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.

Toer de Geuze 2011

Whilst otherwise sensible folk were flocking into London for some wedding, London Miller Chris Turner and I were speeding out of the capital on the Eurostar. Destination Brussels.

Such an early start meant we arrived at Brussels Midi at 11:33am local time - too early to check in to our hotel so we wandered off to the Fleur en Papier Dore - a small bar which had a couple of excellent new beers for me - a tasty IPA, Hopus, and De La Senne's Zinnebir.

From here we wandered to one of the newest bars in town - Moeder Lambic Fontainas - which had a large choice of beers on tap including an excellent range of saison beers which I've really got a taste for. One of the best was the IV Saison from Jandrain-Jandrenouille - really excellent and apparently quite trendy!

Others that I tried included a trio of fine beers from one of my favourite Belgian brewers, De Ranke, with their XX, Hop Harvest and Saison de Dottinges. An excellent start to our trip.

The third member of our party - Roger - met us here as he was on a later train out of St Pancras. After a couple more beers we wandered off to the hotel to check in and turn our bikes round (as Liz's dad would day).

In the evening we headed for the original Moeder Lambic bar though this took about 20 mins longer than it should thanks to Chris and his less-than-ideal map reading skills. A decent bar but service was a tad slow and I much prefer the vibrancy of it's younger sibling.

The following day we set out with the best of intentions to try some more of the city's pubs but for some reason we ended up spending the whole session - from noon to after midnight - yes, almost thirteen hours - sat in the quirky surroundings of the Poechenellekelder.

This bar is slap bang opposite the famous Manneken Pis which always attracts the tourists - we ignored it though and headed straight for the bar. The interior is like a small museum with odd, scary puppets hanging from the ceiling and giving the place a highly surreal air.

The beer choice was excellent and the time flew past as we tried beers old and new - we had the odd food break to keep our strength up with Roger having several servings of tette presse (brawn).

Before we knew it, it was approaching midnight. In all we spent over 200 euros and had about 14 beers each - steady going really and we didn't feel that bad considering. See the whole bill here.

We had an early start on the Sunday when we went travelled to Halle station for the main event of the weekend - the bi-annual Toer de Geuze - which is when all the major lambic producers open their doors to the public.

(left) The best of Boon

There is a very good report on the day on this posting from Des De Moor who was on our bus so I won't try and explain the intricacies of the day to you as he does it so much better.

Joining us on the bus were Jackie and Simon from London who we know well from many beer festivals. We also got talking to an American couple - brother and sister - and a friendly Belgian guy who sat with us so he could translate what our bus guide was saying.

At the first brewery - de Cam - there was a mad scrum for the bar and the way in which tokens were bought and beers were served was rather chaotic. After finally getting a couple of beers we wandered outside where we got chatting to some more Americans, one of who was Pete Slosberg.

Pete was one of the first to brew decent beer in the US and it sparked a small revival in brewing which led for a while to new US brews being sold in Oddbins back in the 1980s. I used to drink a lot of his stuff and it was great to finally meet him (even though he sold up many years again, preferring now to just travel and drink).

The bus then took us at a healthy pace around the breweries of de Troch, Boon, 3 Fonteinen and Oud Beersel.

The beers of Boon are amongst my absolute favourites and they didn't disappoint, especially the kriek which was beautiful.

(right) Simon, Jackie, Roger, Chris and our friendly Belgian chum

In all, it was a really interesting trip but the crowds were huge as it was a very sunny day on a bank holiday weekend which meant that a lot of locals were out in force.

The queues at most of the breweries meant that there was often less time that I would have liked for drinking. I'm not known for my patience.

We were dropped off back at Halle station and as we had an hour or two to spare before we caught the Eurostar home we went to the Moeder Lambic Fontainas for a few more beers.

On reflection I don't think I would do the toer again as the queuing makes it too frustrating for an impatient git like me but I will certainly head back to Brussels now that I'm beginning to get my bearings.

