Random Belgians

After a few years off the roster, my wife is once again making regular work trips to Brussels. And, legend that she is, this has meant a bit of a beery bonanza for me. Here are some recent examples of things she brought back and was kind enough to share.

Kasteel's Barista was first out and I'm guessing this was created with an eye to the export market. "Chocolate Quad" is definitely written in an American accent. It's 11% ABV and, typically of Kasteel, tastes like all of it and more. Even before tasting there's an intensely sweet chocolate aroma and this follows straight through into the flavour which is unpleasantly sickly. By way of balance there's just a touch of wheaty breakfast cereal dryness, but it does little to counteract the building layers of hot mocha, adding an old coffee sweatiness to the syrupy chocolate. So, not a subtle beer. Maybe the brashness is deliberate, designed to appeal to the broes who'll chug an 11%-er and pretend to like it. Not me though. This beer needs to go away and calm down.

Something much lighter to follow: Session 4 is the abruptly-named collaboration between London's Brew By Numbers and Brussels's De La Senne, top notch operations both. Yes it's 4% ABV -- insanely low strength for Belgium -- and from looking at it I was expecting to see "east coast IPA" in the description: it's that sort of opaque pale yellow. That's where the similarity ends, however. It's billed as a blonde ale and that's how it smells: all cereals and honey. It's rather more complex on tasting, introducing a lovely moist melon fruitiness and a very slight hop acridity on the finish. This isn't a million miles from Senne's own classic pale ale Taras Boulba, though like Taras Boulba I think it would be even better if it cleaned the yeast out. But that's not the way of things in Belgium, or Bermondsey, for that matter. Onward!

The next beer lays its cards right on the table with the name: Full of Hops, a white IPA by Het Nest Brewery in northern Flanders. It's the pale lemon yellow of a typical witbier, hazy but much less so than the previous beer. I get a rather homebrewish twang from the aroma, a sort of earthy funk that I don't believe belongs in either wit or IPA. A big burst of fizz is the first impression in the gob, but behind this there's a rather cultured and elegant beer, with a dry prosecco grape character and then a more intense hop burn in the finish. White IPAs aren't normally my favourite beer style but this one dodges the soapy pitfalls rather well. Still smells rank though, which is unfortunate.

Enough craft messing, it's soberly traditional Dupont next, and their Bière de Miel organic honey beer. They've got their money's worth out of them bees as the end result is 8% ABV. It's a hazy pale orange colour and smells warm and sugary with that uniquely Belgian savoury yeast funk. I get more honeydew melon in this, but it's a lot more: intensely sweet. That turns to a distinctly honeyish perfume in the finish, one which fades off the palate in a mannerly, unsticky, way. As expected, this is a classically understated sort of honeybomb, showing off the key ingredient but not getting in the drinker's face with heavy amounts of booze or sugar. I don't know that I'd drink more than 250ml at a time but it's an entertaining sipper which leaves a pleasant wholesome warmth in the pit of the stomach.

And lastly Viven Master IPA. I thought I'd covered this in my last Viven round-up back in 2012 but it turns out I didn't. Having really liked the double IPA I was expecting big things from it. It's a muscular 7% ABV, though pale and innocent-looking in the glass. Quite a bit of alcoholic heat comes through in the aroma, with just a small element of juicy peach struggling to make itself heard. It really steps up to the mark in the flavour, however, where the soft stonefruit is right out at the front, backed by bitterer grapefruit and lime. The two sides work perfectly in tandem for a well-rounded classic US-style IPA experience, minus any crystal malt toffee, thankfully, and only a slight yeast burr serves to remind you that this is actually a Belgian. Like the honey beer, a building belly warmth is its legacy after it has departed from the palate.

A bit of a ropey start to this lot but some lovely examples of the Belgian brewer's art here.

New beers from old friends

Troubadour Magma is damn near irresistible, and Westkust is a comforting friend, so I'm always alert for new beers from The Musketeers in the hope that this classic double-act can be turned into a trilogy. The first candidate was one I found at a studenty pub called Le Coq, just up from the Bourse in Brussels: Troubadour Spéciale. And it is grim: a really boring red ale with masses of porridgey grain that is a chore to drink through. Why, Musketeers, why? A few days later, and Waterhuis aan de Bierkant in Ghent. Troubadour Obscura in the fridge, in my glass, in my mouth. What the hell is THIS? It appears to be a stout of some sort, a strong one at 8.2% ABV. It's roaringly sour, all lactic tang and a stubborn awkward brett funk squatting in the middle of the flavour, refusing to let anything else out. There's no mention of this "character" in the official tasting notes so I suspect something just went up the left with my bottle. I think I'll wait until I can have it on draught before chancing this one again. That's 0 for 2 in new Troubadour beers. Stick to the Magma, kids.

The other progressive Belgian brand I always look forward to new beers from is Brasserie de la Senne. They have an adapted version of their classic Taras Boulba pale ale, produced in collaboration with Birrificio di Montegioco and called Taras Runa. Like Taras Boulba this is a hazy shade of yellow, and like Taras Boulba it blends new world citrus hop flavours with light Belgian yeast spicing. Like Taras Boulba it's an approachable, sessionable strength. Actually: this is almost identical to Taras Boulba. It's perfectly decent, but I'm marking it down for being far too close to a beer they already make. What's the point?

