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Cantillon Quintessence 2025: A Gourmet Beer and Food Pairing Event
One of the lambic beer world’s premier events is the hallowed Brasserie Cantillon’s Quintessence, a gourmet beer and food pairing event first held in November 1998. Quintessence became a biennial event from the 2008 edition onwards. Cantillon really puts on a show for Quintessence, featuring rare vintage beers, as well as more recent and interesting…
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A visit to Restaurant La Gourmandise, and Rochefort Triple Extra on draft
Let’s face it: if you are a beer lover visiting the town of Rochefort in Belgium, you are probably there to taste the beers of the renowned Brasserie Trappistes Rochefort. These beers are brewed within the walls of the famous l’ Abbaye Notre-Dame de Saint–Remy, one of the five Trappist abbeys in Belgium with breweries. I have visited…
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HORAL’s Oude Geuze Megablend 2024
Belgium’s Toer de Geuze, which is a biennial open house at most of Belgium’s lambic breweries and blenderies, was held the weekend of May 4-5, 2024. It was a great success, with an estimated 20,000 attendees, despite cold and wet weather on the Saturday. Toer de Geuze is organized by HORAL, which is The High…
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Sang Bleu: a new star in the Brasserie Cantillon lineup
Brasserie Cantillon, Brussels’ beloved lambic brewery, has been crafting a plethora of interesting and superb lambic beers for many years. Cantillon and its brewer, Jean Van Roy, continue to do numerous experiments with fruited lambics, as well as lambics infused with grapes and berries, and other things. Some of the experimental lambics are repeated on…
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Gueuzerie Tilquin: Toer de Geuze 2024, the “Family Tree Project”, and more!
Gueuzerie Tilquin has announced its plans for Toer de Geuze 2024, and the revered lambic blendery-now also a lambic brewery-should be a great place to spend a few hours during the weekend of May 4 and 5. Toer de Geuze is an open house at most of the lambic breweries and lambic blenderies in Belgium’s…
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A Visit to Publitasting Lambic Blendery
While most of Belgium’s lambic producers are located in Brussels and to the areas to the south and west of the city, in the Payottenland and Zenne River Valley, there are some lambic blenders that are outside of that region. Geert Demuynck and his Publitasting Lambic Blendery purchases lambic that has been aged in barrels…
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Brouwerij Kestemont joins The High Council for Artisanal Lambic Beers, and Toer de Geuze 2024
HORAL, The High Council for Artisanal Lambic Beers, has just added another new member. Brouwerij Kestemont, which I wrote about last year on these pages in this previous article here was inducted as a member of HORAL on Thursday, January 11, 2024. Brouwerij Kestemont opened on the same grounds as the old Brouwerij Goossens in…
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A brew day at Brasserie/Brouwerij Taymans, Brussels “new” lambic brewery
Brussels has another yet another brewery, and it is a historic one. What is now Brasserie/Brouwerij Taymans first opened in the Jette neighborhood, to the northwest of the city center, in 1906, as Brasserie-Malterie Taymans. For the first five years of its existence, Taymans was a lambic blendery and maturation warehouse. It was located on…
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Lambiek Fabriek at Washington, D.C.’s Snallygaster Beer Fest 2023
On Saturday, October 14, Brian Hennighausen, President and Founder of Winter Dog Cellars, and I will be pouring several beers from Lambiek Fabriek at the Snallygaster Beer Festival in Washington, D.C. The Lambiek Fabriek booth will be located inside the Gargoyle tent. I wrote about Lambiek Fabriek in this previous article here as well as…
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De Lambikstoempers Beer Weekend is August 26-27, 2023 at De Lambiek Visitor’s Center
De Lambikstoempers, the premier Zythos-affiliated beer appreciation and promotion club in Belgium’s lambic country, organizes several events throughout the year. The club is based in Halle, a historic old market town ten miles south of Brussels. One of the club’s premier events is their Bier Weekend, a beer festival that is usually held during the…