Contrary to legend, I had no premeditated plan to take three European trips in 1995. Openly scheming toward such a hat trick would have made me seem greedy, whereas luck is sometimes better than conspiratorial skill. The excursions happened, and I’m glad they did. Taken together, they comprised 30 days of continuing beer education that immeasurably influenced the ongoing revolution at Rich O’s Public House.
It transpired that David Pierce, Ron Downer and John Dennis already had been planning to visit Belgium in autumn of 1995, and my nudging this trio into a quartet seemed ethically and mathematically appropriate. Frequent flier miles sealed the deal, and I found myself yet again at the airport, having packed my bag in a jiffy because it wasn’t ever emptied after the Czech/Slovak/Hungarian jaunt only two months before.
But rest assured, I did do some light laundry first. If ever a trip justified a tax deduction for being work-related, this was it. Our days in Belgium resembled coursework: “An Introduction to Belgian Beers, Breweries and Drinking Venues.” The brief, glorious Sticke Alt clinic in Düsseldorf was like a bonus for early class registration.
I’d been to Belgium previously, finding it a fascinating place with a rich history, friendly people and fine food; it’s also a beercycling paradise, as I would come to experience later. By 1995 my knowledge of beer and brewing had caught up with the existing stock of esoterica accrued from European history studies, deepening my overall grasp of context and setting the stage for an enduring love affair with Belgian-style beers, set happily against a backdrop of brilliantly crisp and sunny autumn weather and almost completely absent the rain that can turn European fall itineraries soggy.
In fact, it was so warm in October of 1995 that the Lambic brewers were being forced to wait longer than normal to begin their batches. Since then they’ve probably become sadly accustomed to these warmer conditions.
Thankfully, ours was a foursome armed with just the facts, ma’am: CAMRA’s Good Beer Guide to Belgium and Holland, written by Tim Webb, who conceived of the book after evenings at ‘t Brugs Beertje (The Little Brugge Bear) in Brugge.
Webb’s irreplaceable book pointed us toward Belgium’s beer-themed cafés, some long-lived but others blossoming across the country during the previous decade in the wake of Brugs Beertje’s excellence (1).
Of course there’d been Belgian cafés for decades (nay, centuries), and we can trust that some of them had always been noted for their beer, or in some cases large selections of beers. Just as obviously, quantifiable aspects of Belgian café and pub culture already existed, and the sociological norms were evident as readily in a local café with a single tap pouring Stella Artois as the one down the street with a vast Trappist ale program.
As in America, Belgian “better beer” innovators during the modern period found there was a previously untapped market for genuinely subversive ways of doing business — in essence, eschewing the “new and improved” for a daily celebration of tradition. Beer education wasn’t secondary; it came from foundational intent, as a goal in itself, and as a result Belgium’s diverse collection of local and regional beers invariably was treated intelligently, in the same way as wine specialists had always conducted their business.
The Swedish bikini team it most assuredly was not.
While Brugs Beertje did not invent its model of operation, it certainly helped perfect it by aggregating trends already emerging prior to its creation, and moreover, by speaking the language — literally and figuratively — of those who were eager to discover what all those Belgian beers had to offer. At the start, numbered among them were many English-speakers who’d found the mother lode.
Outsiders like Michael “The Beer Hunter” Jackson, a Yorkshireman, saw Belgium’s beer and brewing heritage as an asset when the Belgians themselves did not. Jackson’s subsequent fame in Belgium derived in large measure from this invaluable service in demonstrating to the Belgians exactly what they possessed in abundance to offer the planet in terms of better beer, if only they’d think outside those self-imposed Stella Artois, Jupiler and Maes Pils boxes.
Which is to say that when Brugs Beertje opened in 1983, Belgium still boasted between 200 and 300 breweries, many quite small, which had survived by catering to excruciatingly narrow local markets and regional preferences. Concurrently, the entirety of the far more populous United States hosted fewer than 100 breweries, and suffered as an insipid monoculture accordingly.
Belgian beer’s stylistic diversity stemmed precisely from a sense of pride in exaggerated localism that marked a nation harboring multiple languages, varying histories and conflicting myths. Unfortunately, as in America during the post-WWII era, Belgium’s local and regional brewing traditions were under siege during this period, with industrial brewing’s economies of scale and implied (faux?) modernism eroding the old ways.