De la Senne also have a new black IPA out, called Black in Japan, with yet another gorgeous label. It's 7.2% ABV and was a bit of a job to pour, what with all the foam. I was expecting a much bigger hop punch than it delivered. What we have here is a perfectly decent export-strength stout, with plenty of dry roast in both the aroma and flavour, plus a crunchy veg complexity from the hops. It's not a million miles from good old Wrasslers XXXX, a beer I'm coming increasingly to believe would be badged as a black IPA if it were brewed today for the first time.

This was in Poechenellekelder where one of the seasonal draughts was from the St-Feuillien/Green Flash collaboration series. The black saison they did previously was wonderful, so I had high hopes for Belgian Coast, a 7% ABV IPA. It arrived very cold, rather flat and quite a dark shade of amber and is definitely more Belgium than San Diego in the aroma: sugar, spice, fruit esters, but only a bit of hop greenness. The flavour mixes the sticky Belgian candy with the vegetal hops in an odd way, but it's not without its charms. There's a long metallic afterburn in the finish. Not as much fun as the saison, and not all that different to a zillion other Belgian IPAs, but quite nice to drink.

Dupont's archetypal saison needs very little introduction but I was acutely aware of how few of their other beers I had tasted and decided to put that right. Redor is the basic pils, well-assembled if a little nondescript. A sharp, almost sour, aroma and a flavour which combines light peachiness with some dry grain husk. There's also Monk's Stout, another simple one. 5.2% ABV and nicely dry and crisp: not always a guarantee in a country that seems to tolerate overly sugary stouts. Bons Vœux is a strong cloudy blonde, almost 10% ABV, and nicely warming with it. There's not much going on the the flavour, however, just a bit of cereal and a token sharpness from the hops. And finally Bier De Miel which, as the name suggests, is brewed with honey. Quite a lot of it, I'd say: from the beeswax aroma to the smooth sweet middle to the herbal aftertaste, this definitely shows how good honey can be in a beer without taking it over completely.

I confess I hadn't had any of the beers from the Brussels Beer Project before this trip, but I had heard of them. It's an on-trend collectivised collaboarative contract brewing operation that has been going for about a year and so far produced six beers. I got to try two of them: Dark Sister is a dark ale of 6.66% ABV and uses Citra, Simcoe and Smaragd hops. It pours a blood red colour with lots of dark malt coffee flavours to the fore. This is followed by a kind of plummy sourness and a bit of blackcurrant jam. I'd probably be calling it a dark mild if I had to guess a style, but either way it's a very interesting combination of flavours. Delta is the beer it's a sibling to, a 6% ABV pale ale using the same hop combination. The first one I got was a dud: all stale oxidation and sharp lactic sourness. Reuben rescued me by donating a portion of the one he was drinking. It's another one of those orange barley sweet Belgian IPAs, though a burst of grapefruit zest in the finish, combined with the modest strength, lifts it a little beyond most of its contemporaries.


Three new ones from three of the big-hitting geek-facing Belgian breweries next. VI Wheat (picture, right) is the latest in the numerical sequence by Jandrain-Jandrenouille and it's a weird one. There's a herbal urinal cake aroma and a lot of funk in the flavour. I don't really remember what it tasted like when I drank it in Moeder Lambic Fontainas but my notes say "lemons and cowshit" so perhaps that's for the best. Speaking of sequences, De Ranke have followed up their classic XX Bitter with XXX Bitter, though at 6% ABV it's actually slightly weaker than its predecessor. It's nearly a perfect Belgian blonde, beautifully smooth with clear, clean, polished flavours of light citrus fruit and candystore sugars. And so to Struise, one of the more one-uppy of Belgium's breweries. Their offering this trip was nothing more complicated than a 10% ABV bourbon barrel aged dark rye tripel, and they too have appropriated the XXX name. It's a murky brown and the aroma is full of that loud wood effect you get with so many bourbon-aged beers. On tasting there's no sign of any tripelish qualities, and I couldn't taste any rye. Instead it's smooth and warming with some really beautiful port and sherry notes. And bourbon? Yes, a little: enough to impart the flavour without it completely taking over. Nicely done, Struise.

Girardin is very much an old friend when I'm in Brussels. Their Gueuze is top-notch and can often be found for a euro or so cheaper than its main rivals in the pub. I was intrigued when I discovered that Bier Circus was serving straight Girardin Lambic on cask, pleased when I noticed that they were charging €2 for a 200ml glass of it, and ecstatic when it actually arrived. I never knew Brussels had an answer to Cologne's drinking style and the following review is based on the dregs at the bottom of my third glass. It's an unassuming clear brown colour and almost totally flat. It's also not especially sour, but dry and tannic instead with just the suggestion of oak. More than anything, like your Kölsch and your Alt, it's refreshing, in a grab-sink-and-go sort of way, a pint of Brussels plain, if you will. I wish more places than the Moeder Lambics and Bier Circus served cask lambic.

Until next time, Belgium...