My wife and I went to Ghent for a 5-day break. I am determined to try to avoid air travel as much as possible and so we are exploring various cities which can be reached relatively easily by train from our home in Bath. Ghent was on the list, together with an excursion to Bruges for a day.
The beer adventure started in Bruges where we discovered an excellent Museum of Belgian Beer! This was such an informative place, covering a lot of history, in-depth information about the different processes used in Belgian beer making, and then specific focuses on different working breweries. Fascinating stuff, made all the better by a tasting session of 6 beers at the end.
The majority of the rest of our beer drinking too place in Het Waterhuis aan de Bierkant, an excellent bar with over 150 beers, on the waterfront and very close to our hotel. What’s not to like! We also made a point of drinking beer with all meals, but most restaurants pretty much just served Duval or Le Chouffe, which are very enjoyable blond beer, but something you can get in most supermarkets in the UK.
Beers worth of comment:
- Gruut Wit - Gruut is both a brewery (near Ghent) and also a method. Gruut beer is flavoured using herbs and spices rather than hops. This ‘white’ beer is delicious and was my wife’s favourite from the trip. The Gruut Blonde was also very nice. I didn’t try their Brown, which was probably a mistake.
- Bourgogne des Flanders - beer from Bruges (we tried to keep it local). A special beer which combines a ‘lambic brewed’ beer with a traditional, younger brewed beer. Absolutely delicious brown beer. If you can get hold of this try it out.
- Gulden Draak - named after the golden dragon at the top of Ghent Belfry (which we climbed to see). Another delicious, local, red brown beer.
- Artevelde Grand Cru - my favourite from the trip. Delicious, creamy brown beer.
- I wanted to try a ‘saison’ beer, but the bar tender convinced me to try Dupont Biere de Miel instead. Also a saison beer but honey flavoured. It wasn’t sweet, but it did have a very strong honey taste. Not keen. I should have stuck to the Dupont Saison.
- Kriek Boon - cheery flavoured lambic. Tasted like kid’s drink. Not for me.
- Delerium blonde - very average in my opinion.
- Rodenbach Classic Sour - a sour red beer. I had this twice. Loved it the first time, hated it the second.
- Malheur 6 - Trappist brown beer. OK. Nothing special (I was getting picky by now).
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