It looks like it will be a great beer festival summer in Brussels this year, and it already kicks off this weekend with Swafff! Brussels Craft Beer Fffestival. On both Saturday the 24th and Sunday the 25th of June, more than 30 Belgian and foreign breweries will serve us their best beers in Les Ecuries van de Tram.
A puppet theatre wouldn’t be the first place you’d look for a nice beer, would it? But hidden away at the end of a narrow alley, the estaminet attached to Théâtre Royal de Toone is serving beers from Oud Beersel and Boon on draught, and a few more interesting beers on bottle! Even though we’ve been at Toone a couple of times already, so far, we have never seen a show. But if you’re interested, there are plenty of puppets hanging around — literally — to get an idea of what you can expect ‘on stage’, three nights a week.
The beer festival season has started again, and this year sees the launch of yet another festival, but one we’re particularly excited about: the BXL BeerFest! The beer festival is still a couple of months away — the 26th and 27th of August 2017 at Tour & Taxis — but tickets are already available now!
UPDATE: Closed permanently…
La Brocante must have been the place we’ve fruitlessly been trying to get in to most often. Yes, it’s open every day, but it closes already at seven — on Monday and Saturday even at six — and that’s usually long before we make our way to the Marolles, especially if we’re going for a big bottle of gueuze, one of the specialities of the house. The name should have been a giveaway though: this place is all about the daily antiques / flea market on the Place du Jeu de Balle. We finally made it, though!
There’s quite a bit of history to Het Goudblommeke in Papier, even though it’s ‘only’ a little over 70 years old, and it’s not surprising a lot of effort went into reopening the bar after a bankruptcy a decade ago. But the protected building and bar rooms of this ‘marigold in paper’ have more to offer than just memories of René Magritte and Guido Gezelle: artistic performances of all sorts, but of course good Belgian food and beer as well!
For the first anniversary of our blog — today — we wanted something special. And what would be more special than the mekka for the beer tourist, the Cantillon brewery? Only open five days a week (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday) and just until five o’clock in the afternoon, and very busy at times, you’ll have to plan your visit to the brewery-cum-museum carefully. However, an impressive list of Cantillon beers, some of which you thought would be long lost, will be your reward!
Café Bizon was one of the very first bars in the centre of Brussels I frequented, even before I lived there. The reasons were simple: great — often live — blues music, cool and quirky interior, multilingual staff, and Guinness on draught. Even then I didn’t like lager, so the stout was a welcome alternative, and so the Guinness was my drink of choice. It’s still there — always served with the Irish shamrock drawn in the foam — but the beer list is actually a lot more interesting than that!
It had been a while since we last visited the Flagey area for a drink, but Le Murmure still looked pretty much the same as last time we were there. And that’s quite quirky, with its copper pipes curling through the space over our heads, and colourful wall paintings. More importantly however, the De la Senne beers were still pouring from its taps, and quite a few gems from Belgium and abroad adorned the bottle list.
Even though Vini, Birre, Ribelli is primarily a wine festival — over 75% of the participants are winemakers — this still is one festival beer lovers in Brussels can’t afford to miss! The third edition moved once again to a bigger location, this year occupying the Citroën site near Yser. Oh, and no ‘sessions’, no tokens, just a fixed entrance fee and unlimited refills of your tasting glass!
Update: La Tana has move across the street, to Rue de l'Enseignement 27, and beer shop La Tana 2.0 has moved to the same location. [venue id= 5e27564fa292720008bc3b61]
When visiting Rome a couple of years ago, there was only one beer bar to be found in the eternal city, and just a few interesting breweries in the whole of Italy. Much has changed since then, and many Italian beers now equal or surpass our Belgian brews. However, it is still quite rare to see an Italian restaurant serving those beers. Luckily for us, in 2014 two Romans — chef Valerio and his brother — opened a tiny place called La Tana, where they serve great pastas, and beers to match.