Borefts Festival 2012

The start was ultra-early even by my standards - catching the N15 night bus at 4:30am (and standing room only!) so that I would be in good time for the 6:50am Eurostar to Brussels.  At St Pancras I met fellow beer hound, Chris, one of the London Millers, for a trip to the Low Countries in search of some beer excellence.

Despite the time of day the train is pretty full, mainly with business folk, and the journey passes smoothly with the weather gradually improving as we move eastward.

We arrive in Brussels at 10:10am - two hours before our connection to Utrecht - but thankfully the local Cantillon brewery opens at 9am and off we headed.


Warning to motorists - beware
festival drinkers!

 Famous for lambic beers - which have a very distinctive sour taste and a style that nearly died out until people such as Michael Jackson started to write about the style - it is a popular destination and we weren't the first people in.

After trying out the kriek (cherry), standard gueze and finally the Mamouche (elderflow) gueze, we headed back to the station where we met Jackie and Simon who seemingly spend most of their weekends chasing beers in Europe (when not doing so in London).

On arrival Chris and I checked into our hotel, had a quick brush-up and  headed back into the town centre. As with most of the Netherlands' major cities, it is undergoing major refurbishments which made navigation rather problematic.

We finally located the Utrecht FC club shop so Chris could get a few souvenirs and then located our first port of call, Kafee Belgie. Here we had a few beers and also met Mark, a friend of Jackie and Simon and also a fellow Yorkshireman and East End neighbour.

Cafe de Rat was the next stop - a great little pub with an excellent atmosphere - the place was full of Norwegian beery types who'd come to Holland for the same reason as us.

Erik the landlord was a smashing chap, charming his customers and digging out a miscellany of rare lambic beers to keep us happy (the rarity of one carrying a price tag of €55!).

We were also joined along the way by Des de Moor who is well known for his articles in CAMRA magazines for many years and who also has an excellent beer blog. Check it out.

De Molen brewery - home
to the Borefts festival

Next morning we had breakfast at Utrecht CS before meeting Jackie, Simon and Mark.  We take one of those excellent double-decker trains - a shame we can't have them over here - and head off to Bodegraven and the wonderful Borefts festival.

The festival is in it's fourth year and is held at the two sites of De Molen, the most exciting brewery in the Netherlands.

The festival features their beers as well as offerings from other breweries representing the cream of the European crop. 

Joining us in the queue were a large number of people from the UK and various parts of Europe and a decent number from the US.
The beer was served in small (15cl) portions which meant that you were constantly getting up and getting a refill but even after being there nine hours, we weren't drunk.  There were far too many good beers to mention but it was a superb day spent with loads of friendly beer fiends (not all hairy men either) - I hope to return next year.

Whilst Simon, Jackie and Mark returned for a second visit to Borefts on Saturday, Chris and I took the train into Amsterdam, a city where I really feel at home.

We had a couple of steady openers at de Wildeman which for many years was the number-one-do-not-miss bar in the city.  These days though there are plenty of other good bars but for us de Wildeman has the main advantage of opening at noon.

Next stop was the new-ish de Prael bar - complete with brewery out the back - which has a stable of excellent beers.  In the early days, the brewery employed psychiatric patients as part of their rehabiliation.

The beers are all named after Dutch singers from the 50s, 60s and 70s - typical schmaltzy middle-of-the-road stuff and includes a tasty milk stout - Zwarte Riek - named after a 50s singer.

The surprising thing in here was the number of (all Dutch) hen parties - all with a male guide seeing them safely from venue to venue - and some of the elderly Dutch women looked well scary.  I'd hate to see what they were like by the end of the day.

De Prael bar, Amsterdam

From here we move to the Beer Temple which mainly specialises in US beers but also stocks others from leading European brewers such as Mikkeller. 

For a short while we were joined by a stag-do from Blackburn who were astonished at the prices charged for the US imports.  Friendly lads though.

On the way to our final destination, Arendsnest, we pop into the Bierkoning (beer shop) to search a few bottles from the latest Dutch breweries.  I've never seen it so busy and have to queue for ten minutes with my purchases.

The Arendsnest is packed and we do well to nab the last couple of spare bar stools.  We met the owner, Peter, at Borefts yesterday and he said he was out on a stag-do himself today.

This used to be a popular Belgian beer bar when we first visited about 15 years ago but now it showcases Dutch beers only and it was good to taste some old favourites such as SNAB Pale Ale.

Eventually we'd had our fill - back on larger capacity glasses was having an affect - and we called it a day.  As we left for our train back to Utrecht, we checked the scores - Darlington beating Newcastle Benfield 5-2 whilst the Millers beat lowly Oxford United 3-1. Great news all round!

On Sunday we were up relatively early for a hearty breakfast in the hotel before catching the train back to Brussels.  We arrived at 1pm which gave us a few hours to spare - what else to do but head to another of Brussels' finest bars, Chez Moeder Lambic Fontainas?

A long modern-style bar, it has a superb range of draught and bottled beers from all over Europe although on this occasion I found some of my favourite draught saisons not up to (my high exacting) standard.  Nevertheless it was a perfect place to finish our grand tour.