Previously: 40 Years in Beer (Book II), Part 83: Full frontal hops in Poperinge, Bamberg and Žatec (1999).
For those who weren’t present for the arrival of a new millennium, you sure missed a preponderance of palaver.
Civilization had a Y2K affliction, having decided on the fly to tether all of life’s myriad processes to computers via a tangle of twist ties, duct tape and a power strip. Suddenly there was panic at the prospect of our loyal cyber servants misreading dates, emptying bank accounts, dismantling power grids, and losing the passwords to the patchy forerunners of today’s mighty PornHub.
On my part, I have absolutely no idea where I was at midnight on Dec. 31, 1999. It was a Friday, so in all likelihood I was working at the Public House. In the event of the unthinkable, I knew beer would continue pouring from our taps, although without electricity it would gradually become warmer than accustomed (an entirely different level of existential dread for Americans).
Drinking room temperature beer in the dark never bothered me much, but 2000 duly arrived, and apart from a few minor glitches, Mother Nature persisted. Freed from whatever precautionary angst I’d been feeling, there could be only one logical course of action.
Plan the next European trip, of course.
I could get away with it because our pizza and beer business kept growing. Recalling that Sportstime Pizza began in 1987, the new millennium’s arrival marked a bit more than a decade since my first shift as a server. I’d joined up full-time in 1992 to help build Rich O’s into a pub and beer bar destination. We’d become a local institution. Everyday business had its challenges, but we scraped through and kept learning.
My 40th birthday approached in August of 2000. I’d joined a small (and unfortunately short-lived) gym across the street operated by Jim Abel, a football coach at Floyd Central. Between this and bicycling, my overall physical condition probably reached a post-high school basketball peak in spite of a Falstaffian caloric intake.
What could we expect for 2000 and beyond?
Maybe contract brewing. Silver Creek Brewing Corporation’s absorption of Tucker Brewing, followed by its shocking acquisition of Oldenberg, offered prospects for a “house beer” collaboration. I didn’t foresee that SCBC would do a full Titanic, leaving NABC with the ex-Tucker brewing system, which became our own brewery in late 2002.
NABC operations were manageable, and the F.O.S.S.I.L.S. club basically ran itself. However, craft beer’s first bubble was in the process of unceremoniously popping by over-supply (circa 1999 – 2000), and then the dot-com bubble burst (2000 – 2002). The latter scotched SCBC’s Oldenberg venture; SCBC was the offshoot of an internet service provider, and the two breweries became unsustainable when techie capital dried up.
Also, further remodeling. For about a year, from the new walk-in’s installation in 1999 …
40 Years in Beer (Book II), Part 80: Running Gravity Head’s daunting gauntlet (Act I: 1999 – 2009)
… the pub was upgraded with the invaluable and herculean assistance of Kevin Richards, our plant manager, resident craftsman and multi-talented project manager. He became one of my closest friends and was a Mount Rushmore-like presence.
The odious drop ceilings were removed from the front room, Red Room and back bar. Kevin directed the harder bits, then I tidied up and painted. For heavier tasks, pub regulars pitched in for food and beer. Gradually the space came to resemble a pub, not a strip mall insurance office.
Through it all, I found myself in a bicycle saddle more often than before. Walking to work was a longstanding habit, and now biking provided stress relief and time to think. Happily, riding locally led to new European horizons.
I’m eternally grateful that my former teacher and mentor Bob Youngblood asked me to be a chaperone with the student trip he was planning for 1984. I agreed, then withdrew after discovering the book Europe on $25 a Day. What subsequently blossomed was as much about Europe as previously dormant resolve to do something on my own ― by myself, for myself, to find myself.
Alone.
As an only child, that’s how it had to be.
In time my friends started coming along, and I came to know a few Europeans. By the year 2000, fifteen years into my geographical obsession, I’d experienced Europe by means of train, bus, street car, street car, tram, funicular, chair lift, tiny lake boat, enormous ocean ferry, taxi, horse-drawn carriage and naturally my own two feet, but not even once by motorcycle (even via sidecar), scooter or bicycle.
