December 23rd was an exciting day and one of the few pre-planned things on the trip: a tour of Rodenbach. Rodenbach makes a delicious beer they call Grand Cru and I don’t know if it’s available in the US right now. Therefore, we needed to make a trip to the mothership and bring some home.
Rodenbach only does tour for groups of 15 or more and you need to make an appointment in advance. As luck would have it, they had a group tour scheduled for the morning of the 23rd and said we could join that one. This particular group was from a near-by facility for mentally and physically handicapped (Dominiek Savio Instituut). I must say, it’s pretty strange to be able-bodied and feel like the minority. A great bonus of touring with this group was that they moved at a slower pace which gave us more time to take in the sights. The tour was conducted in Flemish, and with our previous knowledge of the brewing process we were able to pick up on some of the words.
One of the trademarks of the Rodenbach process is their oak barrel aging. They have 294 oak barrels ranging from 12,000 to 65,000 liters in size. Some of the barrels are more than 150 years old and are still in use.
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| Rodenbach street sign | Huge Rodenbach barrels |
On the tour we met one of the employees from the facility that was on the tour. Hilda was very nice and spoke great English. It turns out that her facility was the site of the 2007 World Cyclocross Championship and she called over to her office to have them hold a couple books for us. They were photo books made of some of the riders and some residents putting together the course. That was a super nice thing for her to do and we went over to her office after the tour.
The tour ends in the tasting room of the brewery where we got to sample some Grand Cru and also the regular Rodenbach. Then we salivated as we looked through the display case and decided what to buy. Like kids in a candy store, we ended up with 12 33cl bottles of Grand Cru, 2 75cl bottles of Grand Cru, 1 33cl bottle of Vin du Cereal, and a t-shirt.
The town of Roeselare (home of Rodenbach) was also having a winter market and of course we had to check it out. In keeping with the winter market formula, this one had vendor booths, festival food, an outdoor skating rink, and the ever important warm alcoholic drinks.
Westvleteren
Our friend Hilda spoke very highly of Westvleteren beers, even calling them the best in Belgium. We’re not ones to pass up a recommendation, so we left Roeselare and went to the Westvleteren abbey. The Garmin nav put us on some questionable farm roads, but we eventually made it. There wasn’t much to see at the abbey as it was under construction, but one notable feature is that they have a drive-through where you can purchase their beer. An abbey drive-through. Awesome. Their tasting pub was quite impressive. It was a huge timber frame constructed building. The beers are great, and they seemed very similar to some St. Bernardus I’d had earlier. St. Bernadus is an abbey style, but not an actually abbey. It turns out that it makes sense for them to taste similar, because St. Bernardus used to make licensed imitations of the Westvleteren beers. In the early 90’s that license expired, but they still make similar beers with similar excellent quality.
The abbeys generally name their beer based on alcohol content. For example, the Rochefort 10 is 10% ABV. If you’re faced with a decision between multiple levels of the same abbey’s beer, I’d go with the highest number. I’ve found that I like those the best. Maybe I just like to get tanked.
Christine saw that there was a brewer in a town named Silly. Based on the name, we had to make a side trip. The pub was dead, and the beers were middle of the road. The saving grace was that the guy working the bar looked like Rod Stewart, complete with big 80’s hair.
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