Consequently, what Brugs Beertje and its cohorts among Belgian beer cafés were achieving in 1995 was to make Belgium’s old beers newly marketable and interesting by connecting the liquids and labels to what foreigners like Webb and Jackson were writing, this proving an attraction for ever multiplying numbers of tourists, but more significantly, to the Belgians themselves, many of whom hadn’t previously known or cared what breweries in the next valley were creating.
Henceforth the Belgians, many of whom would continue to think of themselves first and foremost as Flemish, Wallonian or Bruxellois/Brusselaars, might continue to drink flavorless “international” golden-colored lagers on a daily basis just like the rest of the world, but at least they might occasionally choose a Delirium Tremens or Chimay for dessert or a special occasion.
For these Belgians, the curiosity of Brugs Beertje’s early notoriety derived from the café’s baffling refusal to serve these best-selling, golden-colored lagers, known generically throughout Belgium as Pils. The café’s policy was polite, but firm: those customers seeking Pils were welcome to try something new, or conversely, to go somewhere else.
And this, my friends, was beautiful music to my increasingly militant ears.
This new generation of Belgian beer cafés, as advanced by Brugs Beertje’s husband and wife team of Jan DeBruyne and Daisy Claeys, also established a template for the presentation of the many specialty beers that weren’t Pils: extensive and clearly delineated bottled offerings; a small yet meaningful draft selection; signature glassware matching brands and styles; and breezily educational beer menus exhibiting clearly defined taxonomies of style and/or regional origin.
That’s how it all came together for me in October, 1995. Using Webb’s guide as a textbook, there came a series of epiphanies about what “beer placemaking” might mean at the Public House.
For me, our swing through Belgium was as much about beer cafés as the delicious beers we drank at them: Éblouissant in Namur; Brugs Beertje and Garre in Brugge; Paters’ Vaetje, Elfde Gebod and Kulminator in Antwerp; and another in Ieper called Posterie, where I stopped for a beer during a day trip from Brugge to see the WWI museum in the Cloth Hall. Posterie would loom larger during coming years of infatuation with the region called Westhoek (2).
To be sure, I jotted down the names of the Belgian beers I drank in a notebook, virtually all of them ales. Eventually many of these would be exported to America and find their way to ever-expanding shelves at the Public House. Some would become lifelong personal favorites.
However the venues for their consumption became my own personal obsession — the color schemes, décor, furniture and 1,001 other details that might be adapted for use in our New Albany establishment, setting it far apart from the Liteweight world outside.
But before any of this, we began our 1995 Belgian tour in Germany.
Düsseldorf and Köln.
Our Euro entry portal was Amsterdam Schiphol. Seeing as we paused only to flash passports before hopping a train via Amsterdam Centraal to Düsseldorf, and alas, not a single raw herring filet dredged in onion was consumed in the company of a Heineken.
Awaiting us in North Rhine-Westphalia was a beer treat (albeit non-Belgian) of rare significance, because by an act of divine intervention, our only day in the city coincided with the release of “Sticke Alt,” the Zum Uerige brewery’s special version of its everyday ale.
It was said to occur only twice yearly – and we won the lottery.
Recalling that Düsseldorf’s best Altbiers are brewed by the small brewpubs in the city’s Altstadt (Old Town), four of them were tested, beginning with lunch at Zum Füchschen. The Alts were all copper-colored, cold-aged and clean, complex in malt character and pleasingly hopped in the finish. However, as expected, Zum Uerige’s special Sticke Alt was the high point; “extra” in all respects, dry-hopped and utterly orgasmic.
The following day we set out for Belgium, pausing first in Cologne (Köln) for a brief tour of the brewpubs and bars in the Heumarkt area serving Kölsch. After four hours strolling and sampling in the shadow of the mountainous Cathedral, we boarded a westbound express for Belgium, and Namur.
A change of trains was necessary at Liege, and there was time for an inaugural Belgian ale at the rail station buffet, which had 35 choices on the menu, spanning the range of the brewer’s art.
In America, if you can even find a train station, you’ll likely have a more restrictive choice: Lite, Ultra and the vile substance called hard seltzer.
Namur and The Dazzling.
Scenic Namur is located in the Meuse River valley, guarded by a venerable citadel that affords sweeping views of the countryside. Belgium’s southeastern districts comprise French-speaking Wallonia. The northwestern part of the country speaks Flemish, or in essence, Dutch.
