Hi there,
It's been a while since my last post here. Apparently winter is at it's end, spring is coming, and I've been suffering a nasty flew, as I seem to be having the last 10 years around this period of the year :( But I think (hope) I'm over it, and feeling better again. So the last few weeks my head wasn't really "beer-minded" to be honest, hence the lack of posts here. Now, feeling better again, it's time to get back on track :)
Two weeks ago, we had our first "open" beer tasting at Bier Central. Anyone interested could join the tasting at a very reasonable price of €12,5 per person. The tasting was lead by Hans Bombeke, president of the ABC (Antwerps Bier College). Hans is a real beer expert and has been giving workshops about beer for many years. He is also a full-time teacher in beer-science, and though he doesn't admit it: he knows about everything "beer", especially Belgian beers.
We started around 8:30 pm and took around 2 hours. During those 2 hours the approx. 25 participants got tons of information about beer/tasting beer, and eventually tasted 6 beers covering a wide range of Belgian beer-styles.
The tasting started of with a hefty intro, giving us everything needed to enjoy a good tasting. During that intro we first got a ton of information about "beer" itself. It's ingredients, it's elements and everything needed to taste beer the right way. During this intro we got to drink a "De Koninck", or "bolleke" as it called here in Antwerp.
A bolleke has never been one of my favorites, but with all the information we got and the positive atmosphere, I have to admit that for the first time I actually liked it (and I was actually feeling sick that day).
As it was the first tasting, we got served a wide variety of beer-styles. Future tastings will focus on specific beer-categories, in which we will taste different beers from a specific beer-style. Now, we got to taste 6 beers all from different categories.
After the De Koninck we got a "3 Fonteinen Oude Gueuze". Allthough I liked this one very much, I noticed that several people didn't share that same feeling, which surprised me a bit. In hindsight this is of course a bit normal. Gueuze is a special and very typical Belgian beer-style, not known to the masses. You would probably have the same when you would do a cheese-tasting and started off with a bleu Rocquefort (while having never tasted different kinds of cheese). It's too much of the good, too soon. One's taste has to grow towards more complex tastes before being able to appreciate all the aromas.
The third beer was yet again a very typical Belgian style beer: a Rodenbach, an Old Flemish Red style beer. Rodenbach is a sweet-sour dark beer, with it's roots in the West-Flanders.
The fourth beer was another typical Belgian style which is most famous around the world: a trappist beer. For the occasion we got to taste a La Trappe Quadruple, a very strong, rather sweet amber-dark trappist, which was liked by many of the participants.
The next beer was yet again of a complete different style called a "Saison". The Saison Dupont was a very nice surprise for me, as I never tasted a saison before. Bitter-sweet and very easy drinking. I can imagine that this kind of beer is super during the summer.
Our sixth and last beer was a XX Bitter. As the name already reveals, this is a very hoppy and bitter-tasting beer. I was a bit reluctant to taste this, as very bitter is not my thing. But much to my surprise I actually liked it a lot, and is certainly a beer I will drink again!
This first beer-tasting sure proved to be a success and I'm looking forward to the next tasting on March, 3rd, where we will delve further in a specific category to explore more beers. Again, this coming tasting is open to anybody interested. Just mail me, or info@biercentral.be to reserve your place. Hope I will meet you there!
Greetingz,
Koen.
