You’ve probably tasted their products, even if you’ve never heard of La Fruitière: some of the best beer bars get the cheese for their cheese platter from this cheesemonger. Cheese and beer make a great combination, so it shouldn’t really come as a surprise that finally, a cheese shop decided to sell and serve beer as well, and even on draught! And not just any beer, but some of the best Brussels—or even Canada, as it happens—has to offer!
City of Brussels
BXLBeerFest 2018
If you’ve been to any beer bar or beer festival in the last couple of months, you must already have noticed the posters or flyers, for BXLBeerFest. In just a week— Saturday the 25th and Sunday 26th of August 2018 to be exact—the biggest, cleanest, freshest, and tastiest beer festival dedicated to artisan beer in Brussels, will take place for the second time at Tour & Taxis, and we sure hope you can all make it!
CHAFF
UPDATE: After being closed for a while, it reopened under new management. We have revisited it since, and it seems mostly unchanged.
Once again, we found ourselves in the Marolles, right next to the location of the famous flea market, this time at CHAFF. While the band was getting ready to play later on that evening, we picked a table on the first floor to have a couple of local beers—almost every brewery in Brussels was represented with at least one beer—and something to eat. Despite the large choice of rather healthy looking dishes, we decided to go for the burgers.
La Bottega della Pizza
Pizza and beer, it still is a great combination! Most pizza places, however, offer little more than a commercial lager, and certainly no draught options. At La Bottega della Pizza Sablon, there’s at least the reassuring presence of a couple of De la Senne beers on draught, alongside Dupont‘s organic saison Biolégère, to go with the wide selection of Neapolitan pizzas.
Kumiko
UPDATE: Closed permanently…
We’ve had ramen and gyoza before, but we had no clue what donburi, kara age, or onigiri were, when we first read it on the menu of Kumiko. Although the food menu is definitely Japanese, you can’t simply call the place a Japanese restaurant: there is a cellar bar more suitable for drinking than eating, and a nice courtyard terrace. There is some Japanese macro beer available, with the brewery in the same block, a Brussels Beer Project beer would be the obvious choice here, unless the CraftWorks beer tickles your fancy more.
BrewDog Brussels
Most beer lovers familiar with foreign beers, already know BrewDog, or at least have heard of it. The sometimes controversial Scottish brewery doesn’t only brew beer, it also runs a few dozen bars. Already quite a while ago, BrewDog Brussels opened right next to Central Station, but a recent change is finally turning it into the beer geek mecca it should have been from the start. The hoppy beers BrewDog is known for, are now fresher than ever, the Buffalo wings hotter than ever, and the staff is more passionate than ever. If you haven’t done so recently, now is the time to (re)visit BrewDog Brussels!
GIST
It only opened a couple of weeks ago, but GIST seems to be well on its way to be a prime spot in the Brussels beer landscape. Not only are there sixteen normal draught taps to pour just as many different beer styles at any given time, but two beautiful beer engines for cask ales as well. We’ve seen similar beer engines in Brussels to dispense lambic beers, but as far as we know, this would be the only place where they will actually be used to pour British (style) ales! And that in a city that actually has a couple of British pubs…
Manneken Pis Cafe
In Belgium you can’t get around Duvel, and even we drank our fair share of this extremely foamy beer before moving on to either very local or foreign beers from microbreweries… But when we heard that Duvel was now available on draught in Brussels as well, we decided to revisit the original Belgian golden strong ale once again, and we headed to Manneken Pis, or more specifically, Manneken Pis Cafe, as it was recently renamed when it became the newest Duvel Moortgat showcase.
Caberdouche
It can be quite frightening when upon entering Caberdouche, you see big tanks of Stella below your feet in the pits of hell where they belong… Or maybe it is just a floor window offering a glimpse of the the beer cellar of the bar? Luckily, there’s quite a bit more on offer, among which a dedicated Brussels Beer Project tap, and a couple of beers from Tiny Rebel, that not quite so tiny anymore Welsh brewery, that seems to become more available in Brussels every passing day.
Menma
When you think about having a beer, a Japanese ramen restaurant isn’t the first thing that springs to mind. However, after the obligatory sake and plum wine, the first thing on the drinks menu of Menma Artisan Ramen you’ll notice, is a short list of beers, and even a couple of them on draught: Uijin, and Uijin Yuzu Blond. Considering the only beer of this brewery we ever had was at Moeder Lambic, we had to try these Japanese beers! Although… are they really Japanese?