(You’ll never spot me on a motorcycle, as I refuse to fork over the money to pay for the leathery cosplay ensemble those cacophonous people invariably exhibit.)
Bicycles finally scored in the summer of 2000. We called it “beercycling,” and seven similar expeditions set out between 2000 and 2008. They stopped because our lives got in the way, but I can say in complete honesty that these rides were a complete, unmitigated blast even when soaking wet. They rank among my most cherished travel memories.
A quarter-century later, I still can’t explain exactly why it took so long for me to rediscover the joys of biking, which I hadn’t pursued since high school. Gradually during the mid-1990s riding once again enticed me, first with short loops around then-deserted downtown New Albany, lengthening to trips into the countryside, culminating with the Trek to the Deck in 1999.
40 Years in Beer (Book II), Part 76: A boy can dream – about beercycling (and a Requiem for Moose)
Finally I began to comprehend the wider possibilities, thanks in huge measure to Kevin. Bicycling became a major component of our early friendship; he was experienced, and taught me. A coalition of the like-minded followed.
One day in 1999, Kevin and I rode up the Knobs (nearby hills), and while sagging at a venerable ice cream haven called Polly’s Freeze, I began reminiscing about bicycling in Europe, which I’d witnessed but never joined.
Suddenly we looked at each other. Wait, why not us?
Bicycling by day and drinking beer by night in Europe, where conditions and attitudes supported riding, and the beer was better anyway. In a moment’s time, soft-serve in hand, beercycling was birthed and my European travel instincts were reborn.
Hmm. Belgium to start?
Henceforth we focused on a handful of beer-oriented Belgian urban centers with bicycles for hire; day trips at first, then scaling up in future years as we gained experience. An itinerary came into shape, and as the calendar turned to June, 2000, five of us readied for the journey.
—
I was stuffing bags into a coin-operated storage locker at the disconcertingly grungy subterranean Centrale Station in Brussels when suddenly Buddy Sandbach popped around the corner, having spotted Kevin Richards strolling out on the concourse. Buddy was freshly arrived in Brussels from Amsterdam, where he had spent several days fulfilling his longtime dream of learning about Holland’s many and varied species of, er, tulips.
Kevin and I flew together from Louisville, via Atlanta. Buddy’s unexpectedly early debut in Brussels put us squarely ahead of schedule, which loomed large, for it might easily translate into free time for an extra beer.
That’s always a good omen.
After a pitfall or three pursuing a place to lodge Buddy’s bags and prized, um, bulbs ― these obstacles being overcome in spite of the best efforts of an obstructionist baggage room bureaucrat named Erik ― the transaction finally was arranged, stairs were mounted, and we met bustling streets outside the station.
A handy public map determined the course we’d be walking to the famed Grand Place, that ornate central square pictured on jigsaw puzzles and boxes of Belgian chocolate.
The giddy enthusiasm one feels when returning to a great city always makes it easy to ignore trifles like kamikaze taxi drivers and intermittent drizzly rain, and so we merrily dodged these impediments and strolled into a bustling, vibrant urban environment filled with touristy restaurants, multi-lingual menu offerings, the delivery vans of florists and family butcher firms, tacky souvenir stands, suavely attired Euro-businessmen, and the occasional tattoo parlor.
Would they really etch a genuine facsimile of the famed Mannekin-Pis-Boy into your virgin rump while you wait? I suspected so.
The Grand Place remained a refuge for aficionados of gilded guild halls, and the ambience was duly photographed even if it cannot be adequately captured on film. When the clicking of shutters subsided, I cautioned my friends that from a beer traveler’s rarified point of view, truly noteworthy beer cafes from which to view the splendid architectural setting weren’t likely in the square itself, where rents were sky high, and terrified sightseers demanded blandly predictable pilsners.
However, there was time to waste until Bob Reed materialized by the door of the Maison des Brasseurs (the brewing museum; absent mobile phones, the rendezvous was pre-arranged), and the rain had returned, so any café would do. We opted for La Rose Blanche, which had an above average list of ales, providing the ideal vantage point to watch for Bob.
