The sando is quickly gaining popularity in Brussels. One of the first places where we saw this Japanese type of sandwich was at Chou Sando, in the centre of Brussels. The prominently displayed beers we saw there, immediately made this Japanese sandwich shop an obvious candidate for our blog!
In passing, you might mistake Beer Planet for one of those beer shops aimed at tourists, mostly selling bog standard beers and weird glasses… However, you couldn’t be further from the truth. Once you enter the shop, see the shelves full of—mostly very local—craft beers, and meet the Latino owners, their love for beer becomes blatantly clear!
The Galerie Bortier, where not so long ago one would only find old books, now also is the home of Bar Bibine, proudly pouring beers from eight Brussels breweries: La Mule, L’Ermitage, En Stoemelings, La Senne, Brussels Beer Project, Surréaliste, and La Jungle.
A train station—especially in Belgium—is not the place where you’d usually look for craft beer and good food. However, somehow we found both in Brussels Central Station, in the slightly confusingly named little restaurant Seoul South Station. Here you pair your tasty Korean fried chicken with a refreshing Asian style rice lager made by Tipsy Tribe, in Koekelberg.
1762, it says on the facade of In ’t Spinnekopke, and it certainly looks the part! We can’t vouch for all of its history, but it has been there ever since we moved to Brussels. However, in 2022 it was taken over by a team of young people, passionate about Brussels and hospitality, and they definitely succeeded in breathing new life into the centuries old estaminet!
With the name Chez Lutgarde, it is not surprising they mostly serve beers from the young Lasne brewery Abbaye d’Aywiers, better known by the name most of their beers carry: Lutgarde. You could even consider this bar the downtown taproom of the brewery. What drew us in, however, were the advertisements for some Brussels breweries you don’t see in that many other bars yet, like Brasserie Vandekelder! Once inside, we discovered that actually all the beers they serve, are from small, independent breweries, and quite a lot of them even from Brussels!
When Beer Capital Brussels opened and we briefly peeked inside, we could only see ‘big beer’ on draught. Consequently, we dismissed it as ‘just a tourist bar’ and didn’t really consider it for our blog. However, when we ended up there some time later, we discovered it actually had quite a nice and extremely large selection (1464 different beers, last time we checked their Untappd menu) of canned and bottled beers in their cellar and fridges, and even local beers Zinnebir (from Brasserie de la Senne) and Delta (from Brussels Beer Project) on draught!
A bit later than we were used to, but it’s almost time for the fifth edition of the biggest and best craft beer festival of Brussels: BXLBeerFest! On the 30th of September and the 1st of October in Tour & Taxis, you get once again the opportunity to try more than 400 beers—and some meads and ciders—from 60 smaller, artisanal breweries from Belgium, Europe and beyond. From a clean glass, of course!
Surprises can be right around the corner, and sometimes quite literally, as was the case for Knees to Chin. We must have passed their Brussels center restaurant dozens of times, without thinking it would actually be a candidate for our blog. Then all of a sudden, we noticed people drinking some Dutch craft beer here! One might expect beers from a microbrewery like De Kromme Haring in a specialised bar—we actually attended a meet-the-brewer and tap takeover with these guys at GIST a while back—but not quite in a Vietnamese street food restaurant. Of course, now we had to check the place out!
