertje, which has an amazing beer list that breaks Belgium down into many regions. It’s a geography and beer lesson all at once. De Garre is a hidden gem. You’ll be lucky without Google Maps to find it straight away, but it is worth the seeking out because their house beer is one of the world’s best triples. You can also tour and sample beer from the only brewery in old town Bruges, the De Halve Maan Brewery. Nothing they brew is amazing, but it’s a pleasant spot to drink outside if the weather permits. All of these places are within walking distance of the Market Plaza and so there is no good reason to practice moderation. I known Lili and I have not in our time in Bruges!While all the aforementioned places were open, the Bruges Beer Festival brought in an amazing number of craft brewers that deserve global renown. The festival was not as geared up to debauchery as some beer festivals that offer unlimited beer tastings for a set price. At the Bruges beer festival you would buy your official glass, which came with a certain number of tokens, with each beer costing a token. Once you had the glass, the tokens were only 1.80 Euros a piece. Such prices were shockingly cheap as decent beer in a bar in Bruges is usually around four Euros or so.
They had a separate section for Trappist beers, which included the white whale Westvleteren 12, which is usually ranked and one of the best beers in the world, a beer one should try once but not surprisingly is bit overhyped. They had beers from all the other Belgian Trappist monk breweries, like Achel, Chimay, Westmalle, Orval and Rochefort, all which any decent bottle shop should stock. Whether you love these beers or not, the fact that they are widely available means that one should not bother with them at a beer festival. You’ll eventually become too drunk or too full to consume more beer, so one must choose wisely.Another beautiful space at the festival was dedicated to our favorite beer styles like lambic, geuze, oud bruin, kriek, flanders red ales and other amazing “sour” beer styles that Belgium has gifted to the world. While possibly the world’s greatest brewery, Cantillon, had some of its standard line available at the festival, we had tried those already, so sampled Oude Gueuze Tilquin à L'Ancienne and the same recipe but with quetsche (plums) from Gueuzerie Tilquin. Each are amazing. A “sour” beer is more than just sour, it is a galaxy of fermented fun. Another standout there was Hanssens Artisanaal’s Oude Kriek. It looked like a glass of red wine and had a kind of complexity in its sour cherry flavor that is unlike any other. In the hall dedicated non-classic style “sour” or Trappist beers, we found countless gems as well. White Pony, an Italo-Belgian brewery only operating since 2013, was a standout. One of their amazing beers, the Crow, is a 14% Russian Imperial Stout that is not as hoppy as the style can be, but balances out the kind of syrupy sweetness that can come with such high ABV beers. The Oracle is an English barleywine brewed with Belgian yeasts and another big beer at 10.7%. Yet it was immensely dangerously drinkable. While some brewers merely offer their standard flagship beers at festivals, it seemed that White Pony was there to impress and impress they did. They had an IPA, but having already tried to many California hop bombs, we demurred.We tried almost everything we could from Brouwerij 't Verzet as they did unique “sours” that were not quite in the classic modes as some of the older brewers. Their Oud Bruin Raspberry Harvest 2016 was the combination of their amazingly well balance Oud Bruin with the most realistic raspberry flavor we have ever tasted in beer. They had the most unique beer of the festival as well with their Kameradski Balsamico, which at 13.5% blended an Oud Bruin with a Russian Imperial Stout in a way that tasted like a glorious balsamic vinegar reduction. That one would ever conceive of such a beer is one thing, that they had the titanic skill to actually brew it and pull it off is another. Definitely a brewery to watch in the future.As much as we wanted to keep going, after about 30 beers shared over the course of two

days, we had no more in us. Yet, non-beer related Belgian glories are waiting for you around every corner. Right outside the festival there were fry stands housed in tiny cottages. With an endless supply off different condiments and little toothpicks that keep you from dirtying your hands, these twice-fried beauties are impossible to resist. Ordering a helping of fries without its accompanying stewed beef dish is a mistake. One can not ask for better street food or more reasonable prices in an expensive city like Bruges. 
To fit in all the food groups, we took a break from fries to visit the De Westhoek deli, which has an amazing selection of cheese, some of which are even made by the same Trappists who brew wonderful beer. A picnic lunch of this cheese and good sandwich bread offers a break from fries without breaking the bank.We made sure to hit all of Belgium’s other greatest hits in Bruges with multiple visits to both the Chocolate Line and Dumon , who produce the greatest chocolates we have ever tasted with heretofore unimaginable recipes. Check out the links and try to find a delicious ingredient that they don’t employ. The folks at Oyya will in fact sell you the greatest waffle, made in the Liège style, which has a thick yeasty dough that is far less runny than say an American chain hotel breakfast buffet waffle. They become perfection with a generous schmear of Speculoos. Many high gravity beers will not allow a person to have only one.
We came to Bruges to drink some of the greatest beer in the world, to drink beer that would change our ideas about what beer could be. White Pony and Verzet did just that. When we needed to sober up we would eat Belgian fries (they invented them and not the French!). We tried amazing raw milk cheeses and had the greatest chocolates and waffles of our lives. Such things happen when you let to gourmands loose on the streets of Bruges. Beer festival or not, amazing beer will be had by anyone who looks for it. It is indeed a “fairytale” city but one not just of canals and cathedrals, but of food and drink as well.