The uniformed waiter brought the first of three rounds to our low wooden table by a large, open window. Through it the customarily thronged square was weirdly quiet, and echoes of scattered voices occasionally sounded above a steady drumbeat of rain on cobblestones. The White Rose may not have been the best beer café in Brussels, and yet is also couldn’t possibly be the worst.
My first three beers of the trip were Palm (Belgian pale ale), Rodenbach (sour red/brown ale from West Flanders) and Rochfort 8º (heavenly Trappist ale), three choices you’d love to savor anywhere, anytime, while engaged in the task of mulling life’s mysteries.
Soggy tourists crossed the square’s expanse, and among them we soon spotted the angular Bob loping across the pavement wrapped in a brilliant reddish-orange rain poncho. We motioned him inside and had another round. Soon the rain dissipated, and we were back on the streets in search of food and drink.
Historically, Brussels’ environs in Pajottenland were lambic country, home of Belgium’s indigenous, spontaneously fermented ales. I’d developed a serious taste for these rare, complex nectars, never imagining their future cult popularity. Our next two cafes were lambic-themed, secreted in a warren of streets beyond the Grand Place.
À l’Imaige Nostre-Dame had Timmerman’s Faro, by definition sweetened, but with the characteristically tangy lambic character still present. At Toone, Cantillon Gueuze was the textbook example of sharp, sour and rigorously authentic lambic. I chased it with a bolleke of Antwerp’s smooth, signature De Koninck pale ale.
That’s three hours, six beers, and a veritable cross section of Belgian brewing, all before dinner. Our quintessentially Belgian evening meal was a pot of mussels apiece, just as many baskets of crusty bread for soaking up broth, and mounds of frites (fries).
One must include vegetables for a balanced meal.
My mussels were accompanied by famously balanced, deceptively drinkable Duvel, a strong golden ale. This followed a draft portion of forgettable Jupiler mass-market lager, allegedly “bought” for us by the restaurant’s street hawker as an enticement.
Jupiler served as a valuable calibration beer because everything else I drank the entire day ― and the remainder of the trip ― was an improvement on it, although in fairness, if regular Jupiler drinkers were presented with a Coors Light, it’d likely be dumped down the nearest drain.
Soon the mussels were gone, and so was our Brussels afternoon. An hour-long train ride awaited to Tournai, located in French-speaking Hainaut province and chosen as our headquarters for three days of cycling in the Wallonian countryside. We were early to the station, providing the chance to have a cherished final beer. Mine was Brugs Tarwebier, a citrusy, representative Belgian-style wheat ale.
Blessedly, there was no superfluous orange slices to angrily hurl to the floor.
Rumbling past the suburbs aboard a nearly deserted train, our bountiful harvest of opening day libations (nine beers, if you’re keeping track) suddenly became even more fruitful as Kevin magically produced a bottle of 40-year-old Noval port, technically a tawny port with indication of average age as pertains to blending stocks, and not vintage as such, but no matter. He’d cleverly procured the bottle from our fifth wheel, Kevin Lowber, who would be meeting us later in Poperinge.
Why wait? Having neglected minor considerations like glasses or plastic cups, there was little choice save the thumbing our noses at accepted decanting propriety, and taking turns imbibing the sinuous, concentrated nectar from two of Buddy’s souvenir Parisian shot glasses as tidy fields and shuttered small villages flew past in the approaching dusk.
A taxi slumbered in front of the queue at Tournai’s rail station, and two hundred Belgian francs later (Euros were about to happen), we were deposited at the gate of the Hotel d’Alcantara, which appeared to have been an industrialist’s mansion in a previous life.
This momentous first day in Belgium ended without bicycling, but with a succession of Chimay Trappist “blue” ales on the pleasant, landscaped terrace of the hotel. Night fell as we drank, toasting ourselves and the surroundings, which included bright hotel flowerboxes and the lovely vista of a floodlit church spire.
