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The
secret's out:
Belgium: Ales from Flanders Geographically, Flanders is the northern part of Belgium. It borders the Netherlands to the north and France to the south. Beer styles associated with Flanders include wit (wheat ale), old brown and old red. For the beer hunter, there are many locales of interest in Flanders. The fields around Poperinge, near to where some of the worst fighting in World War I took place, are home to Belgium's hop growing industry. Cities like Antwerp and Brugge (Bruges) boast several of the world's finest beer bars. There are breweries at two Trappist monasteries, where religion finally seems to make sense in bottle conditioned form. Roeselare is a tremendously boring commercial town in most respects, but it is the home of Rodenbach, and any place where a beer traveler can step into almost any bar in town and get a draft Rodenbach for a buck and a half is worth visiting. Drinking cheap Fall City neighborhood bars in Louisville during the 1950's just couldn't have been as good. Check out Peter Crombecq's Benelux Beerguide Daring Flavorful Wallonian ales are capturing temptations Wallonia is the French-speaking, southern half of Belgium that borders on France, Luxembourg and Germany. Although there are large cities, Wallonia is more rural than Flanders, and this would seem to lend itself to traditions of small scale, farmhouse brewing that result in a wide variety of individualistic, eclectic, artisanal ales that is impressive even by Belgian standards. No Belgian brewery has harnessed Wallonian imagery better than Brasserie d'Achouffe, which operates in a tiny village in the Ardennes and would have you think that it is run by the gnomes that are its namesake. However, it is a thoroughly modern brewery with a letter perfect marketing scheme that makes fantastic ales and exports a large percentage of them. Nearby is the little known Fantome brewery, serving an almost entirely local clientele, housed in a converted barn, and brewing wonderful ales. To the southwest, in Hainaut, three country breweries stand within a few miles of each other (Dupont, Vapeur and Dubuisson), and each specialize in very different styles of ale, which are sold locally as well as exported far and wide. The Wallonian influence extends across the border to Northern France, where bieres de garde impressively dash the prejudices of bibulous Francophobes with their malty complexity and suitability with food. See the section on France for more information. A good place to start on the web:
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