Belgian beer, chocolate, waffles and frites are marketed in Britain as traditional, high quality Belgian products.  For tourists, these products are also strongly pushed as souvenirs around the centre of Brussels.  It was disappointing to see so many of the same products on sale in Belgium as in Britain.  Notably, many of the same chocolates and beer brands crowd the shelves in expensive shops.  However, by looking a little deeper,  it is possible to find more exciting produce, at a nicer price too.

Beer

Many of the shops and bars have recognisable brands such as Chimay, Leffe, Hoegarden and Duval on sale – the same as in the UK.  There are however, a staggering array of other types of beer, including Amber ales (pale), the lighter Blonde beers, slightly sour or fruity Lambic beers, white wheat beer or one of many more.

Trappist Beers are manufactured by Monks and have some of the oldest and most traditional brewing methods.   Abbey beers are produced by breweries where the original Trappist monastery no longer exists, no longer brews or are just sometimes commercial attempts to imitate Trappist beers.  Although numbers have fallen, Belgium still boasts hundreds of small, independent breweries.
La Morte Subite (Sudden Death) is both a bar and a brewery, where the fourth generation of the family serve up a wonderful array of beers (nearly 30 to choose from) in the fabulous 1920′s style bar which has been home to the bar since 1928.

Alternatively, if in Bruges, why not try the Brugse Zot (Bruges Fool) brewed at De Halve Maan (The Half Moon) – Bruges last remaining family brewery.  Enjoy a tour of the brewery, grab some lunch or just sample the beer.  Periodically steaming piles of mashed hops/barley/wheat are ejected down a wooden chute and into a barrow.  The aroma reminds you that the place is a working brewery, if somewhat touristy.  The beer is a wonderful, light, crisp refreshing beer, ideal in the sunshine after pounding the inexhaustibly picturesque streets of Bruges.

Frites

It was surprising to learn that the Belgians take frites very very seriously.  None of this French Fries nonsense.  As with the waffles, mobile serveries and street hatches serve up low cost frites left right and centre.  Popular with locals and tourists alike, there always seems to be a queue.  Frites are cooked once then, re-fried before being served to you.  This adds extra crispness and a deep golden colour.  A theatrical process of tossing the frites high in the air is observed, portion by portion, to adequately mix in the salt.  Hence the queues as each portion is cooked up to order and served with ketchup and mayonnaise in a truly continental fashion.

Waffles & Chocolate

Waffles do seem to be present everywhere in Belgium.  The smell of hot waffles off the irons from street side serving hatches fills the air of many a street.  Dangerously delicious, the light, crispy waffles are uniformly good; most probably because of the huge volume produced meaning yours is almost always as fresh as can be.

There are an alarming array of chocolate shops dotted around the centre of Brussels and Bruges, making chocolate fresh on-site, all very expensive and seemingly reluctant to give out samples.  A box of 10-12 sophisticated little chocs could cost anything from €12-15 upwards in these shops, although the choice and more importantly, aroma is wonderful.  There didn’t seem to be anything particularly Belgian about the type (truffles, mousses, praline etc) or flavours (coffee, fruit, nuts etc) but they all boasted high cocoa content Belgian chocolate.  Perhaps the growth in ‘high end’ chocolates in the UK over the last few years means the novelty of the fine Belgian chocs is not what it once was.

Restaurants

Having somewhat patronisingly heard Belgian food described as Peasant food, there appeared be precious little of it around in Central Brussels at least.  Unsuprisingly, most restaurants around La Grande Place and the Lower City are very touristy, selling Mussel & Frites at very high prices (~€20 and somewhat disappointing).

For something a little more sedate, Place Saint Cathering, in the old docks area, offers a more relaxed environment.  Again the restaurants are on the pricey side of reasonable and generally not particarly inspring.
A good choice would be  L’Achepot in the Place Saint Catherine.  It offers reasonable value, aparrently more traditional food, including a good variety of fish and offal.  They have several Belgian beers to choose from and a nice terrace, slightly away from the busier main square.  Very informal and full of locals, the Rabbit fricasse was served up with all the offal and some good crusty bread.  The black pudding, servied with apple and mashed potato is a tempting dish for the less adventourous who want to have a traditional dish.

I’ve been a fan of ‘real ales’ for a while now but I’ve always thought making your own would be a lot of effort. I used to help my Dad make wine from our home-grown grapes when I was younger, I always remember it as a long (and smelly) process, requiring quite a bit of effort (especially since I wasn’t really old enough to appreciate the benefits afterwards). I assumed beer would be the same and certainly not the kind of thing to attempt in a flat.

For my birthday I was given an exciting home-brewing kit by Belle and Paul. Not just any bit of kit though – The Brubox claimed to be easy and tasty as well as not making any mess or smell. The novel approach of the Brubox, is that everything happens in one container and box – you just simply add the ingredients provided and leave it. Another worry I had had was what I was going to do with the 10 litres plus of beer – we don’t have that much storage and don’t drink that frequently/heavily. Cunningly they’d bought it in advance of our group holiday!

