Our Yellowstone & Grand Tetons Multisport & Beer Adventure finished last week and our Belgium Hike, Bike & Beer Adventure begins later this week, so we thought it was fitting to post a blog about BEER! We asked our Belgian guide Sacha Seggai to tell us a little bit about the beer in his home country…
Belgium is a very small country where people think very small, very local. We call ourselves sometimes “parish”-minded. Having to go somewhere 120 miles away is for us mentally the same as a trip from the East Coast to LA for many Americans. There is one good thing about this mindset. No other country in the world has a tradition of so many different beer styles!
Quite recently more and more beerclubs appear where people share their passion to discover brews from other Belgian places. Those “brotherhoods” are very local and their beer tasting festivals are rather often organized in community rooms belonging to the church (told you we are parish minded…). And then there is Zythos Bierfestival, held annually in April. They try to outdo everyone else by organizing a really big event with more than 100 brewers and 16,000 visitors this year. In Belgium (a country roughly the size of Maryland) we have about 160 breweries and more than a thousand beers so you can picture this festival, perhaps. If not, see the video below.
At Zythos, all are smaller or small family breweries. Only two or three big breweries participate, but there are no big crowds for them, as the smaller breweries are more popular. Of course you need to be selective and you better keep a (not!) To Do list in mind if you go.
But even when it becomes nebulous good things can happen. A few years ago at the Zythos Festival an intoxicated man asked Vincent Dilewyns of the Vicaris brewery to pour some Vicaris Triple in his (not yet empty) glass. The brewer asked the man to first finish his glass but the drunk man insisted. The beer remaining in the glass was a Gueuze from Girardin brewery. The drunk man liked the mix but he was drunk. Then the brewer tried it, and a little bit later a fantastic beer was born, a blend of a top fermented Triple and a spontaneous fermented Gueuze. The Vicaris Tripel Gueuze!