Jan 23

Today was another long day of back-to-back brewery tours. Luckily this time the bus arrived on time. We started with Brouweij Bosteels in Buggenhout (say that three times fast) who are the makers of Kwak and Tripel Karmeliet. They started the tour by showing us a bunch of different carriages—which seems odd for a brewery—but turns out Kwak was originally made for carriage drivers; they weren’t allowed to leave the carriage and so the tavern owners made a beer that would both quench their thirst and fit in a special holder on the side of the carriage. When we arrived, they were currently making a batch of Tripel Karmeliet and the whole brewery smelled wonderful. We also saw a farmer picking up spent grains for their cattle. After the tour, we got to taste three of their beers—the two that I already mentioned and something called “Deus” which was champagne-like but extremely odd to taste. I really enjoyed the Kwak—it was creamy and caramelly without being too sweet—plus it’s an adventure to drink because you have to spin it at a certain point or else it will splash in your face. After drinking, the brewer came up to see us and offered to show us around the brewer’s house—which is now just offices, but still exciting!

We then bussed it out to Ghent for a bit of site-seeing and lunch as well as some weird local fruit snack called “Cuberdons”. Ghent was a cute little city on the water, slightly similar to Venice with water running through it rather than it being a coastal town. We then bussed to Oudernaarde—deep in the heart of Flemish Belgium (Flanders)—for a tour of Liefmans Brewery. Most of it is out-dated and much of the process happens at a different location except for the fermentation because they use spontaneous fermentation and need the local cultures from the brewery. I enjoyed the tour guide because he switched up some English words—like he said at the end of the tour we would get to consummate the beer instead of consume it. I tasted four of their beers—Flanders Oud Bruin—but I wasn’t a fan because they had a sour twang from the fermentation style—similar to that of Cantillion. They also had some similar to the Oud Bruin but with fruit: sour cherries make Kriek and then fruit juices in another. Although they were a little sweeter to cut some of the sour, I still wasn’t a huge fan. Before leaving he gave us all a canister of sorts with a bottle of their Kriek in it. The canister is really cool but I don’t know if I can fit it into my luggage. We then headed back to the hotel and wandered around looking for a place for dinner. We settled on a Vietnamese restaurant and they asked if that was ok with everyone. A few of us, myself included, replied with it should be fine but we hadn’t tried Vietnamese food before. We waited for a long time before we got our food and some of us got to the point that everything was funny because of how over-hungry we were. It hit me partway through waiting that I have actually been to Vietnam before so it wasn’t my first time having Vietnamese food. Either way, when it finally came out, my food was really bland but I shoveled it in anyway because I was so hungry. Anyway, I best get to bed because it is about 10:30 pm here and we have to meet at about 7:30am tomorrow for our train to Leuven. Then Wednesday we go to Bruges, Thursday is mostly free, and Friday at 3:30am we leave for the airport! I can’t believe this experience is almost over.