These linguistic divisions reflect the respective cultural heritages of two Belgian halves, while in Brussels, the capital as well as the European Union’s chief administrative center, a local dialect is spoken that allegedly not even the natives truly understand.
As a tourist in Belgium, your best strategy is to speak English. Next best is to drink Belgian beer and know a little something about it, because people are delighted that foreigners appreciate facets of their culture.
So it was that we nodded politely as the purely Francophone desk clerk at The Tanners Hotel in Namur endeavored to be helpful. Then, equipped with a bare bones city map crisscrossed with scrawls, it was time to walk.
Finding 108 Rue des Brasseurs proved to be easy, and a café was there — just not Éblouissant. Spotting Webb’s book, the bartender understood immediately; reacting sympathetically, he explained that The Dazzling had moved across town, maybe a twenty minute walk. As a gesture of thanks, we purchased and consumed a round of Duvels.
There was no sign at 27 Rue de l’Armée Grouchy apart from backlit Murphy’s Stout oval adorning a reasonable facsimile of an Irish pub front. Stepping inside, the Belgian-Irish force of nature called Alain Mossiat, henceforth to be known as “Moss the Boss,” welcomed us with bad news.
Éblouissant was closed for a private event; two dozen or more Namur residents were gathered together to celebrate their return from a tour of Sri Lanka.
But once again, Webb’s book served as a talisman. Seeing it, Moss quickly gathered that we were American pilgrims making use of a British holy text to find one or more promised lands in Belgium, having exerted great effort from far across the water to locate The Dazzling. A compromise quickly emerged.
He’d be very busy with the group, but we could occupy an improvised table in the yet-to-be-finished rear storage area. He’d come and serve us beers whenever there was a break; not only that, but there’d be plenty enough spaghetti bolognese and party nibbles on hand for us to have dinner, too, and at no charge (the party had prepaid).
Moss proceeded to cook and serve food to the thirty of us, operating from a closet-sized kitchen with an ordinary four-burner home stove, while a solitary hired hand helped on the floor and Moss’s 12-year-old son mounted a beer crate behind the bar, pouring nitro Murphy’s Stouts all night long for the local revelers.
The stout was Moss’s nod to his Irish side, and besides, no other bar in Namur had a nitro ale on tap in 1995. However, Hibernian cash flow aside, Moss’s pride and joy was a comprehensive list of bottled ales from Wallonia, which he viewed (outspokenly as well as presciently) as being inadequately represented on renowned beer lists elsewhere in Belgium.
As Webb observed in his guide, anything else Moss personally approved might be available on a given evening, ranging from ciders and perry through single malt Scotch. After making our initial beer selection, we asked Moss to choose for us, and for the remainder of the evening, one after another, 750 ml bottles of Wallonian specialty ales and fresh signature glasses appeared before us.
The pinnacle wasn’t a beer at all; it was an aged, homebrewed mead from his grotto-like personal cellar, accessible by a gnarled trapdoor built into the floor. The mead was the best I’d ever had, and might still be today.
The evening was … dazzling, the four of us seated near random food service equipment and various beer placards and advertisements (ironically, not unlike the scene at my Public House home base). It was a delightful ambience without a television set, but encouraging spirited philosophical debate.
As I described it then: “As we sampled ales, an argument ensued as to the true nature of craft-brewed beer in America, with Moss interrupting occasionally to explain the next selection. Expatriates abroad. Drinking, talking. Very cool.”
In retrospect, it is bizarre that the perennial “what is craft beer?” debate was already underway during the first Clinton administration. What exactly was being said about “craft” as we drank ales and mead in Namur? My recollection is hazy, but one general theme was whether Samuel Adams could still be regarded as “craft” given its level of production.
That’s right; we’re STILL arguing about things like this.
I believe the boys returned to Éblouissant after my departure for Denmark, and I made it back twice during subsequent trips before Moss left the game in 1998, first relocating with his family to County Mayo in Ireland to operate an organic farm, then eventually gravitating back to Belgium. Judging from his whimsical Facebook page, he’s long since become a grandfather; that little kid pouring pints is now well into his forties (3).
A Quick One to Copenhagen.
From Namur, I broke away for an overnight train ride to Copenhagen to participate in Kim Wiesener’s birthday bash, which afforded me the opportunity to drink bland canned Jupiler lager with two thirsty Norwegians (on the way to Denmark) and watch a forlorn Chinese girl get arrested at the Danish-German border (on the way back to Brugge); to enjoy the herring buffet at Nyhavn the first day and on the second, a traditional Danish “lunch,” complete with various herrings and tidbits washed down by Carlsberg and aquavit; and at some point attend the party itself, where beer ranked second to an incredibly strange jungle juice.
