Belgium 2017 - The Beer Trappe

Ça sent la bière, donne-moi la main

La bière

Ça sent la bière de Londres à Berlin

Ça sent la bière, Dieu qu'on est bien

Ça sent la bière de Londres à Berlin

Ça sent la bière donne-moi la main

I love Jacques Brel....

And I love beer.....

And Belgium, Brelgium…. Ça sent la bière ….

Jacques Brel was only 49 when he died in 1978, but his wonderful songs remain.  He was an extraordinary performer, with intense feeling and perfect enunciation, and his lyrics have influenced many other artists, such as David Bowie and Leonard Cohen.  A favourite is La bière....

C'est plein d'Uilenspiegel

Et de ses cousins

Et d'arrière-cousins

De Bruegel l'ancien

C'est plein de vent du Nord

Qui mord comme un chien

Le port qui dort

Le ventre plein

I have been in Belgium, wandering from Brussels to the Ardennes, via Liège, carrying these words in my wallet, and sampling some of the finest beers in the world.  I can smell beer, God!  It’s so good!  There’s the scent of beer – give me your hand!

Ça sent la bière....

 

C'est plein de verres pleins

Qui vont à kermesse

Comme vont à messe

Vieilles au matin

C'est plein de jours morts

Et d'amours gelées

Chez nous y a que l'été

Que les filles aient un corps

Belgian beer is justly famous.  There are hundreds of varieties (some say 450), ranging from the standard draft lagers such as Maes, Jupiter and Stella Artois, through winey Lambic Cantillon, cherry flavoured Mort Subite Kriek Lambic Tradition and spicey, candy sweetened Faro, to the highly sophisticated unfiltered complexities of Trappist beers such as the 6.2 abv Orval (completed with a secondary fermentation using brettanomyces yeasts) and world champion (and very rare) Westvleteren 8.0º…..  And each beer has its specific glass....

Ça sent la bière....

C'est plein de finissants

Qui soignent leurs souvenirs

En mouillant de rires

Leurs poiluchons blancs

C'est plein de débutants

Qui soignent leur vérole

En caracolant

De "prosit" en "Schol"

The characteristics of Belgian beers are many and various, but they fall into categories, of sorts.  Lambic beers, which come from the Brussels region mix at least thirty per cent raw wheat with malted barley, but are then fermented and matured in wooden casks using wild yeasts which give the beers a distinctive winey sourness, sometimes likened to a mixture of scrumpy and sherry.  Some of the best Lambics are produced in the Anderlecht area of Brussels by the Cantillon brewery.  A more sparkling version of Lambic is known as Gueuze which is a blend of young and mature Lambics.  Faro is a Lambic beer sweetened with dark sugars.  

Kriek is Lambic which has been flavoured in later fermentation with small local cherries.

Ça sent la bière....

C'est plein de "Godferdomme"

C'est plein d'Amsterdam

C'est plein de mains d'homme

Aux croupes des femmes

C'est plein de mémères

Qui ont depuis toujours

Un sein pour la bière

Un sein pour l'amour

Other Belgian beers include White (made from half wheat and half malted barley), produced famously by Hoegarden; Brown (rich in malt and slightly caramel flavoured), often used in carbonnade flamande, particularly well made in Oudenaarde where the water is particularly soft; and Red, which is matured in large wooden tuns.  The Rodenbach brewery produces some of the best of the reds.

Ça sent la bière....

C'est plein d'horizons

A vous rendre fou

Mais l'alcool est blond

Le diable est à nous

Les gens sans Espagne

Ont besoin des deux

On fait des montagnes

Avec ce qu'on peut

But the contemplative, austere Trappist monks in a handful of Belgian monasteries are the master brewers whose products are without rivals.  These beers are not closely related to each other, having very distinct characteristics, but they belong to a family, with secondary fermentation in the bottle leading to strength, depth, and character.  Authentic Trappist beers are brewed within the walls of a Trappist monastery, under the control and responsibility of the community of monks, who are involved through the process of making and marketing the beer.  Most of the income generated by this activity is devoted to the needs of the community and social works.

Typically, taking Westmalle as an example, these beers may be designated Single (or Extra) [only brewed by Westmalle twice a year and  produced for the monks and their guests for their midday meal], which tends to be bright and golden; Dubbel, stronger, dark-brown and nutty (7%); and Tripel which is pale bronze complex and aromatic (9.5%).

The Trappist monasteries in question are Orval (almost certainly brewing its own beer since 1529, but reinvented commercially in 1931 to fund the reconstruction of the monastery); Chimay (whose Bleu, at 9%, is a wonderful dark ale with a powerful aroma); Rochefort (founded in 1230; brewing since 1595); Westvleteren (near Poperinge, whose label-less bottles are rationed, and retail at about €36 a litre….) and Westmalle (brewing since 1836 but since 1991 having a bottling capacity of 45,000 per hour).

Not to be confused with the Trappist beers are the many Abbey beers, which are made by commercial brewers in the environs of active monasteries, which may be Benedictine such as Affligem, Norbertine (or Premonstratensians, or White Canons), such as Leffe or Grimbergen, or Carmelite, such as Karmeliet.  These are excellent beers, and, like the Trappist ones, can be strong. 