Then four ancient, yet intact bicycles were spotted chained together in the corner of the walled courtyard. In a few hours, these would be our introduction to European biking.
—
In 2000, Tournai seldom surfaced as part of prospective Belgian beer-hunting itineraries, and on the surface of it, the omission was understandable. The city itself no longer possessed working breweries, and there was only one genuinely special beer café, Cave de Bieres, as deemed worthy of mention in British writer Tim Webb’s essential book, The Good Beer Guide to Belgium and Holland (the café has long since ceased to exist).
And, our time in Tournai came just before the city greeted Belgian beer modernity. An example is Brasserie de Cazeau, a brewery dating to 1753. The invading Germans seized and dismantled the brewery, which resumed production in 1926 and continued until 1969, when Cazeau closed; it was the last functional brewery in Tournai’s vicinity. In 2004, four years after we beercycled, younger family members revived the family tradition.
In spite of the drawbacks, we elected to make Tournai our home base for the first segment of our program, simply because of the city’s relative proximity to several excellent breweries ― and Hotel d’Alcantara had inexpensive bikes that we could use to reach these places.
In the end, Tournai was vindicated. As a bonus, it proved to be an intriguing locale in its own right. The city was founded as a Roman settlement, and like most comparably sized urban areas, it was ceded, swapped and passed around to various feudal and imperial powers for much of its history. There was a relaxed and pleasing mixture of Europe’s new and old.
Tournai suffered damage in both 20th-century European conflagrations, but in WWII it had the distinction of being the first Belgian city to be liberated from the Nazis. The city’s trademark postcard photo is the imposing, five-towered Cathedrale de Notre-Dame; there is a squat but massive 13th-century bridge across the Escaut River; and as of 2026 the central square seems finally to have escaped its misuse as an entirely unnecessary car park.
We enjoyed the strange intermittent fountain made possible by EU developmental funds, and the square was ringed by respectable if unspectacular pubs and cafes where mid-range ale selections could be found, as well as good espresso and snacks.
Ten miles west of Tournai lies the larger French city of Lille. We didn’t have time to visit, but understood it to be a center of northern French brewing, with many beer bars in the center and breweries in the outskirts. The Brunehaut brewery was located ten miles south, the inheritor of the Abbaye de Saint-Martin brewing tradition, founded as a commercial entity in 1890 and re-chartered (more or less) in 1992.
We found Brunehaut’s beers in Tournai, one memorable example being a specialty ale spiked with genever, Belgium’s distilled forerunner to gin.
Twenty miles northeast of Tournai is the Pays des Collines, a rural region of low hills, towns, patches of woods, farms, and a 21st-century focus on eco-tourism. With the invaluable assistance of a Hotel d’Alcantara staffer, we booked a guided mountain bike tour of the area for our second day in town.
Ten miles east of Tournai lies arguably the finest collection of small breweries that you’ll find out in the Belgian fields, all of them within a two-square mile area: Dubuisson, maker of the incredible Bush strong ales (known as Scaldis in the USA); Dupont, brewer of classic saison ales; and Vapeur, the archaic steam-powered museum/brewery that we scheduled for a visit on Day Three.
Prior to mountain biking Friday and brewery schmoozing Saturday, there was an open riding day Thursday. We had plenty of raw adrenalin, but no plan. Having examined the four bikes and found them rickety but serviceable, the friendly hotel manager suggested charting a course for Mont St. Aubert, a few miles north of Tournai.
This beercycling inaugural offered an introduction to the joys of biking and bruising over dry cobblestoned streets; wet cobblestones were yet to come, providing thrills of an even greater magnitude.
Cobblestones gave way to smoother paved roads as we passed from the inner city to modern districts on the outskirts. Following signs into the countryside, we clearly saw the hill looming ahead. Climbing it was challenging, with each of us having only a two or three gears in operating condition, but we made it and were rewarded with a spectacular view of Tournai and the surrounding region.
(Actually, some made Mont St. Aubert’s summit in better condition than others; Buddy learned the French pronunciation of “Ralph” in route, and curiously, it’s almost the same as in America.)
