The Belgian Beer-Off

Three Belgian beers

The Belgians seem to combine a Gallic love of gastronomy and religion with a Germanic affinity for beer and  Byzantine complexity.

Too northerly a climate for wine, Belgium produces a vast array of beers, often made in abbeys by  Trappist monks, of different styles, colours, alcohol levels and sweetness each with its own, impenetrable code of dubbel, trippel and quadrupel (see guide here) and often their own bespoke glasses.

Belgians also seem to share a Teutonic love of eating and drinking out as a competitive sport; it is hard to pin this down precisely but for Italians eating and drinking well is part of a general lifestyle statement; for the French, it is an innate raison d'etre while for Germans, and quasi-Germans, it is a status symbol and public announcement of general success in life.

Returning from a family holiday in Bruges last year, we decided to being back some of the local stuff.

Brugse Zot from local brewery De Halve Maan, rich, malty and complex golden ale.

Thoroughly pleasant.

Westmalle Tripel bigger, stronger, sweeter and more bitter. Citrussy and floral, too. More of everything.

Good.

Trappistes Rochefort 8 sweetish dark ale, complex with fruitcake, bitter, roasted nuts and spices Good.

Orval - Trappist Abbey and Beer‏

Belgium has no wine-making tradition but more than makes up for this with its many and varied beers of which the Trappist ales, made at one of the country's six Trappist monasteries, are amongst the best.

Too northerly for viticulture, Belgium was originally a region of city-states whose monasteries were bastions of knowledge with their libraries, herb gardens and beer and cheese-making.

After a day spent visiting Bouillon (see here) en route to France's wine regions, we stopped by Orval Abbey for a mixture of sightseeing and beer-purchasing.

The original Cistercian monastery dates from 1132 but is now in ruins after being destroyed in 1793 by French forces - its contemporary replacement, dating from 1935, is unadorned and futuristic - and also not generally open to the public, so we contented ourselves with a wander round the much more beautiful and atmospheric ruins.

Afterwards, exiting through the monastical gift shop, there were opportunities to buy religious trinkets and imagery, but more importantly boxes of Orval beer (we passed on the Orval beer glasses and decided the Orval cheese, whilst good, would not keep during our journey).

The beer itself is quite strong, 6.2% alcohol, and is fermented using Brettanomyces yeast. Like many Belgian beers, it undergoes secondary fermentation in bottle meaning it has a sediment and is extremely fizzy, so out of a small-ish bottle of 33cl, around a quarter is lost.

Many bottle-conditioned ales improve with age just like a fine wine and finding this to be the case with the Orval, after the first few bottles, I tucked the rest away to be sampled periodically over the next 18 months or so.

Early bottles were crisp and refreshing, well-structured and balanced with orangey, coriander-seed hints.

The development from bottle to bottle every couple of months was barely perceptible but after a year or so, it had become noticeably fuller, richer and more strongly-flavoured, but still did not appear to have peaked.

Moreover, with a little of the gas escaping via the crown top, it was a little less explosive on opening.

This then, is a beer for cellaring - for at least a year or two, so if you happen to be passing through the Belgian Ardennes, it's worth stocking up with a few cases.

Links

Orval Abbey - http://www.orval.be/an/FS_an.html

A Short Visit to Bouillon‏ in the Belgian Ardennes

A few years ago, I decided to break up the travelling on a driving and wine-buying holiday to France by stopping off in Bouillon in the Belgian Ardennes.

About a 3-hour drive from Calais, the Belgian Ardennes in the south of the country is an unspoilt, somewhat forgotten land of gentle hills and rural woods.

Bouillon, a very small market town, is set in a magnificent horseshoe bend of the river Semois surrounded by a natural amphitheatre - its other claim to fame is an extensive ruined castle on a hilltop in the centre of the town - much of it carved out of the rock itself.

In 1082, the castle was inherited by Godfrey of Bouillon, who then sold it in order to finance the First Crusade (accompanied by some unlikely companions - his mother and Peter the Hermit). The castle was later fitted for heavy artillery by Vauban, Louis XIV's military architect in the late 17th century.

We made a day of it by first seeing the castle, then going for a walk up to the top of the surrounding ridge where a viewing platform takes you several storeys up, above the height of the trees, for an amazing view over the town.

After all this exploring, our accommodation for the night was La Ferronniere, a former forge as the name suggests which I had found in the Logis de France guidebook and which gets the guide's top-level 3-chimney rating.

The hotel, set halfway up a hill leading out of Bouillon, has superb views of the town centre and the castle and is an extremely pleasant place to stay.

Owners Wim and Angélique Philips have an eye for tasteful detail and, having picked out a beautiful building in a great location in 2000, have given the interior a classy and elegant but understated feel.

This approach extends to the food, which was not just innovative, but extremely well-flavoured and imaginatively presented.

We had a trio of cold starters - gazpacho, cream cheese with chives and parma ham and water melon - whilst the hot starter was a beef tomato with snails and pesto, before a main of oven-baked cod with courgettes and a dessert of pistachio cake wrapped in pain perdu.

We chose an Alsace Riesling from just across the border to get us in the mood for the next few days and it was, if I'm really honest, a little expensive and slightly disappointing - plenty of typical Riesling character, but somehow a little unfocused.

I often find this problem - you almost always do better going for something local and this means that in non-wine-producing countries you accept you'll probably pay a little more for something that is not quite so good.

However, in the context of the stay - and especially of the superb food - this really is a minor quibble.

Belgium is, of course, a land of beer - especially crafted Trappist ales - and the next day, we got up and went in search of what drinking in Belgium is really all about.

Links

Bouillon website - http://www.info-bouillon.co.uk/
La Ferroniere - http://www.laferronniere.be/
Logis de France - http://www.logishotels.com/en.html

Image Credits

Photo of Bouillon by Jan Roegiers - link here
Photo of Bouillon Castle by Jean-Pol GRANDMONT: link here.
Photos of La Ferronniere from hotel's website.