Which is to say, it was an entirely debauched affair and one fully worthy of Kim’s considerable talents in this regard (4).
Brugge.
I reconnected with my compatriots in Brugge, one of the best preserved historic cities in Europe.
Once it had been an important port, with canals and waterways girding the town and providing access to the ocean. A few hundred years ago development bypassed the city; the waterways silted, and Brugge became mummified in pristine isolation until 19th century Europeans began regarding old-fashioned buildings and streets as nostalgic, contrasting with belching smokestacks, pollution and the human rights abuses of the Industrial Revolution.
Tourism exploded, and today the old town is a dreamlike destination for history buffs, walkers, bicyclists, closet romantics, eaters, drinkers and aficionados of their fellow tourists.
Brugs Beertje was an obvious and abiding focal point for us in Brugge, and a great deal of our time was spent poring over its beer list. The public rooms were small and cramped, the walls plastered with beer signs and advertising paraphernalia, the wooden furniture on the pleasingly battered side, and low-key classical music charming (if only truly audible briefly at opening and later when last call came).
Proper and principled supervision was, and remains, a given at Brugs Beertje. Early one evening I went to the bar intending to order a Rochefort 10 Trappist at 11.3% abv, a huge, dark, deeply warming colossus of an ale, which I hadn’t yet learned to love only because it would be my very first time drinking one.
The barman on duty wanted to know if the Rochefort 10 would be my last beer of the session; if not, he wouldn’t serve it to me. He explained that the intensity would overwhelm my palate; save it for the end, and savor other, milder ales until then. File under “Life Lessons.”
Brugs Beertje also is where I learned the meaning of “snacks” in the context of a Belgian beer café, because to ask about food in such an establishment would be to receive an answer something like this:
We’ve no meals, only snacks. We’re not equipped to uphold the amazing Belgian tradition of incredible full-service restaurants, and at the same time, deep-fried items would require budget-busting deep fryers and a hood. Fortunately, there are great restaurants nearby, as well as a friterie (also called frituur) or two, where you can enjoy deep fried potatoes — as well as deep-fried croquettes, cheese, fish, sweets and probably even salad if you ask them nicely. But here, we have no meals, only snacks.
These “snacks” generally included local/regional cheese and meat trays, voluminous plates of spaghetti bolognese and sometimes lasagna, and perhaps a croque, a simple ham and cheese sandwich heated in a toaster oven or with a small Panini press. Whether touring afoot or wheeled during the beercycling era to come, various combinations of these snacks made for perfectly satisfying and filling … well, meals.
Between 1995 and 2008, I managed to return to Brugs Beertje fairly often; the most recent session came in 2014. At some point along the way Jan and Daisy split up, both personally and professionally, with Jan starting his own tourist-oriented craft brewery business in Brugge, which ultimately failed, although a few of us dropped by to see him circa 2000 or 2001. He died at 77 in 2022 (5), and Daisy retired at the end of 2016 to universal adoration and acclaim.
A successor has taken over, and Brugs Beertje lives on. Long may it prosper.
Day trips from Brugge.
Belgium is a small country, facilitating easy day trips via public transit. All four of us went to Brussels for a look inside the famous Lambic producer Cantillon in the capital city’s Anderlecht district, where we found all the archaic accoutrements on display not as museum exhibits, but being used to brew traditional, spontaneously-fermented, funky ale: the attic koelschip (a big, shallow tub), the slats in the roof for opening to entertain wild yeast, and wooden barrels for aging.
On another day, while David and Ron took a train to Ghent and John wandered Brugge by himself, I rode the rails to Ieper (Ypres). The primary objective wasn’t beer. Some of the First World War’s bloodiest and most senselessly protracted fighting took place for three and a half years near Ieper, reducing the medieval city to kindling; it was painstakingly rebuilt afterward, and to reflect on the lessons of the Great War alongside a Poperings Hommelbier, I found the Posterie café to be a peaceful refuge.
I’ll never forget returning to Brugge after my Ieper day, walking into Brugs Beertje, and finding John already there, holding court, playing his white-haired mature gentleman persona to the hilt as he spun yarns about Kentucky to a throng of rapt British women (and a man or two), wielding his Southern-accented, made-for-media voice, and graciously accepting the beers they were buying him.
