Fridges stacked with Guinness Special Export and Foreign Extra Stout.
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Belgian beer culture is the only one in the world that is recognised by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage. With that recognition comes a responsibility to make sure that this culture is open and inclusive. The consequences of movements like #MeToo and #TimesUp are bringing up hard questions about sexism, misogyny and gender equality in beer. Is Belgian beer culture and the beer community ready and willing to answer them?
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2017 was a bit of a watershed year for beer in Brussels. Breweries like En Stoemelings and Nanobrasserie L’Ermitage both moved into new and/or expanded facilities. Brasserie de la Senne broke ground on their new site along the Brussels canal. The city even saw its first beershop open north of said canal in Fermenthings. And the beer events calendar has become increasingly busy – new upstarts joining established calendar entries. 2018 looks set to be no different; so to help guide you through 2018, here’s nine events to look out for.
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A man walks into a bar, followed behind by his daughter. They exchange a few words in muttered French. A couple ahead of them – man with his arm in a sling, woman fussing over the drinks menu – order their beers in Dutch and take a seat at a rickety wooden table. This is La Charnière, a rudimentary café housed in an 18th century Brussels farmhouse
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Acknowledging that the local Brussels brewing scene is still quite small compared to other local scenes, I expected that in this era of ubiquitous choice many submissions might highlight the abundance of styles available to them locally. And, several did. Several more entries questioned the very nature of styles and posited a contradiction between the spread of styles and the search for local variety.
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Change comes slowly to Brussels. But it is coming to the corner of Brussels where the unfashionable communes of Koekelberg, Jette, and Ganshoren meet at Parc Elisabeth in a jigsaw puzzle of municipal borders. Hotel Restaurant Taverne Le Frederiksborg and Bar Eliza represent old and new Brussels, and show in their contrasting fortunes how accelerating demographic changes are reshaping the neighbourhood. They also serve beer.
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It is a simple enough assumption: that a beer with the name of a place would be made at that place. In Brussels, as elsewhere, reality is a little muddier. A new beer launched in June that puts Molenbeek at the centre of its branding raises issues of provenance and what it means to be a Brussels beer.
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Brussels Beer City is a blog about Brussels and its beer culture. This is not an industry blog. Nor is it a beer review site. There are other, better websites if that is what you are looking for. That is not to say that I will not cover developments in Brussels’ brewing industry, or discuss and rate beers from breweries in Brussels. What it does mean is that I want to write about the city’s broader relationship with beer and brewing – its breweries, its bars, and its cultural, historical, and urban legacy.
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