A Saturday afternoon spent with some good friends at the tasting room at 3 Fonteinen in Beersel, Belgium can do a lot to rekindle your love for craft beer. Even with my enthusiasm for the industry, I can get bogged down and burned out from the recent gloom and doom, obnoxious gatekeeping, and a whole bunch of mediocre to bad beer. But walking into a place as friendly, and comforting as 3 Fonteinen was, despite how revered they are among beer nerds, reminded me that there’s still plenty to get excited about in beer. Seeing the looks of joy on my friends’ faces as they sipped glasses of some very special but accessible beers (okay, apart from the whole traveling 3,500 miles part) on their first visit warmed my heart. And as much as this was about beer being something special on its own, it was about beer as a social experience: reconnecting with familiar friends in a foreign place over shared bottles of gueuze on a sunny afternoon made for one of the most perfect days.
This was my fifth trip to Belgium, and I felt the most comfortable I have yet settling into a bottle of Rochefort Trappistes 10 at an outdoor cafe… or washing down some mussels with a de La Senne Zinne Pils at my favorite seafood spot. The Belgians have always been an incredibly warm and welcoming people on my visits, and they are remarkably proud of their beer. I’ll be back really soon.
Side note: I decided to peel myself away from friends and visit the new Belgian Beer World that opened last month in Brussels, since it was getting a lot of press. It’s… totally fine. It’s a whimsical treatment of the history of beer in Belgium and the brewing process itself. If you’re a hardcore beer nerd, a lot of the information presented feels like Brewing 101. But if you’ve been more dedicated to drinking beer than knowing how it’s made, there are far less fun ways to learn about it. And you’re treated to a pour from an extensive list of Belgian beers on a rooftop at the end of the experience. This view alone might be worth the price of admission:
Anyway, you don’t have to travel all the way to Belgium to experience 3 Fonteinen’s beers. Next Thursday, Pig Bar on the Lower East Side is offering a guided tasting of four of their offerings, along with a pairing of meats and cheeses. You can reserve your spot here.
Brewery Tracker
Total brewery count: 3,199
Total breweries visited in 2023: 304
Total breweries visited in Belgium: 15
Brewery Visit of the Week
Brewery #3198, Dok Brewing Co., Ghent, Belgium (Visited 9-Oct-2023)
On my last trip to Belgium in 2022, I attended BXL Beer Fest, where I first tried some innovative beers from Dok, a brewery I hadn’t heard of that turned my head. Pouring American-style beer at a Belgian beer festival kind of blew my mind (even though I should’ve known better — I met the festival’s organizer at a Brussels beer shop that celebrated modern beer styles back in 2016). This past weekend, I visited Ghent for the first time (a city very much worth your time, if you’re heading to Belgium soon) and Dok was at the top of my list for a visit, and it lived up to my expectations.
The tap list was dizzying, featuring over two dozen beers, running the style spectrum from Japanese Rice Lager, Cold IPA, and Smoothie Sours to Belgian Witbier, Saison, and Uytzet — an historical style from Ghent that was widely popular across Belgium in the nineteenth century. The space itself is housed in a building in Ghent’s north docks, with high ceilings, generous outdoor space, and food vendors that offer up burgers and barbeque. It’s a setup that wouldn’t feel out of place in most American cities, but also seems to fit in just fine in Belgium’s third-largest city.
The Weekly Reader
In praise of Southern Tier Pumking (featuring a quote by yours truly) [Ariana DiValentino, Pellicle]
A pioneering Rochester craft brewery has closed… [Will Cleveland, Cleveland Prost]
…and so has a Syracuse-area brewer that’s been brewing since 2016 [Don Cazentre, Syracuse.com]
Facing the realities of burnout in the beer industry [Stephanie Grant, Good Beer Hunting]
One More Thing
A reminder that this Saturday is the Brewminaries Cornucopia event for those looking to nerd out about beer ingredients with some cool Brooklyn homebrewers. And two weeks from Saturday, Staten Island’s homebrew club, Pour Standards, hosts their annual Pourmania at Flagship Brewing Company. As a recovering homebrewer myself, I have immense respect for people who dedicate their time and effort to the craft… and the clean-up after brewing a batch.
Cheers,
Chris