Don't forget the Belgians!.....

BEER is booming. The elaborate world of real ale and craft beer just keeps on expanding. But I think we’re forgetting someone, a once-loved distant cousin who you now just see at occasions like special birthdays and weddings.

I’m talking about the Belgians. Are we forgetting how good these bottled beauties are while we’re lost in the hedonism of hop bombs, IPAs and barrel aged stouts? I think so.

I love Belgium. Yes, that’s what I said. Every year I visit at least once to get my fix and imbibe on their produce. Recently, I travelled back to Brussels on the Eurostar and only moments after checking in to my hotel, I was heading for a couple of my favourite bars in the world.

It’s also the first visit for my friend, Simon, who’s checking out the beer list in Monk, a busy Flemish bar, as I’m trying out my Flemish ordering the beers. The barman assumes we’re tourists immediately of course, probably because Simon is having a Westvleteren 12, which to be fair is stunning, but I’m glad he understood me.

Westvleteren 12 is dark, malty, raisiny, with hints of cherry, caramel, maybe clove. Boom! Simon’s blown away. I take it easy with the Trappist classic, Orval – the real king of beers: complex, dry but fruity and delicious.

After a couple more we head to Moeder Lambic, where on the back bar there are six hand pulls, the same as you’d see down your local. It’s odd to see them in Belgium but they don’t dispense real ale, here they dispense lambic, a unique style of beer.

Lambics are sour beers brewed using a spontaneous fermentation process involving wild yeasts present in the air, after which the beer is matured in wooden oak barrels – it’s all very traditional.

Simon gets stuck in with a Gueuze, which is a blend of one, two and three-year-old lambic. I’ve opted for Rosé de Gambrinus, a lambic brewed with raspberries added to the barrel. The producer of these beers is Cantillon and Cantillon rocks my little Belgian beery world.

They also make lambic with fruit added – grapes, cherries and apricots. I find everything that comes out of Cantillon brewery is mesmerising, but perhaps most mesmerising of all is the brewery itself, just a stroll away from where we’re enjoying their beers – and it would be rude not to visit, wouldn’t it?

I always get a little tingle of excitement visiting this special brewery, it really is like stepping back in time. I love how their tradition and history is preserved here and better still, it all still functions as a working brewery.

We tour the building, viewing the old mash tun and brewing kit, most of it original, then up into the eves where the magic happens. The wort – the liquid before fermentation – is left to cool in what you could only describe as a giant copper paddling pool where the wild yeasts pop by work their magic.

We walk past hundreds of wooden barrels of beer and down to the bottling line (the only automated machinery in the building), on our way to sample the wares. There’s usually something available at the brewery you can’t easily buy elsewhere. Simon and I go for Pineau d’Aunis, a lambic with the reddish grape of the same name added to the barrel, it’s peppery, earthy, with a hint of jam maybe citrus pith. It’s a stunner and turns out be beer of the trip for me.

As we leave to grab some food, Simon is bowled over by the place and the beer, I’m just glad to visit again and to pass on the experience of this Belgian institution.

Luckily, you won’t have to go to Belgium to try lambic. Regular stockists of lambics in York include Pivni, York Tap and the House of Trembling Madness. As well as as Cantillon, producers such as Boon and Oud Beersel are a great introduction and I’d urge you to give them a go. I think you’d be pleasantly surprised.

Salut!