Hergé We Go, Hergé We Go, Hergé We Go

This weekend saw a few DAFTS opt for the bright lights of Brussels rather than the FA Trophy tie with Tamworth as a way to celebrate Lesley's 50th birthday.

Originally Tony and Lesley had arranged to go to Bruges with Neil and Mari before changing it to Brussels which is when yours truly opted to join them.

(left) last chance for a decent breakfast for a few days

After a hearty breakfast at Da Vinci's, we gathered at St Pancras International for the 11:04am service to Brussels Midi which turned out to be a very smooth journey getting us there just after 2pm.

As we exited the international part of the station, there was a driver on the concourse waiting for a passenger. "Bianca Jagger" read his sign. "Wishful thinking!" we told him.

We caught a local train to take us the couple of stops to Brussels North and our hotel which was located in the modern business district - very much like a small version of Canary Wharf but with much less atmosphere.

After a quick beer and a bite to eat in the hotel bar, we wandered off into town - taking taxis as the hotel is about a mile from the main centre - ending up near the Belgian stock exchange (or Bourse).

As Friday night is usually a curry night in DAFTS circles, we'd eyed up a couple of possible restaurants - one was an Indian with the highly odd name of the Shamrock and the Fanny Thai which does thai food (what else?) - on Rue Jules van Praet which seems to be a mini-Chinatown.

We went into a nearby bar - Les Roi Des Belges - which turned out to be full of young, trendy folk and not the sort of place DAFTS are normally seen in but we were thirsty and once we'd got a table we were well settled.

Tony and Neil tried various beers from the beer menu whilst I was a little too adventurous in trying (and sticking to) 75cl bottles of the N'Ice Chouffe.

This is a 10% winter beer which despite the strength was quite easy drinking - too easy as I ended up having another two bottles.

By the time we ate at a nearby thai restaurant I was a little befuddled but at least I still remember that the food was very good (even if I disagreed with the waiter over what a spring roll is - don't ask).

Not surprisingly I was a bit fuzzy-headed the next morning but that was soon cleared as Tony and I set off early for a walk back towards Brussels Midi. Our destination was the Cantillon Brewery which was top of my "must do" list (just above "get nice chocolates for Liz").

We arrived just after 10am and after being given a talk on the brewery and the process of spontaneous fermentation - which uses natural yeasts found in the building itself - we were free to wander around the brewery.

The beers that Cantillon produce can probably be described as an acquired taste - lambic beers are sour, even after fruit has been added - but I developed a taste for them several years ago and this brewery is one of just a few which still follows the traditional process.

(right) Tony tries the Cantillon kriek

At the end of the tour we ended up at the bar where we bought a few samples - the basic Geueze and then two beers which had added fruit - the Kriek and the Rosé de Gambrinus. Tony found the latter to be most to his taste and took a bottle back for Xmas day.

The afternoon was spent trawling around a few shops - Neil and Mari had gone off to do some serious shopping but Tony, Lesley and I couldn't muster the enthusiasm and we wandered around the city centre and visited a few bars.

We later met up with Neil and Mari in a small brewpub just off La Grande Place - Les Brasseurs de Grand Place - where we tried their artisinal beers. Given the prime location, it was not surprising to see them charge 4.5 euros for these beers which weren't exceptional by any means.

From here we went in search of a nice juicy steak - we'd seen a restaurant called Steak Frit earlier in the day and although it was initially busy when we went, Tony worked his charm and we finally got a table.

The place was packed and the service from our waitress was rather haphazard but even so we were quite surprised to later see her chucking in her apron and storming out after a heated discussion with the maitre d'.

The steak though was beautiful, charred on the outside and bloody in the middle - served with excellent frites and what could only be described as a token effort of a salad. Clearly the Belgians have no time for such things.

And that was my lot - just the most fleeting of visits but I'd probably come back at a quieter time of year and try out some of the bars I didn't get a chance to visit.