Intellectual Ferment of a Different Kind
~In Search of Belgium’s “Best” Beer Cafes~ Belgium is home to countless beer cafes ranging from hole-in-the-wall locales in the working-class districts of Brussels to beer pilgrimage destinations like In de Vrede, Westvleteren’s beer café in West Flanders. Many lovers of Belgian beer …
5300-plus breweries in the United States and counting. Another 775 in Canada as of 2016 (and counting). A veritable explosion of new and innovative breweries in Europe’s strongholds of brewing tradition: Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, and Belgium. Judges at the 2016 …
I was at Schloss Belvedere a few days back, the famous Viennese museum that houses the even more famous Kiss by Gustav Klimt. Alongside some of his other iconic works such as Judith und Holofernes hung several paintings dating from the year of Klimt’s death …
Skimming place names on a map of Belgium is like going into a prodigiously stocked bottle shop. Where do you start in a country with a beer heritage as rich as it is in Belgium? Trappist beers, witbier, saison, Flanders red, oud bruin? What about …
With the popularity of craft beer at an all-time high this holiday season, it’s no surprise that all manner of purveyors have stepped up to offer you an array of beer-related wares. Need yet another item to add to your wish list? Still wondering what …
To age, or not to age? This temporal variation of a timeless existential question is one that’s being asked with growing frequency in the craft beer world.But even if cellaring beer has become an increasingly popular topic of conversation of late, it’s still relative terra …
Addendum (24 August 2014): When I read the theme for September’s edition of The Session, it seemed an ideal occasion to share something I had written earlier this summer. September’s Session topic, My First Belgian, comes to us courtesy of Breandán and Elisa of Belgian …
Sauerkraut is one of those dishes that can assume multiple incarnations, some on the light side, and some with enough goose fat to sink the Bismarck. After three solid days of eating rich foods over the course of that American holiday of sublime overindulgence, I’m …