Brugs Beertje

The Brugs Beertje (Little Bruges Bear) has been around for about 25 years and they must be doing something right because they still get high marks from beer community. It is a cozy, well worn place with a great communal feel. The small front room has a bar with about a dozen stools and some tables opposite the bar, most set against a wooden bench along the walls. There is an equally sized back room with more tables and then a third event room with a second bar and some more tables that is opened sometimes when it gets crowded. They have five taps- two regulars (Brugse Zot, Deconnick) and three rotating taps of special beers (recently including La Rulles Estival and Dupont Les Bon Voeux). It is place well known to beer aficionados- the Good Beer Guide to Belgium notes that no one will seriously believe you found the place by accident.

A visit to a place such as this deserves a fine beer so I went with a 2008 Oerbier Reserva from De Dolle. This is their Oerbier aged in oak casks. This further aging lifts the alcohol level over 10% abv. It has an incredibly complex flavor that touches on notes of bourbon, a hint of sourness, along with a light spiciness. These all come together to make an amazing beer.

An Evolution of Beer Appreciation

It was nearly three years ago in a small restaurant in Gent where the sip of a glass at the dinner table resulted in the exclamation of: "That's terrible!". It was a glass of Hanssen's Oude Gueuze. Those words came from my father in law upon tasting this style of beer native to Belgium and regarded by many beer connoisseurs as one of the most complex and interesting styles that exist.

Gueuze is created by blending different vintages of lambic and then continued aging to create an astoundingly  complex but challenging beer. It is very tart and puckering and often has a note of earthiness to it. The lambic used to make gueuze is brewed using wild yeast that, traditionally, is carried in the air in the Senne Valley south of Brussels. Aged hops are also a hallmark of lambic, used to impart the preservative quality of the hops but without the flavor. This allows the tart nature of the wild fermentation to shine through. Lambics are brewed and then aged from one to three years to let the wild yeast do their work. Gueuze comes from the blending of various ages and batches of lambic to create a new beer that is considerably different from a straight lambic. This is a skill mastered by a gueuze blender, skill of experience. The gueuze is now ready to sit and continue to mature. It can wait for upwards of 20 years under the right conditions.

Back to the point of this story (which has a happy ending). Since that time of the first sip in Gent, through the tasting of more and more complex beers, I can report that earlier this month my father in law drank and enjoyed numerous glasses of lambic and gueuze at cafes around Brussels.