Martijn

Buying Beer when Bars are Barred

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Fridges and shelves at Malt Attacks

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic measures, going to a bar or restaurant to enjoy a fresh draught beer isn’t an option anymore for the next couple of weeks… After drinking all the beers you had in your fridge, where can you get some more?
When the first version of this article appeared about a week ago, there were still plenty of options to go out and stock up, but even though beer shops are legally allowed to stay open*, many have decided to close their doors anyway, and—if they haven’t closed completely—rely on delivery and pickup only…

This article was updated regularly until 31/05/2020. By that time, most brewery shops were open again, bars who could and wanted, started selling beers for takeout.
We’re now counting down to the reopening—in whatever form—of the bars…

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Bélier Bar

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UPDATE: Closed permanently…

The bar with its six taps

Nothing about Bélier Bar exactly screams craft beer bar: the modest number of six, unbranded taps could be pouring anything, and the amount of spirits on the shelves behind the bar, would rather give you the impression this is a cocktail bar. They do cocktails indeed, but once you discover the beer list, you’ll immediately see that those are not their only strength!

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Patatak

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UPDATE: Opened a second location in Brussels centre.

With the addition of Patatak to the food scene in Saint-Gilles—already a year ago—there are really no excuses left to have a bad beer with your chips. This chip shop even has three beers—by Dupont and De la Senne—on draught! The chips themselves are freshly cut, and fried in beef fat, which has become a rarity in Brussels.

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Family Brews

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Family Brews opened just a little over a year ago in the Rue des Harengs, just off the Grand Place. In such a central location, you might expect just another tourist trap, but nothing could be further from the truth! For prices comparable to the ones you’ll pay for an uninteresting industrial beer in nearby bars, here you can enjoy some local brews instead. Don’t get hung up on specific breweries or beers, just let the staff surprise you with something they think you’ll like!

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Otomat

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UPDATE: Closed permanently…

Belgians love eating pizzas at least as much as any nation, but most of the time they go for—not always successful—copies of the Italian originals. Otomat decided to take another direction, and now creates decidedly un-Italian, but nevertheless very tasty pizzas. Besides that, they’ve given beer a central role: Duvel yeast as an ingredient for the dough, and plenty of beers to pair the pizza with, even some local ones!

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L’Ermitage Saint-Gilles

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The biggest drawback of Brussels’ currently open taprooms, is their limited opening hours. We can imagine it’s hard to combine a bar-like environment with a working brewery, but luckily l’Ermitage found a solution: open a separate bar a kilometer and a half down the road. L’Ermitage Saint-Gilles is open seven days a week, every day from 4.30 PM, so there’s no reason any more to go without your preferred l’Ermitage beer on draught when the craving hits you!

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La Source

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With La Source as Brussels’ ninth brewery, we can end a decade of the revival of brewing in this city—which started in 2010 when De la Senne joined sole survivor Cantillon—on a high note. While most breweries mainly focus on the production part when opening, for La Source the social aspect of their brewery with taproom was at least just as important. That doesn’t mean the beers are not important—quite the contrary—and so far their beers have rightfully so been very well received!

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Beergium

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Uccle has not really been craft beer central so far, or actually central anything… The opening of Beergium however, has finally made this part of Brussels a more attractive beer destination, and on top of that, the perfect stop in between lambic brewer and gueuze blender 3 Fonteinen, and the centre of Brussels. Don’t worry if you never make it out of Uccle though: in addition to the numerous foreign beers on offer, there are plenty of 3F bottles in Beergium‘s fridges as well!

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Wanderlust 2019

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Closing off the beer festival season as usual, is Brussels Beer Project‘s anniversary festival Wanderlust, this weekend September the 14th and 15th! As usual, visitors can expect a modest (14 breweries) but still very interesting selection of befriended breweries, each bringing at least four beers for you to sample.

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BXLBeerFest 2019

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It’s the end of August, which means it’s time for the biggest craft beer festival of Brussels: BXLBeerFest! For this third edition they’re once again pulling out all the stops to make this a great beer festival: clean glasses for every beer served, cold storage for the kegs, great food, and plenty of room to sit or walk around to socialise with old and new beer friends!

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