Belgium Beer Weekend
Brussels Beer Festival
The first weekend in September, Brussels held there annual Beer Festival where beer vendors take over the Grand Place for 3 days of beer drinking and festivities. I left the Hague on Friday afternoon and met Matt (who was in Brussels for work) to attend and I must say, it was a very fun weekend. We spent Friday afternoon touring around Brussels as neither of us had been there. We ventured into chocolate shops, saw the Mannequin Pis (Brussels famous statue), and of course had some Belgium waffles and moules frites (mussels and fries) - delicious!
Everything referenced the Mannequin Pis
Friday night we went to the Delirium Bar- they had 2004 bottled beers and hold the world record for the most beers at a bar! It was a very cool bar- and we got to try some beers that I’m not sure I will get anywhere else!
Delirium Bar
Saturday we went directly to the beer festival to try the hundreds of beers that were available. We were joined by several of our friends and co-workers and we spend almost 6 or 7 hours at the festival trying all types of beers. You paid for the beers with these coins they gave you (1 coin = 1 euro) and none of the beers we tried were over 4 coins!
Matt and I with our first beers!
That night we continued the festivities with a great dinner on the water and then went to bars. We went to this one awesome bar that we found in the NY Times article on Brussels. It was called Goupil le Fol which was a 3 story bar that used to be a former brothel. There were old records over all of the walls and they had old French music playing on the jukebox. We really enjoyed it and stayed there for a few hours before heading back to the Delirium Bar for one last beer.
At Goupil le Fol
The next day was our last in Brussels and we went back to the beer festival for one last time. Sunday we were able to try the Westvleteren Abbey beer. This beer is not sold commercially, and to get it at the abbey you have to call between certain hours of the day and give your name and license plate number (so they know you are not a vendor) in order to get 1 case. It has been named the best beer in the world and was incredibly good- and we only paid 4 euros for a glass!! It sold out very quickly at the festival so we were lucky to get a glass- and it was a great way to end a great weekend! If you’d like to see more pics, be sure to check out our Picasa Album!
They had hops surrounding the fence around the festival :)