One Week 'Til Belgium

Literally YEARS of planning and preparation culminates next Thursday as I board a plane and wing my way to Belgium. Twelve years after my first visit and 11 years since my last, I will finally get back to Belgium and take the full beery trip I have always wanted to do.

Whereas my last trips were sidestops of larger trips or fortunate port of calls, this one will venture outside of the Antwerp\Brussels junkets I have done before into the countryside of Wallonia, the fields of West Flanders and the cities of Brugge and Gent.

Bags are beginning to be packed, reservations and deposits have been finalized and the itinerary is complete. A few resources that I found especially useful that I can pass along to others...

1) Tim Webb's Good Beer Guide to Belgium - I will know for sure once I go but I can't imagine that there is any better guide for a beer trip to Belgium anywhere on the market. Webb is an entertaining and opinionated writer and it's very thorough even for the smaller towns.

2) Belgian Beer Pub Map - While not as thorough as Tim Webb's guide, this website is maintained by Belgian beer fan Filip Geerts and features an easy to navigate map that enables you to see the worthy beer establishments in each town. There are a lot of little known gems in his lists and the best part is you can download all the data in a .ov file for use in your TomTom GPS. I imagine this will be very, very helpful during the car journey portion of the trip.

3) Belgian Beer Board - Another Geerts creation, the best part of this site is Filip's blog. He's turned me on to a few pubs and beer stores I had not heard of before and has been keeping up with the newest and best new beer releases in the West Flanders area. Excellent resource and excellent pictures to go with.

4) The Burgundian Babblebelt - Very useful for keeping up with the latest goings on in the Belgian beer scene. For example, the sad news of the closing of the Hopduvel cafe in Gent was reported there last week and I have seen no news of that anywhere else. Better to know now before going out of my way to visit only to find the place shuttered! Lots of expertise among the users who gave me some useful tips on some of the finer points of my planned visit. Also has city/province guides as well as many Babbler trip reports.

5) BeerAdvocate.com - The Belgium group in the Beer Forum is not nearly as active at the BBB but offers some good info on planning your Belgium trip, especially if you're coming from the U.S. Very good insights on brewery tours and arranging to buy Westvleteren at the abbey. The BeerFly feature also allow you to search various Belgian cities for notable pubs and beer stores.

6) Belgian Tourist Office Website - They devote a page to Beer Lovers coming to Belgium. While not comprehensive in content, it is comprehensive in the links it has to dozens and dozens of resources to learn more about Belgian beer. A good calendar for regular beer festivals and such. Also a good start for looking for accommodations and previewing non-beery attractions.

7) Michael Jackson's Great Beers of Belgium - My edition of this classic is fairly outdated but it was Jackson's writings that first made me aware of Belgium's brewing traditions and got me to buy my first Belgian beers. It's coming with me to Belgium if for nothing else but nostalgia.

Beer For 18 Year Olds?

Not a shocking proposal to me but I was shocked to see this opinion column in the Atlanta Journal Constitution (AJC) written by a UGA senior. Not an notion that would normally be entertained in the Bible Belt south. Good stuff, even only if it means people are beginning to talk about the idea.

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I never really addressed this story about the Georgia Legislature making changes to what is allowed in brewery tours in the state. The change that's really sticking in the brewers' craw in the provision that would make it unlawful to charge admission and then serve beer. Now I don't agree that this would "cripple" the brewers' as Fred Bench from Sweetwater says. I've been to plenty of tours and I can't think of one that charged me a cover to get in. I mean, there are other business models out there that allow for tours and samples that would be OK under this new law.

But really, what's the big deal? Is this practice that is done by three breweries in the state and makes up a mere fraction of a percent of GA's beer drinkers really worth all this consideration? For being such a Republican state, Georgia is sure inhospitable to small business sometimes...

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The Brick Store Pub in Decatur is participating in the Michael Jackson Toast on September 30th. Ditto for Aromas up in Athens, GA.

Michael Jackson: 1942-2007

I was saddened this week to learn of the death of "The Beer Hunter", Michael Jackson after a long bout with Parkinson's Disease.

In 1992, at the age of 21, I bought a hardcover copy of his 1988 revision of The New World Guide to Beer and, at the risk of sounding completely sappy and geeky, it truly did change my life. My new found interest in "microbrews" was pretty enthusiastic but now I had a beer bible! Styles I had never dreamed of, brewing processes, origins and producers of the great classics were now revealed in glossy pictures and words that breathed life into those pictures.

My favorite quote: "It's a perilously drinkable brew." That was in reference to De Konninck but I'm sure he used it elsewhere.

I loved his writing style. He was sometimes criticized for being too easy on beer that was less than stellar. People sometimes missed the subtlety in his jabs at soulless, corporate beer but Jackson was a beer ambassador more than a pure critic. His writing was pure beery poetry.

Mostly, Michael Jackson inspired me to seek out the beer. My tendency to road trip or plan entire vacations or incorporate beer hunting into vacation or business trips is directly attributed to Jackson. (I actually call those entries in my blog "Beer Hunts".) Getting the beer at the source is very rewarding on many levels.

So, to Mr. Jackson I'll raise a pint or three today. But every pint I've had up until now and every pint I'll have after will really be in his honor.