I deferred to age, experience and all-purpose coolness, pulled up a chair, and ordered a Oud Bruin. I was only 35, for heaven’s sake.
Mussels and Ale in Antwerp.
My travel year 1995 finally ended in Antwerp, bustling port city on the River Schelde. We sat out from our hotel on a gorgeous autumn day to find a few good beer bars, quickly learning they’re in abundance, particularly in the city center as clustered around the massive Gothic cathedral.
One of them is Paters’ Vaetje (Priests’ Little Barrel), with a list of 75 to 100 Belgian beers in the shadow of the cathedral wall, including draft De Koninck, Antwerp’s tasty, session-strength, classically balanced local pale ale.
Next up was Elfde Gebod (The Eleventh Commandment), with a beer list that touched the stylistic bases and perhaps the most singular décor I’d experienced in Europe, as filled top to bottom with religious artifacts and statues like the ones reposing on the front lawn at Catholic institutions.
If I recall, one was called “Jesus with the head of a dog.” Behind the bar reposed a huge pulpit; upstairs, bizarre paintings suggested fevered and twisted religious vision – but aren’t they all?
For an early dinner we dined on mussels in one of the many restaurants specializing in the preparation of these North Sea delicacies.
The traditional Belgian way of serving mussels involves placing atop the table a small pot filled with dozens of mussels in their shells (they open during cooking); they’re swimming in broth, different varieties of which you may choose. Beers are then consumed until the last mussel has been extracted and the broth sponged up with delicious crusty bread, usually accompanied by a plate or two of fries and tubs of mayonnaise.
Our mussels vanquished, a ten-minute stroll led to assorted desserts at our last stop: Kulminator, founded in 1979 by Leen Boudewijn and Dirk Van Dyke, who continue to run it today. There were 500 Belgian beers available at Kulminator that night, including up to 200 vintage selections, some dating to before the café’s inception.
One of these, an extinct brand of strong ale called Breughelbier (6) from 1985, was on special the night of our visit. Dirk told us a customer found three cases of it in a garage. A decade’s aging gave it a dark, smooth nuttiness similar to barley wine, and it was immeasurably enhanced by a Romeo y Julieta Churchill cigar from Havana; I’d purchased a box at an Antwerp tobacconist’s shop and successfully smuggled them home the following day in defiance of the imbecilic embargo.
Kulminator proved to be a storybook ending to Euro ’95 III. In the years to come, Tim Webb continued pointing the way to must-visit Belgian cafés: Cave a Bieres in Tournai; Malle Post in Rochefort; Hommelhof restaurant in Watou; Hotel Palace in Poperinge, where we often stayed and got to know the owners Guy and Beatrice; and many others. Some are gone now, but others remain.
The number of Belgian ales consumed altogether? In the hundreds. Heady stuff for a hick from somewhere near French Lick.
Next: 40 Years in Beer (Book II), Part 61: The Silo Microbrewery’s fatal travails, 1994 – 1997.
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NOTES
(1) It bears mentioning that in Brugge, the large Belgian beer selection at Hotel Erasmus predated Brugs Beertje by several years, and Kulminator in Antwerp dates to 1979.
(2) The cafés mentioned here remain operational today except Éblouissant and Posterie.
(3) In January of 2007 I stumbled quite by accident onto the website of a band called Ceilí Moss, a folk/rock act from Belgium, only to be slapped in the face.
If you’re curious where this name comes from: Ceilí (pronounced as Kylie) is a Gaelic word for a party with music, and Moss was the nickname of Alain Mossiat, boss of the pub “L’Éblouissant”, where we did our very first gigs.
By 2015, the band had ceased performing; they may have reformed since then to join the Wallonian heritage tour. The music and back story of Ceilí Moss can be found here.
And, David Pierce contributes this sketch by Moss the Boss, as drawn in 1996 when Matt Gould and Rick Buckman borrowed David’s copy of Webb’s book for their trip.
(4) Kim’s party was my introduction to Boris, friend and Haarlem NL resident.
(5) The obituary at the Het Laatste Nieuws: “Jan De Bruyne (77), founder of the famous ‘t Brugs Beertje, has passed away: ‘A café without a barrel of pilsner on tap… That wouldn’t last long, many thought.'” Here’s a gallery from the article:
(6) Breughel Bier was later revived (and reformulated).
