Rather different from other breweries is Belgium's Cantillon.
This brewery, based in Brussels 15 minutes' walk from the Grand'Place and ten minutes walk from the Midi station, specialises in lambic beers, using natural yeast for spontaneous fermentation. Its acid and even sulphurous Gueuze and other beers have a distinctive character and invite either wild love - or bitter hatred.
The brewery is open 9-5 every weekday and 10-5 on Saturday. The entrance price of EUR 3.50 includes a glass of Gueuze, which is pretty good value.
Showing posts with label beer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label beer. Show all posts
Sunday, 22 April 2007
Friday, 5 January 2007
Brewery visits in Europe
This is by no means an exhaustive list. But all these breweries run visits on a regular basis (as far as I can find out today). Some of the larger breweries that used to do so, like Caledonian in Edinburg, have now stopped - a pity, since Caley's (as it's affectionately known) is a real museum of brewing history. And I know I have missed a good few out. But if you're that interested in beer you'll know where to find them!
* Elgood's Brewery, Wisbech, UK. Out in the wilds, but it's a good family run brewery and has rather good gardens for those of you who might not be quite so much into beer.
*A double brewery trip if you can get to Masham, Yorkshire. Theakstons Brewery, and its rival Black Sheep - started by a Theakston who left the family business when it was sold to a big brewer (it's now back in family hands).
*Batemans in Lincolnshire can be highly recommended. You get a windmill as well as a brewery and the beer is superb. But you may be beginning to get a bit of a theme here - the best brewery tours in England all seem to be a bit out of the way. Nothing nice and central in London, for instance. Most city centre breweries and maltings are now conference centres and hotels. But there's one notable exception:
* Hydes, in Manchester. And they still brew an excellent mild - not a style that's particularly fashionable today, but with its light hopping and sweet malty notes, one I happen to like a lot.
* Many of the Munich breweries only put on tours for groups. However, Erdinger, which makes one of the best wheat beers in the world, just asks you to phone for a booking. And Andechs, a little way out of Munich, also has an interesting tour - though only in German; but there's the opportunity to enjoy the beer and good solid food in the brewery pub (Braustuberl).
* Plzensky Prazdroj, better known to most as Pilsner Urquell, operates tours. If you've got time to go out of your way, so does its smaller sister Velke Popovice - though the tours are only in Czech. And if you really want to get lost in the back of beyond, an expert beerhunter has uploaded his account of a visit to a microbrewery in a castle in south Moravia, on the way to Brno.
* Staropramen has a new visitors' centre, opened in 2005, in the Smichov district of Prague. If you're short on time this is probably the easiest beer visit in the Czech Republic. To see Budweiser/Budvar, you have to go out to Ceske Budovice (yes, that's how it got its name) - and most of the tours are for parties, but the tour after lunch is for everybody, no reservations.
* The New York Times did my job for me on Belgium!
* In France, Strasbourg is the home of Kronenbourg, giant of French brewing. At the other end of the scale, Brasserie Hotteterre, in Normandy, brews what I think is better beer than Kronenbourg in its village farmhouse headquarters, about an hour's drive from Rouen (closer to Evreux).
I'll hope to add a few more as I go - and any comments would also be welcome. But that should be enough to keep beer lovers happy for a while!
* Elgood's Brewery, Wisbech, UK. Out in the wilds, but it's a good family run brewery and has rather good gardens for those of you who might not be quite so much into beer.
*A double brewery trip if you can get to Masham, Yorkshire. Theakstons Brewery, and its rival Black Sheep - started by a Theakston who left the family business when it was sold to a big brewer (it's now back in family hands).
*Batemans in Lincolnshire can be highly recommended. You get a windmill as well as a brewery and the beer is superb. But you may be beginning to get a bit of a theme here - the best brewery tours in England all seem to be a bit out of the way. Nothing nice and central in London, for instance. Most city centre breweries and maltings are now conference centres and hotels. But there's one notable exception:
* Hydes, in Manchester. And they still brew an excellent mild - not a style that's particularly fashionable today, but with its light hopping and sweet malty notes, one I happen to like a lot.