Bob Reed thoughtfully had procured a map of the area, so we chose narrow country lanes through surrounding farmlands amid reassuring aromas of fodder and dung, finding drivers polite, and eventually arriving in Pecq. From there, immaculately groomed bike paths along the river led back into Tournai.
It was unlikely that we rode more than 15 miles that day, maybe 20, but the historical significance of the afternoon simply cannot be exaggerated. It didn’t matter that the bicycles were inferior. Kevin and I had plotted this trip for months, and now we were actually pedaling. Huffing and puffing up Mont St. Aubert, I realized that Europe would never again be quite the same.
The remainder of this judiciously short biking day was spent exploring Tournai on foot, pausing to have restorative ales in the café at the Hotel Europ (including Bush Blonde, arguably the easiest drinking 10.5% ale ever conceived), then dining on beefsteak and frites at a nearby restaurant.
The aforementioned Cave a Bieres, Tournai’s finest specialty beer café at the time, was located by the river in a former storage cellar. It didn’t open until 5:00 p.m., and we were there when the tumblers spun.
It was a “shotgun” bar, narrow and deep, filling space below street level in a venerable brick warehouse. The walls and vaulted ceiling were painted white, with a small bar, big wooden tables and chairs on both sides of a central walkway. Belgian brewing memorabilia was everywhere.
The café was administered by a head waiter (male) and chef (female chef), perhaps husband and wife, perhaps not, but with the latter indisputably in charge of the proceedings, which in addition to a bottled beer list of 75 to 100 choices included typical Belgian café snacks and excellent full meals on weekends.
Settling in, I concentrated on regional ales: Brunehaut, Elezelloise and Dupont. Vapeur was available, but there’d be plenty of that on Saturday in Pipaix.
On Friday morning following an exemplary hotel breakfast, it was time for yet another new adventure. We were met in the lobby by our guide for the day’s pre-arranged mountain biking excursion. Etienne, a teacher, coach and superbly conditioned all-around athlete, loaded us into his pristine van for the trip to the rural Pays des Collines.
At a sparkling new athletic club in a town (Frasnes-lez-Anvaing?) on the periphery, we were introduced to our bikes and Etienne’s bubbly aunt, who followed us in her car, pausing occasionally to pull alongside and provide commentary in English. Etienne confessed to speaking only French, but we were able to communicate wonderfully through gestures and snippets. With regard to mountain biking technique, Etienne showed us what to do, and we followed his lead.
Only Kevin had previous experience on a mountain bike. He and Etienne bonded immediately, sharing a love of all sporting endeavors in a common, unspoken language. Soon we were riding off-road in the rough, over steep hills in the mud, across dirt paths by wide, cleared fields, and through old railroad cuts in the woods. There were stops at a traditional farmstead with an ancient mill being restored, and a museum of local culture.
Two hours into the ride, Etienne took us to his mother’s rectangular brick farmstead for juice, coffee and pastries. In the village of Ellezelles came a needed rehydration sag at the Brasserie Ellezelloise (now owned by Geants, and called Legende).
The isolated brewery featured high-quality ales familiar for their stopper bottles, including Hercule, an intense, high-gravity sweet stout named for Agatha Christie’s fictional detective Hercule Poirot, who was “born” there.
The brewery’s Quintine was named for a local witch from the 17th century, and Ellezelles went through a period similar to Salem around the same time, leading to being known as “the village of witches.” Accordingly Etienne made sure we paid our respects to Eul Pichoure, a renowned public art installation of a sculpted witch squatting and glowering atop a waist-high pedestal.
She bore comparison to the Mannekin-Pis in Brussels solely by virtue by virtue of its plumbing; put a coin in the slot, and came shooting out from beneath the witch’s skirt. But during magical fest times, Etienne insisted that beer flowed instead.
Back at the athletic complex, we retired to the pleasant watering hole inside and toasted our superlative guide with a round of Hoegaardens. He was a true gentleman.