Jenny was slightly worried by some of the warnings on the box, she had visions of it decorating the flat. As a result she reluctantly let me brew it in her bathroom, where minimal damage could be done. Also, it tends to be the coolest room in the flat with no windows and a hole under the bath linked to the roof (which we found out from some pigeon visitors!).

Another ingenious feature of the Brubox – the cardboard container has a perforated hole for the tap to poke out, should you wish to dispense straight from the box.

Digging into the package, there were three main components – the brewing vessel (which was cleverly folded up), a giant metal tin and a bag containing instructions, cleaner, rubber tubing, stick-on thermometer, packet of grain and hops, sachet of yeast and the cap/tap for the box.

Once everything was unpacked, I checked through the instructions. The first stage was to clean the brewing equipment which was easy enough – put the tubing in the box and add some cleaner and hot water. So far, so good – no mess, no smell.

The second step was to heat up the giant tin of malt extract in a saucepan of boiling water. Then in a jug, you needed to make a giant cup of ‘tea’ with the grain and hops bag. You then add both the ‘tea’ mixture and the malt extract to the Brubox. This bit was a little tricky – the box wasn’t that solid so I felt it needed two people to pour and stabilise it. It was also a little awkward to shake it all up.

You then leave the box to cool enough to add the yeast. We had to move the box from the kitchen to the bathroom which again was a little awkward since the 10kg box was fairly warm and a little wobbly. Once you add the yeast, you add the piping to the open tap and put the other end into a cup of water so only excess air escapes.

As the end of brewing approached, it dawned on me that I needed to work out how I was going to transport 10 litres of beer on holiday. I wasn’t sure whether transporting it in the brew box would mess the concotion up. After finally finding an email for Brupak that worked they told me that they wouldn’t recommend trying to move it in the box. I didn’t get a reply as to how long it might take to re-settle so I decided to just opt for the bottling approach.

Finding this out with a day to go, I realised I’d have to find somewhere to get bottles from. A quick search online brought up Arkwrights, a home-brew specialists in Highworth nearby. We popped along on May-day weekend. We’d never thought there was much in Highworth, but we were pleasantly surprised – it even had a surreal May-day procession.

Following directions to Arkwrights brought us to a tiny village shop in a residental area. The shop was fantastic – not much bigger than our lounge, two rows of shelves with tins of beans, papers and other village-shop stuff and the rest full of brewing equipment and a good selection of beers and spirits. The guys in the shop were really friendly and knew their stuff. I learnt that bottling the beer actually lets it last for a long time – one of the guys said he actually drunk a 5 year old bottle once and said it was OK. I had been hoping for the Grolsch-style swing-tops but they’d been cleaned out the previous day. Instead, I opted for standard glass bottles and a capping gizmo. Once we got the bottles home, we washed them out and steralised them in the oven.

We understood from the instructions that if you’re bottling, you only add sugar to each bottle – the instructions still don’t read clearly, but it seemed to taste fine. Because of the speed it emptied from the box and the dark bottles we had to first fill up a jug to accurately fill the bottles.

Although there were more sophisticated capping gadgets in the shop, the guy said the cheapest one does the job fine, although there is a slight risk of smashing the bottle. You simply, pop the cap on the bottle, put the gizmo on to and bash with a hammer (always good in my opinion). We started off fairly gentle but actually found it needed quite a hit to properly seal.

Verdict

The three objectives that Brubox claim to have set out with are:

• The beers must be the finest ever produced from a beer kit.
• The brewing method must be straightforward and problem free.
• The range should encompass all of the world’s major beer styles (and some of the minor ones).

The first one, with my experience of only having done one homebrew is equally true and false. The beer however was pretty impressive, beyond my expectations. Everyone else seemed to like it too (apart from Kate, but she doesn’t like beer). It was a bit like a London Pride but possibly slightly softer.

The second point, I can’t agree with. The instructions were the major failing point of the kit. It was often not immediately clear what and when you were supposed to be doing things. In places it was still ambiguous after several reads – the steps and pros/cons for the bottles or box option for example. The lack of rigidity and poor durability of the box itself was also an issue for me. Mine actually punctured but I managed to seal properly and quickly so it didn’t affect the brew. The issue is whether it could be improved upon without affecting the compact package.

Finally, they do seem to have a good selection of beers.

So would I recommend it? Yup, I probably would, it’s pretty good for beginners and people with a lack of space.  It’s handy for getting to know the basic procedure in a neat all-in-one package. One thing to bear in mind however is that the Brubox only lasts 6 at most brews according to their guidelines so it actually works out fairly expensive compared to conventional home-brew kits.

It’s certainly got me into home-brewing now, but since I need to get a new kit I  think I’m ready to move on to something a bit more professional.

Related to home-brewing, I recently saw Nick from Hunter-Gathering (he’s attempting to live in a treehouse in a wood), make some Nettle Beer which I may well try out.