* Many of the Munich breweries only put on tours for groups. However, Erdinger, which makes one of the best wheat beers in the world, just asks you to phone for a booking. And Andechs, a little way out of Munich, also has an interesting tour - though only in German; but there's the opportunity to enjoy the beer and good solid food in the brewery pub (Braustuberl).
* Plzensky Prazdroj, better known to most as Pilsner Urquell, operates tours. If you've got time to go out of your way, so does its smaller sister Velke Popovice - though the tours are only in Czech. And if you really want to get lost in the back of beyond, an expert beerhunter has uploaded his account of a visit to a microbrewery in a castle in south Moravia, on the way to Brno.
* Staropramen has a new visitors' centre, opened in 2005, in the Smichov district of Prague. If you're short on time this is probably the easiest beer visit in the Czech Republic. To see Budweiser/Budvar, you have to go out to Ceske Budovice (yes, that's how it got its name) - and most of the tours are for parties, but the tour after lunch is for everybody, no reservations.
* The New York Times did my job for me on Belgium!
* In France, Strasbourg is the home of Kronenbourg, giant of French brewing. At the other end of the scale, Brasserie Hotteterre, in Normandy, brews what I think is better beer than Kronenbourg in its village farmhouse headquarters, about an hour's drive from Rouen (closer to Evreux).
I'll hope to add a few more as I go - and any comments would also be welcome. But that should be enough to keep beer lovers happy for a while!
Thursday, 4 January 2007
A tale of two brewers
I've always liked breweries. They make a product that I like, for a start. But the brewing process is intriguing, and so are breweries.
Now to me a blast furnace is a blast furnace, and a car plant is a car plant. (And I've seen enough of both in my travels as an investment analyst.) But every brewery is different.
I've seen the Gambrinus brewery in Plsen - home of the original 'Pilsener' lager. I've seen the cathedral of beer at Okocim, in Poland, set into the side of a mountain. The huge, shiny, new gleaming steel of Saku Brewery in Estonia, and the 1890s German-made circular malting tower of its rival, Tartu.
(Tartu used to brew the most wonderful range of beers, with a 12% strong Yule beer and a great dark ale, but they seem to have dropped them from the product lineup. A pity - dark beers and stouts are a marvellous if little known part of the Eastern European brewing heritage. Ask for Budweiser Budvar Dark if you haven't tried the dark side yet.)
Now there are more microbrewers on the scene I've had a chance to visit some of them, too. And again, their setups are very individual.
One I know uses all second hand equipment from other breweries. You can tell pretty quickly as you walk into his place - you'll see plenty of other breweries' badges on the equipment! The money goes into the materials - and the beer is first rate. But this is a Dickensian brewery and if I didn't know better I'd suspect he was the first guy to use Linux for Quill Pens. (I bet you he ends up reading this within minutes of my posting it...)
The other, just down the road from us in France, has obviously bet the farm on his brewery. Quite literally, as it's a new diversification for the family farm. It's all bright stainless steel and spotless floors. And this doesn't stop him producing excellent beer - notably a triple fermented biere de Noel which knocks the socks off any of the regular Belgian beers we can get in the supermarket here.
Is there a moral? Not really. The only conclusion I'd like anyone to draw from this story is that breweries are interesting places to visit - and there are plenty of breweries with well planned guided visits. (I'll put some up later.)
Or rather, yes there is a moral. Don't judge the brewery by the brewery tour - make sure you taste the beer!
Now to me a blast furnace is a blast furnace, and a car plant is a car plant. (And I've seen enough of both in my travels as an investment analyst.) But every brewery is different.