For a second consecutive evening back in Tournai, the consensus choice for dinner was couscous (kews-kews) with tagine (stew), the North African delight as widely available in Tournai as Chinese or Mexican cuisine in Louisville.
My newfound joy in biking was never dampened by unnecessary restrictions in food or drink. The whole point of daylight beercycling was to justify massive meals and fine ale at night. Couscous proved ideally suited for an exercise regimen like ours; to learn more, turn back the page.
Euro Pilgrimage ’85, Ch. 6: Pecetto idyll, with a Parisian excursion
Saturday was to be the highlight of our Tournai stay: a ride to monthly brewing day at Brasserie A Vapeur (the steam-operated brewery), followed by televised Eurocup soccer in Tournai and a special meal of lobster at Cave de Bieres. Best of all, we’d be treated to delightful company.
Our Danish friends Kim Andersen, Kim Wiesener, and Allan Gamborg were in Belgium for Eurocup matches. They booked rooms at the d’Alcantara to meet us for an evening’s frivolity.
Unsurprisingly given our collective pasts, the novice beercycling team’s thoughts turned to simple survival.
—
Wallonia is the southeastern, primarily French-speaking half of Belgium. The cultural and linguistic divide between Wallonia and the Dutch-speaking Flanders is deeply seated, politically charged and completely beyond the scope of this account.
For beercyclists, geography is more important. Landscapes in Wallonia vary. To the south and east, the low, wooded hills known as the Ardennes are darkly mysterious, enduringly scenic and sparsely populated. North of the Ardennes, stretching westward through the Meuse River valley from Liege to Namur, then along the Sambre River to Charleroi and Mons, runs an area similar to what Americans now routinely refer to as a “Rust Belt.”
The industrial revolution on the European continent took root and exploded in these environs during the early 19th century, with an emphasis on coal mining and heavy industries producing steel, glass and cement.
These industries are gone, and in their wake the goal of every fair-sized municipality has been to relieve the European Union of wheelbarrows filled with redevelopment cash, deploying this largesse to redress the slag heaps, brownfields and abandoned factories.
The city of Mons is the capital of Hainaut province, the westernmost in Wallonia. Beginning in Mons, and continuing westward to Tournai, the terrain begins to flatten into what eventually becomes the Flanders plain stretching to the Atlantic. The industrial zone remains evident along the Sambre River and then the Scheldt, but it is intermixed with landscape of a more pastoral character.
The towns and villages reflect the differences. There are tidy modern cottages, the homes of people who commute to work in the larger towns. Next to them, one might see the manure-caked tractor of a family still engaged in farming. Crops in Hainaut include wheat, oats, sugar beets, chicory ― and yes, barley. A countryside bike reveals ample numbers of pigs and cows.
Even in the tiniest settlements, there are seen sturdy, drafty brick buildings and rust-stained ground. Back in the day these were workshops and factories, the smaller satellites of the industrial complexes concentrated elsewhere. Many of these relics are dilapidated, while others have been reclaimed and adapted for use as housing, auto body shops, storage facilities and art studios.
These archaic brick buildings have stories to tell, but apart from farming structures, few are still being used for the purpose originally intended. Even if they were, it would be a considerable stretch to fantasize that the work being performed was still being done substantially the way it was a century ago.
However, there is a place where the “retro” vibe is real, and according to the interwebz, this remains the case in 2026. It’s Brasserie A Vapeur, where the indefatigable Jean Louis Dits began brewing beer in 1984 at a brewery founded in 1795, with all the heat and power for the brewing operation generated by steam as the result of an extensive “modernization” undertaken in 1895.
Upon closer examination, the boiler was of more recent vintage, with stainless steel fermenters phased in after “open” fermentation was discontinued during the 1990s. Of course various spare and replacement parts have been plugged in, but in large measure the brewery still operates as it would have when Queen Victoria reigned and Louisville had a major league baseball team.
Jean Louis had the crafty foresight to classify his brewery as a museum, making possible restoration funds that otherwise would not have been available to him.
