Unfinished business

Last year I went to Brussels in the hope of attending the BXLBeerFest only to find it postponed for a further year. It was back on for 2022, however, and what I found there will feature here later in the week. I built a long weekend around the festival, mostly to catch up with the bits of Brussels that were closed last time around, and I had partial success with that. Toone was back in fine form, cat and all, and on the final afternoon I managed to catch the re-opening of À La Bécasse. Still closed doors at À L'Imaige de Nostre-Dame and Aux Bon Vieux Temps, alas, and that's not even mentioning the tragic, and hopefully temporary, closure of La Fleur En Papier Doré.

Gist has a new lease on life, however, and a new owner. The vinyl is gone but the cask engines are still there and the beer list is about as diverse as it was in the good old days. The Drogenbos brewery features prominently and, seated outside, I opened my account with Gruit Passion, an extremely old-fashioned Belgian beer style given a tropical twist. It works really well too, the passionfruit taking a back seat and allowing the spicy herbal flavours sparkle. There's a kind of vanilla sweetness, but again not too much. I found a lot of complexity on show here for just 4% ABV and the thought that it tastes a bit like shower gel was only momentary.

The purple beer beside it is another from the same brewery along the same lines: Blanche Cassis. It's much less interesting, and if as the name suggests, it's based on a witbier, there's not much character showing through from that. Instead you get blackcurrant cordial and a hint of green celery and that's your lot. It tastes like the kind of thing industrial breweries produce to attract the girls to beer, though they don't usually make them as strong as 5.2% ABV.

Morbid curiosity had me ordering a beer from Wallonian brewery Borinage next, called Urine. This is 7% ABV and badged as a double IPA. It's clear and golden, demonstrating a very heavily resinous aroma with dry cereal in the background, suggesting something a bit severe was to come. It proved much mellower, however, beginning with the smooth texture and sweet floral and strawberry foretaste. A harder waxy bitterness rises behind this, but it's gentle and balanced, not jarring or harsh. Overall it works surprisingly well. The only thing I'd change is the name.

Herself opted for stout: Ardenne Stout by Brasserie Minne. It's a big lad at 8% ABV and very much in the British tradition rather than Belgian, eschewing fruit and running instead with cocoa and tobacco. High notes of lavender and rosewater help to temper it, and while it's still a little busy, it's fun with it.

She continued to their Ardenne Tripel next, stronger still at 8.5% ABV and really doubling down on the sugar. Though the aroma is pleasingly savoury, showing white pepper and spinach, the taste is pure syrup with a hot and sticky density to match. Tripel's notorious drinkability is missing, and I enjoyed it less for that.

There were a couple of beers from the new spontaneous brewing facility of Brussels Beer Project on Rue Dansaert and I had one of them before going: Distant Echoes. Seems like they're going for a bit of a prog rock theme with these. It's a sour ale with grapes at 7% ABV, ochre-coloured and smelling powerfully of vinegar. Again, the flavour switched directions, mixing apple jelly and saltpetre spice on a warm and rich malt base. There's a mature classiness to this which does not suggest it's from a brash new start-up. It seems they know what they're doing. I didn't get to try any more from the brewery on this trip but look forward to seeing them again.

A different sort of unfinished business was conducted at the Wolf foodhall, where last time they only had one beer pouring from the in-house Flow brewery. Now they had three on.

Flow IPA is amber coloured and 6% ABV. A vague lemony aroma suggested at first that it might be English-style, but a too-sweet profile of caramel and fruit candy on a thick texture makes me think, if it's in a sub-style at all, it's American IPA done badly. I found it just about potable when cold and in a small glass but didn't want to countenance what might happen if it warmed.

Deep Amber is a lager and 5% ABV. It's slightly hazy in a way I've almost come to expect of brewpub lagers and has quite a bock-like malt weight, slightly sweet at first, before a sudden noble hop explosion of nettle, grass, rocket and spiced cabbage. The full spectrum of Germanic complexity there, and quite delightful, untroubled by any undue sweetness from the malt.

To complete the set out of sheer doggedness I had a glass of Wild Blond finally. This is a clear dark gold, thick and heavy but staying dry. A lager crispness meets Belgian golden ale density but neither really go anywhere, fading to nothing quite quickly: the meh of both worlds.

The brewery is very much an afterthought at Wolf. The venue is fun but the beer is just making up the numbers, by and large.

Have you ever had ubiquitous Belgian pilsner Cristal? I hadn't but chanced it when it was the only unfamiliar thing on a restaurant menu. I had never really thought about Belgian pils as its own style but here it is: like stablemate Maes it's dry with a corn sweetness. It's not unpleasant but you need to be either in the mood for it or very thirsty. To my palate there are strong similarities with the Mexican style lager that seems to be currently in fashion for no good reason. Maybe when that has passed, Belgian pils will have its moment too.

On to new territory next, and I had never set foot before in Les Brasseurs, a quite famous beer café right on Boulevard Anspach at the Bourse. I barely did this time, just to rustle up some service before sitting back down outside. Said service brought me a can of La Source 200 IBUs which was over three months out of date and as a result tasted of caramel with some slight resin. Bitterness doesn't fade with time so I call bullshit on both the beer's name and the bar's stock rotation procedures.

The nearby rooftop beer garden I enjoyed last summer hasn't returned but the management have a new venue, taking over the roomy courtyard of a former hospice in the city centre and making it a massive, yet still charming, beer garden. The beer list was decent and my nightcap there was Bobbi Tripel, a nicely juicy example of 8% ABV. Canteloupe features big, alongside more traditional features of tripel like clove rock, lemon rind, celery and pepper. It keeps things light and not boozy, exhibiting exactly the sort of drinkablity missing from the Minne one above.

That's all for today. More Brussels-based wanderings in tomorrow's post.