Les Brasseurs de la Grand Place

We'll start where any good trip and/or story should start -- at a bar.  And not just any bar, but one of the best beer breweries in Brussels (say that three times fast -- we will use this phrase repeatedly during our tour as a sort of makeshift breathalyzer).  The name is Les Brasseurs de la Grand Place and it is in the heart of Brussels, at the most touristy part.  Despite its location and the escalated prices of all things around us, Les Brasseurs was neither pretentious nor pricey.

First off, how to find it.  Go to the Brussels-Central train station and look around for this place:

I don't know what building this is, nor do I really care, but the tower is visible from most anywhere in the neighborhood.  If you are facing this building and see this exact view, then the place of interest is directly behind you.  Turn around and, as they say in French, "wa la!"

They only serve about 6 or 7 beers on draught, but they brew 4 of them here.  The casks are stacked in the back, hanging on a rack on the wall.  Notice in the photo that just a single copper pipe in the back seems to be connecting all of these together.

Which we thought was alarmingly similar to the Duff brewery technique shown below.

We were happy to see, however, that in our taste testing that each of the beers was indeed unique and delicious.

As you might have gathered by now, we highly recommend Les Brasseurs and these were the beers we liked:

Watney's Scotch
Mort Subite Kriek
Ramee Blanch
De Konig Amber

A note on lambic beers:

Our favorite beers in Belgium are the lambics.  As we understand it, the yeast used to ferment these beers is a local strain, found wild only in Belgium.  The beers always seem to have at least two fermentation steps, in which the second or third fermentation is spontaneous by this wild yeast.  By "wild" I guess they mean grows happily within the brewery, in the casks, among the dust, etc. so that the "spontaneous fermentation" comes from simply opening the casks to the environment when adding the second malt, fruit, or whatever new sugar they have selected for the yeast to feast on.  This multi-fermentation is what gives these beers the very high alcohol content.

We really liked the kriek (cherries added, with a sweet & slight sour taste), the rouge (cherry but somehow brewed differently than kriek, resulting in a stronger flavor and higher alcohol) and gueuse (very sour) beers.  Never got a chance to try a faro beer, so we will hang on to this as our excuse to go back for another visit someday.

More info from folks who know what they are talking about can be found here (lambic wiki page).

Next stop -- Moeder Lambic.