We arranged our beercycling calendar to include Vapeur (“steam”) brewery during its once-monthly brewing day, when the public is always welcome to watch and learn, and a communal picnicking atmosphere is maintained.
Saturday morning in Tournai was cool and cloudy. It was spitting rain intermittently the night before as we crawled from café to couscouserie, absorbing ales great and small. We didn’t expect rain on Saturday, nor did it matter. There was too much on the agenda, and if we became wet, so be it.
The ride began along Tournai’s riverbank, quickly gaining the outskirts and a heavily-traveled highway east toward Leuze. The bike lane provided scant but sufficient buffering from passing traffic. A succession of villages were clustered around the old highway, yielding scenes familiar to highways anywhere: gas stations, video stores, cafes, and dozens of ordinary people tending to their weekend chores.
A sign pointed the way toward Pipaix, so we exited south onto a calmer road, entering verdant countryside filled with fields, farms, villages, rows of trees … and breweries. A “golden triangle” lay before us: Vapeur, Dubuisson and Dupont.
Dubuisson dates from 1769, and the ninth generation of the founding family still runs the business in 2026. Its ales are called Bush in Belgium and Scaldis for export to America (heaven forbid there’d be confusion with Busch Light). Just after the 2000 trip, a sleek new restaurant and café rose on the brewery site, testament to faith in the future of quality ale.
In like fashion, Dupont began in 1850 as the Brasserie Rimaux, which was acquired by the current owning family in 1920. Today Dupont brews, malts barley, bakes bread, makes cheese, and even does a little farming on the side. Dupont was a Belgian pioneer in organic brewing. The brewery’s ales are aggressively exported, include Saison Dupont (I), Moinette (II), and the delicious seasonal Avec les Bons Voeux (III).
It is rare to find three breweries of such high quality located so close together, and we’d like to have made a pilgrimage to each. However, owing to the rarity of Vapeur’s public brewing day, it was the sole destination.
A hard left off the main road took us two kilometers, then a few puzzled moments trying to locate the village of Pipaix. I took the unprecedented (and grudging) step of asking a village passer-by to point the way to Vapeur. He shrugged and gestured. It was the building just behind us, perhaps twenty yards away. Embarrassment ensued.
Couldn’t we smell the mash?
Bikes were chained, and our noses led into the brewery. We joined a handful of onlookers as Jean Louis, his wife and an assistant brought a new batch to life. He’s a Renaissance man whose talents extend beyond brewing Saison Pipaix and Folie: educator, naturalist, curator and baker.
To visit Vapeur is to attend an eclectic seminar about all things germane to Pipaix, taught by a passionate, bilingual instructor.
- the medicinal lichen, once an ingredient in Vapeur’s beer, now sadly degraded by air pollution
- the many breweries that once operated in the area, and why so few remain
- the power of the steam and the system of pulleys and drive belts
When it was time to let nature work, the lecture abruptly ceased, the recess bell figuratively rang, and thankfully there was no dodge ball. At Vapeur on brewing day, resting the mash means rushing the growler. Everyone was guided across the courtyard to the tasting room, where ample pitchers of draft house brews were passed down the wooden tables and a contagious atmosphere of communal appreciation prevailed.
Jean Louis noted that lunch was available for a small fee. In pre-Euro times, roughly $12 sufficed for museum admission, recess beers and a meal of “simple” bread and locally made cheeses.
It wasn’t simple at all: two enormous platters laden with cheeses, hard and soft, white and yellow, stinky and mild, some incorporating locally grown herbs, and taken together, all quite overwhelming to senses already under siege.
Crusty crumbs and cultured shards flew, pitchers of Cochonne continued to appear with breathtaking speed, and we began to think carefully about the ride back to Tournai. The beercyclists persevered.
Back in the brewery, it was approaching the boil; we concluded with sadness that the evening festivities in Tournai meant it was time to bid “adieu” to Jean Louis. He graciously consented to a photo-op in the courtyard, appropriately blurry, and we were off.
It never rained … but the deluge was only just beginning.