I've seen the Gambrinus brewery in Plsen - home of the original 'Pilsener' lager. I've seen the cathedral of beer at Okocim, in Poland, set into the side of a mountain. The huge, shiny, new gleaming steel of Saku Brewery in Estonia, and the 1890s German-made circular malting tower of its rival, Tartu.
(Tartu used to brew the most wonderful range of beers, with a 12% strong Yule beer and a great dark ale, but they seem to have dropped them from the product lineup. A pity - dark beers and stouts are a marvellous if little known part of the Eastern European brewing heritage. Ask for Budweiser Budvar Dark if you haven't tried the dark side yet.)
Now there are more microbrewers on the scene I've had a chance to visit some of them, too. And again, their setups are very individual.
One I know uses all second hand equipment from other breweries. You can tell pretty quickly as you walk into his place - you'll see plenty of other breweries' badges on the equipment! The money goes into the materials - and the beer is first rate. But this is a Dickensian brewery and if I didn't know better I'd suspect he was the first guy to use Linux for Quill Pens. (I bet you he ends up reading this within minutes of my posting it...)
The other, just down the road from us in France, has obviously bet the farm on his brewery. Quite literally, as it's a new diversification for the family farm. It's all bright stainless steel and spotless floors. And this doesn't stop him producing excellent beer - notably a triple fermented biere de Noel which knocks the socks off any of the regular Belgian beers we can get in the supermarket here.
Is there a moral? Not really. The only conclusion I'd like anyone to draw from this story is that breweries are interesting places to visit - and there are plenty of breweries with well planned guided visits. (I'll put some up later.)
Or rather, yes there is a moral. Don't judge the brewery by the brewery tour - make sure you taste the beer!
Thursday, 9 November 2006
Beer is the teacher
I remember in the Czech Republic being told 'pivo je ucitelj', beer is the teacher. (My Czech may not be very good; I was after all learning it with the help of several beers.) That's 'in vino veritas' adapted for a beer-drinking country.
Well beer has recently taught me a lesson. I was working at Norwich Beer Festival as part of the cellar team. It's a good job; you get to do the quality control (though by the end of the week, believe it or not, this really does become a chore).
I have decided preferences in beer. I like it dark - the darker the better. Milds, stouts, old ales, that's my thing. I don't drink IPA. I don't drink lager (except for Budvar black lager of course.. ) I like sweet beers, I don't like hops.
So why is it that my favourite beer of the entire festival was a pale, hoppy, citrusy IPA? Thornbridge's Jaipur IPA to be precise. Damn, that's lovely stuff!
So what did the beer festival teach me? NOT TO BE PREJUDICED.
That applies to beer. It applies to people. And it applies to travel. How often do I hear someone say 'I don't like modern architecture', or 'I can't get on with the Baroque', or 'I don't like big cities', or something like that? People who won't visit Versailles because they're not into palaces.
So - don't be prejudiced. We all have our preferences, and I'm very clear what mine are. But keeping an open mind is more fun.
Well beer has recently taught me a lesson. I was working at Norwich Beer Festival as part of the cellar team. It's a good job; you get to do the quality control (though by the end of the week, believe it or not, this really does become a chore).
I have decided preferences in beer. I like it dark - the darker the better. Milds, stouts, old ales, that's my thing. I don't drink IPA. I don't drink lager (except for Budvar black lager of course.. ) I like sweet beers, I don't like hops.
So why is it that my favourite beer of the entire festival was a pale, hoppy, citrusy IPA? Thornbridge's Jaipur IPA to be precise. Damn, that's lovely stuff!
So what did the beer festival teach me? NOT TO BE PREJUDICED.
That applies to beer. It applies to people. And it applies to travel. How often do I hear someone say 'I don't like modern architecture', or 'I can't get on with the Baroque', or 'I don't like big cities', or something like that? People who won't visit Versailles because they're not into palaces.
So - don't be prejudiced. We all have our preferences, and I'm very clear what mine are. But keeping an open mind is more fun.
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