On the mean streets of Brussels

EBCU business brought me to Brussels a couple of weeks ago. And of course, in between meetings there was a chance to drop in at some favourite pubs and breweries around the city. Assembly point on the first evening was Brussels Beer Project's wild-beer brewery and taproom on Rue Dansaert.

Here I started on something with the wonderful name of You're A Time Machine, Change The Future. It's a blend of lambic and saison, flavoured with rhubarb, 5.5% ABV and a murky orange colour in the glass. It's nicely tart while still leaving room for a proper rhubarb flavour. There's enough of a body to make that rounded and rich, like a rhubarb pie. Lambic complexity is a little lacking, and there's no funk, only touches of salt and spice. This is good though not spectacular, and it would be interesting to find out what a little further ageing would do for it.

Reuben, meanwhile, was drinking Arctic Summer, BBP's cold IPA. This is an excellent example of the style -- a clear golden colour and using its incredibly clean flavour profile to boost big dank and pithy hop elements. Though a relatively modest 6% ABV it tastes more like the 7%+ ABV IPAs that made the west coast famous.

I stayed sour for my next one, Sonic Freefall, another blend of saison and lambic, this time flavoured with apple pomace and a powerful 7.3% ABV. The aroma is a rustic autumnal mix of damp oak and ripe apple. There's a kick of sourness at the opening of the flavour but no sign of that alcohol, and the central taste is predominantly a raw and sappy wood character. It's subtle in a way I wasn't expecting, and I don't think that makes it a better beer. There was definitely room for something more interesting here. Maybe they don't have enough spontaneously-fermented stock to release the pure product yet. I found the half-way approach a little dissatisfying.

Something a bit more normal to follow: Lutra, a dark lager. This 5% ABV job is quite amber coloured and has a seriously roasty aroma. The flavour is bang on for a German-style schwarzbier, being deliciously dry with an interesting nutty complexity to provide a modicum of balancing sweetness. It's one of those where there's not much to say -- it's just lovely: a classically-styled drinking beer.

L-R: Lutra, Slowmo, TRPL IPA

TRPL IPA is the opposite: a 10.5% ABV triple IPA built for sipping. It's still good, though, having the warming orangey thickness of the original American double IPAs. The bitterness level goes with that, being a punchy citrus and pine at the very front. At the tail end, however, it evolves into something more modern, introducing a differently pleasant juice quality. €10 gets you a half litre glass of this if you are so-minded. It's perfect in small measures, however.

Finally for here, I'm always strangely attracted to beetroot beers, mainly for the novelty value, so I finished with Slowmo, a saison made with beetroot and pear. There's a very full-on earthy aroma, beetroot's signature, and then a flavour of two halves. The beetroot continues doing its thing, giving it a rough and bitter taste with more than a hint of dry soil. Then that all goes away and a light and refreshing pear side arrives. This is fun, if a little route-one in the execution: you asked for pear and beetroot and that's exactly what you get; no more, no less.

GIST was convenient to where we were saying so we spent a bit of time there. I indulged heavily in their handpumped Stouterik by Brasserie de la Senne which was tasting superb. For ticking purposes there were a few interesting-looking ones by Brasserie Minne.

That began with the grandly-titled Ardenne Spirit, in the old ale style and 9.5% ABV. I had a fairly clear picture in my head of what I wanted from this: something warm and mature and plummy, but that's not what I got. It doesn't appear to be aged in or on wood but there was a major oaky tang, like substandard Rioja wine. It's dry and sappy, which is coupled with a rough and dusty mustiness. The brewery boasts of using Orval's yeast strain but it lacks the balanced charm of Orval. It's the wrong kind of funk.

The beer behind it in the photo is Woody Wood Gewürztraminer from the same brewery. This is a blend of grape ale with lambic and is 8.5% ABV. It offers a decent kick of lambic spice but in a slightly watered-down sense that's not as good as the real thing. The grape side is very obvious, being a little sickly in the Gewürztraminer way. I like the idea but I think these two excellent beer styles work better separately.

I stuck to Minne for the second round, opting for Rouge Ardenne, their take on Flanders red. This is 7% ABV and a crystal-clear red colour. That's pretty much where the style fidelty ends because for one thing it is not sour. The main flavour is raspberry jam and pink lollipops. There's a vague dryness to it but nothing like the puckering acidity of the mainstream reds. It almost tastes like a protest against them.

This time the blond beer in the background is the Old Style Saison from Drogenbos. This 6%-er has been barrel-aged and given the Brettanomyces treatment, and here you can taste similarities with Brett classic Orval: the same kind of farmyard horsey funk. There's a large wood character but it's better used than in some of the beers above, adding a dry complexity but not preventing the beer from being clean and drinkable. A white pepper spice arrives late on, plus a zingy tartness. It's an excellent use of saison as the canvas onto which other flavour elements are projected, and it all works harmoniously despite the many moving parts.

A crawl of old favourites brought us, of course, to Toone, where Dikkenek by Lefebvre was the only unfamiliar beer on the list. This is a Belgian IPA at 6.7% ABV, clear amber with an aroma of breadcrust, leading on to a dry and tannic opening flavour. Nothing good comes after that: soap, marker pens and a raw leafy hop character. Belgian esters feature but aren't in any way complementary to the hops. I've said before that Belgian brewers aren't generally very good at making Belgian-style IPAs and this is a very clear illustration of what tends to go wrong.

Carlsberg doesn't have much of a presence in Belgium, but they do have an abbey brand, St Hubertus, and I tried the Tripel Ambrée. This is 7.2% ABV, so a bit light for a tripel, and a warm red colour with a very slight haze. As might be expected it's very malt-driven, showing a little toffee but also a clean profile, minimising the fruity esters and coming across almost like a dark lager. There's a little blackcurrant but no pepper or honey as tripel usually gives. You can tell it's mass-produced but I think it's just interesting enough to be worth drinking when there's nothing better available.

Today's last beer was chosen solely for its label: Lelijke Das -- "ugly badger". It's a pale ale of 6.2% ABV and quite a sweet example, tasting of hard orange candy, spritzed up a little with fresh lemon zest and tropical pineapple, while also weighty and rounded in the Belgian way. It gets a little cloying as it warms, though also has a touch of tannin to help offset that. I wasn't sure at the outset if I was going to enjoy it, but I did.

The trip continues tomorrow. Did you know they have a taproom at Boon?