Brussels Day 1

So I arrived in Brussels with no additional travel problems. I got to the the hostel. Apparently check in was not until 4pm and they kick everyone out of the house between 1pm and 4pm. Bit wacky, maybe thats normal.

I got a "Use It" map from reception and decided to go to the Use It store location for more information about what to do. Basically it is a map created by locals and people that love a city and recommend lots of stuff to do. Anyone can nominate a city to become developed for Use It, I wonder if there is one needed for Blenheim?

The guy at the store was great. Lots of helpful info and I got locations of good places to go and eat and drink Belgium beer. My first port of call would be the Cantillon brewery. On the way I was so tired I thought I might just see what it was like to be a bum and have a wee nap on a park bench but then I found a cafe and went to order some caffine instead. The only thing I could read on the menu was "double expresso" so I got that and it was awful. Took the edge of the tiredness though. Then I was on my way to the brewery. It was bloody awesome. It is the only brewery left in Brussels that brews Lambic beer (there are also a couple left just outside Brussels). Which means that the beer is fermented with wild yeasts over three years. We then had a taste of the beer and it was pretty wacky.  Pictures ahoy, Jimmy may be the only one that is interested:

 Slightly bigger than 3kW:

This is what they cool the wort with, they just spray it out into a massive copper tray. I guess when it is gonna sit outside for 3 years who cares how quickly it needs to cool?

The infamous fermenter, they just put the beer in this tank in the attic and leave it there for a while.

I tried a blend of 1,2 and 3 year lambics that had secondary fermentation in the bottle (it was fizzy) and a 2 year straight Lambic (I guess the proper 3 year is too expensive to give out for tastings) which was still. It tasted more like wine than beer but I still kinda liked it. It just had so much stuff going on. The tour group was me and 4 Americans so we had a bit of a yarn. Turns out one of them is pretty keen on home brew in Sinsinatti and is getting a bit of a name for himself locally. The plan is to go to a commercial micro-brewery. We had a big chat about beer and brewing and I was doing my best to channel Jimmy. They were travelling together and I got along pretty well with them so we went to a bar to try some more beer. I had the best beer ordering experience of my life. The barman asked a series of questions (like: bitter or not so bitter?, hoppy or not so hoppy etc) and picked a beer for us based on our answers. The beer was fantastic, so he did a good job. We then went to Delerium where they hold the guiness world record for the largest beer selection at 2004. They apparently have more than that now. They also have 27 Belgium beers on tap so we went about tasting some of those too. I had a blonde yeasty beer and found I didn't really like it. Someone else must have though because it won best beer of the year at some stage.

Two of the Americans had just flown in so they had been up for about 30 hours so they had had a pretty good innings, by this time I had been up for 17 hours too so I was pretty knackered too. But you can sleep when you're dead right? So we dropped the tow weary ones off and went to another bar for more Belgium beer tasting. It is all so damn good here. Normal beer here is pretty much the equivalent of craft beer in NZ.

At about midnight we called it a day and I headed to bed. Unfortunately I was then up to 2:30am typing and updating my blog. Meow. It will all be worth it one day when I read this in 100 years time (with the way technology is going I reckon I can live to about 150).