Tuesday, and we’re off travelling again, 20 miles south to Roeselare, and the Rodenbach brewery. To me, as a historian of beer and brewing, Rodenbach is a fascinating operation, since it brews well-aged ales in what is almost certainly the same way that English brewers did 150 years ago, vatted for months, or years, and… Read More If it’s Tuesday, this must be Kölsch – Part Four
One of the problems of trying to be a beer tourist in Belgium in July is that many places shut for their annual break. This was the case with Cantillon, Brussels’s oldest surviving lambic brewery, a real working museum of beer, which is why we had to squeeze in a visit as we were leaving… Read More If it’s Tuesday, this must be Kölsch – Part Three
Some of the best beer tourism happens in places that are already centres for “ordinary” tourism, with plenty of stuff to see that is nothing to do with beer. That’s what makes Brussels a great place to be a beer tourist. There are many attractions apart from breweries and bars .You can wander about checking… Read More If it’s Tuesday, this must be Kölsch – Part Two
A couple of years back, in the summer of 2018, I was in an argument involving assorted brewers, beer retailers and beer writers over the relative merits of an imperial stout versus a German Hell. This is, of course, like choosing which is better between apples and potatoes, or judging the attractiveness of golf versus… Read More A quick plug for my friends at ABK
There ARE smaller breweries that Poppyland, but not very many: the room that the 2½-barrel brewkit sits in measures about 160 square feet. Your living room is probably larger. So the “brewery tour” consists of standing in a corner and pivoting on one heel through 180 degrees. That’s it: you have now done the Poppyland… Read More The world’s quickest brewery tour
So there I was at the Barcelona Beer Festival talking to Jason Wolford, a native of Portland, Oregon, about the quantity of chamomile that goes into the chamomile pale ale made at his 8-Bit Brewing in Helsinki, using kit supplied by Oban Brewing of Fort William in Scotland, and thinking: “This is what craft beer… Read More Homage to Catalonian beer tourism
Sitting 30 feet below the surface at a table in a workmen’s refuge dug out of the soft Bohemian sandstone, drinking unfiltered, unpasteurised lager made in 80-year-old open wooden fermenting vessels and poured from big copper jugs, I reflected on how long it had taken me to make this journey. Being a beer writer who… Read More Czeched out at last
Whatever you think of Camden Town Brewery’s beer – and enough people like it to swallow more than 300,000 pints of Hells lager, Gentleman’s Wit and the rest every week – the company’s expansion in under seven years from nowhere to third-biggest brewer in London, with two of its beers, more than any other craft… Read More A look round Camden Town’s new Enfield brewery
New Orleans is one of the few places in the world where walking the streets at all hours consuming alcohol from an open container is not just allowed, but actively encouraged. This is party city USA. Bars shut only when the last customer leaves, and will gladly sell you drink to go – and while… Read More Laissez les bonnes bières rouler
It must be very irritating being a Dutch brewer and seeing all the kudos the people next door in Belgium keep getting. What’s the big deal with those bun-munching bastards, they probably say to themselves in the Netherlands, seething over a late-night jenever chaser. The problem was, of course, that by the 1980s the Netherlands… Read More Dutch treats
