Bier Weekend

You may remember in a previous post my mention of the upcoming Belgian Beer Weekend in Brussels. Well it was this past weekend and of course we were there.

It's a real treat to try beer that is van 't vat (on tap) at a restaurant because it really is better than beer poured from a bottle. According to the Belgian Beer Weekend website, there were 210 beers on tap at this event. And that doesn't include the 128 beers not van 't vat. So it goes, there was plenty of beer to sample.

The only problem is . . .

It's traditional and maybe even mandatory to always serve each beer in the glass that's been designed for that particular beer. The glass has a particular shape with the brewery and name of the beer right on the glass. Every restaurant and pub we've been to in Belgium has a collection of glasses for every beer they serve. No one here drinks beer straight from the bottle and heaven forbid it be served in a plastic cup. Always served in its own special glass.

Our own personal beer glass collection. So far.

With that in mind, it was impossible to try very many beers since there were no "samples". Only full glasses. Now, I guess if you were going to stay all day and come back the next day, there's still no way you could even begin to try the more than 300 beers available.

This picture is taken mid-afternoon. The place was packed. I can only imagine what it was like in the evening when it was packed with those who'd attempted to try as many of those 300+ beers as possible.

All beer isn't gold.

And in case you got hungry, you could eat escargot.

I passed on that.

Although we only got to try a couple of beers, it was a fun experience and we even saw several groups of Americans.

They are so obvious. I mean "we".