But, so what?  These are the wines of the north.  It is not the custom to quaff them by the pint…..  These are beers to be savoured.  With a little cheese, and perhaps some bread.

And a little conversation, perhaps…..

Ça sent la bière de Londres à Berlin

Ça sent la bière donne-moi la main

Jacques Brel (1929 – 1978)

I love Jacques Brel....  He is still here, all around.  In one of his favourite bars, A La Mort Subite, {rue Montagne-aux-Herbes Potagères 7, B-1000 Bruxelles} he can still be sensed drinking, smoking, pensive, as if composing…. 

The list of beers in this Elysian bar includes, Gueuze sur Lie, Grimbergen Optimo Bruno 11%, Grimbergen Tripple 9%, Grimbergen Gold, Duvel, Hapkin, Chimay Dark, Orval, Rochefort, Westmalle Tripple,

and, on draught,  Chimay Blond, Westmalle Dobbel Dark, Grimbergen Blond, Grimbergen Dark, Ciney Blond, Ciney Dark, Cherry, Faro, and Lambic White Beer Mort Subite…..

Time, gentlemen, please....

And I love beer.....

And Belgium, Brelgium…. Ça sent la bière 

 

But, after all that beer, there's just time for a digestif.....  In Liège, Wallonia, they peddle a kind of gin known as genièvre (colloquially as pèkèt). This stiff grain-spirit is often served in glasses little bigger than a thimble. 

Ça sent la bière de Londres à Berlin

Ça sent la bière, Dieu qu'on est bien

Night, night!

All the world's a stage

Starry Starry Blade Runner.....

The year is 2049. The Tyrell cooperation has collapsed decades before in the wake of violent revolts involving their Nexus-6 through -8 Replicants, forcing Tyrell into bankruptcy. After the world's ecosystems collapsed, famine swept the Earth. With his invention of synthetic farming, Niander Wallace ended food shortages and acquired Tyrell's remaining assets. The Wallace Company has reinvigorated the Replicant industry by producing the Nexus-9 Replicants, a new generation of artificial humans with modified behavior to make them more obedient than the older models. These Replicants have implanted memories and open-ended lifespans, and are still used for slave labor on the off-world colonies, but some are also used as Blade Runners, hunting down and 'retiring' the few remaining older models that are still at large.

Agent K, one of these Nexus-9 Replicants, travels to a protein farm outside Los Angeles in his flying Spinner, where he has tracked down an older model Replicant called Sapper Morton who was part of a group of Series 8 Replicants that had gone AWOL. After a brief but violent fight, Morton tells him that as a newer model, K cannot come close to knowing what it means to be human. He implies that K would never help humans kill his own kind if he had ever witnessed the kind of miracle that he has. K retires him and is ready to leave, until he notices an old dying tree next to the farm. An investigation reveals a chest buried in front of it.....

Whatever....

I once had a friend whose biggest problem when he woke up in the morning was deciding which car to drive.....

Others have to decide at which end of the rainbow they are going to start digging..... 

I'm in the Arnolfini, looking out at an intergenerational jam session....

I'm in the Watershed....

I drop into the Small Bar....

Next thing I'm in L’Auberge Ravoux in Auvers-sur-Oise.....

And then, suddenly, as if by Spinner, I am back at the Bag of Nails, keeping the cats company....

Time to leave town.  I head for the countryside.....

But I cannot help but feel I am being watched....

Even in the back of beyond, looking up the valley of the Usk, towards the Black Mountain,

There's always someone.  

Like charming Geoff, with his black cat, who has rented here for twenty years (and I apologise if I misremember his name)....

And then, atop of Table Mountain, having lost my bearings, who should I have the pleasure of meeting?  Yes, it's Dickie and Lindsey Bellringer, from Salisbury.....  Who are really nice. 

In such a brief encounter it is impossible to be sure which of us are Replicants, but there's me trusting holographs, again.....

Then, on my way down again to the abandoned remains of Las Vegas [citation needed] I come across a couple of of feral scavenger people who live among the ruins of the old Satellite Dish Array.....

And narrowly avoid being retired by one of Wallace's Replicants....

But, passing my baseline test by the Sugar Loaf,

I manage to get through the gate, 

And deposit the wooden/stone horse/effigy in the furnace/niche.....

And I return to LA.....(?)

And relax for a moment, with a pie and a beer,  in The Three Tuns, 

With Loving Vincent.....

Which just about rounds off the weekend quite nicely.

Except that I had forgotten about bloody Deckard.....

Who is still just a little trigger happy (after all these years) and insists on knowing what I want to know (as if any of us knew).....

The End....

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances,

And one man in his time plays many parts, 

His acts being seven ages.....

The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slippered pantaloon, 

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side; 

His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice, 

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, 

That ends this strange eventful history, 

Is second childishness and mere oblivion, 

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything......

[For f's sake..... Where will any of us be in 2049?]

Take my hand

Take my whole life too

For I can't help falling in love with you

Like a river flows, surely to the sea 

Darling so it goes, some things are meant to be

[With apologies to all the people whose pictures I have taken, in good faith....]

Really the end.