Cassidy in office

Cassidy: Okay, granted, Belgium may be a pint sized country, but it's big on beers and bars.

20:00

And at the end of the day, choosing the right beer at the right bar, is a tough assignment.

Cassidy looks for bar

There are more than 300 locally produced beers, and 27,000 bars serving them. It sometimes seems that Brussels has a bar on every corner. So where to begin.

20:24

Seems to me a good start is a rendezvous with a beer writer. Yep, while the world has wine writers, Belgium has beer writers.

Cassidy greets Danny in bar

And Danny Verheyden is one of them.

20:48

As it happens, he's drinking in a bar where the choice is easy. They sell just one beer – their own. And with an alcohol content of eleven percent, there are strict limits.

Barman

Barman: Only three, that's the rule of the house. Because when you have – I always say first one is for the taste, the second one is a better taste, and the third one is for fun. And the fourth one is dead. That's my experience, because three is enough.

21:01

Danny

Danny: Do you know what the Belgians say when they have had one strong beer?

21:18

Cassidy: No idea.

Danny: Well they say, let's have a second one because you cannot stand on one leg.

Cassidy: It's really that strong.

Danny: So let's have a second one.

Cassidy: Cheers.

Danny: This is perfect.

Cassidy: As strong as it is, customers come from all over the world just to sample this particular beer.

21:37

Barman: And they even come from Australia.

Cassidy: That's what makes Belgian beers different. They have hundreds of special beers with their own unique flavours.

Danny

Danny: In fact in the beginning, it was a quite local story of the Belgian beers, so nearly each town had its own beer, and they did develop their own taste with their own ingredients.

21:51

Breweries

Cassidy: And while the microbreweries flourished, so did the big one – Interbrew, the maker of Stella. Yet just a decade ago it was barely known.

22:07

Danny

Danny: Suddenly they started to expand. They started to take over Labbatz, which is the biggest brewer of Canada. Then they started to take over some breweries in Eastern Europe, and now they had some business in Great Britain, and all of a sudden they're number two in the world.

Bars in Brussels/Interbrew

Cassidy: Second only to Anheuser Busch, the American brewers of Budweiser. And yet while it's keeping with the world leaders, visiting Interbrew is like taking a step back into the past. Here at their Brussels brewery, they still use oak barrels. And most of them are at least 80 years old. There at 10,000 of them at this brewery alone.

22:36

Coopers at work

And that means keeping alive an ancient art. Coopers are still employed to keep the old barrels in working order, because the company has a strict policy, no new wood. The beer must mature in old oak for up to three years. Certainly something's working.

22:58

Danny in bar

Danny: You should know that Stella, which is the lager brand of Interbrew, has become the first lager brand in Great Britain.

23:15

Cassidy: The most popular.

Danny: It is. And you can ask questions about the proudness also of the British of their own beers. And Stella, a Belgian lager is the most popular one.

Danny and Cassidy in Bruge

Cassidy: For a contrast to our first bar, Danny took us to Bruge, the country's most popular city for tourists.

23:37

Danny: So Barrie, we're are in one of the oldest pubs in the lovely town of Bruge. And this is Jan De Bruyne. We can consider him as the …

Jan: Nice to meet you.

Danny: … local high priest of Belgian beers in Bruge. So he knows everything about Belgian beers.

Variety of different beers

Cassidy: Unlike the last bar, with its single beer, this one offers 350, and they're all Belgian. And Jan, being the high priest, likes to get to know them all.

23:59

Jan in bar

Jan: Before, you must taste every beer, before, and you wish to remember the taste of the beers.

24:09

Cassidy: And the most distinctive is the fruit beer.

Jan: The brewer puts the real fruit in the beer. We can put fruit, cherries, perhaps inside, then there's a second fermentation, second fermenting, and then we have the fruit beers. It's unique in the world.

Cassidy: So what kind of fruit do you have?

24:38

Danny: Oh, we have everything. We have cherries, we have even banana, prune…

Jan: Peach beer, almonds, every kind of fruit.

Cassidy: Which is the most popular?

24:54

Jan: The most popular is the cherries.

Jan: When you taste this beer, it gives a very, very nice flavour and aroma. Beautiful nose, smell. It smell beautiful.

Cassidy: And what's the best? Amazingly our experts lean to one brewed in the monasteries by Trappist monks.

25:12

Jan: I think the Trappist beer, they are one of the best you can find in Belgium.

Trappist beer

And the monks they have time enough to make this beer. They are not stressing.

25:28

Danny: The monks don't have any commercial goals. So they are limited production-wise. And they just take care of the quality of the beer. So you should taste them all. To me, this is the best.

Monastery

Singing

25:55

Cassidy: And with that recommendation, a visit to a monastery was essential. And what an eye opener.

Brewery in monastery

Singing

Cassidy: Monks brew beer in only six places in the world, and five of them are in Belgium. And there's one in Holland. This state of the art brewery is the Notre Dame St. Remy near Rochefort. And it's managed by Father Don Jacques-Emmanuel.

26:17

Father Don

Father Don: Our purpose here is not the production of beer. We spend six, more than six hours in the church. Our first purpose is the prayer.

26:29

Church

Singing

26:42

Cassidy: Even so, as a secondary concern, it's still making lots of money. This is the church that beer built. A four year old chapel right in the centre of a 13^th century monastery. And in their private moments, do the monks drink their own beer?

Father Don

Father Don: We don't drink our beer now, because there is too much alcohol in it.

27:04

Cassidy: There certainly is. The top of the range weighs in at 11.3 percent.

Father Don: So you don't have to drink it like that. You have to be at home and drink it slowly.

27:16

Cassidy: And back in Bruge, that's the advice from our experts as well.

27:26

Jan pours beer

Jan: This beer you never drink. You taste this beer. And it feel good, warm inside. It's not so that you drinking very quickly. And this is what I mean, English people, tourists, visit this place and they taste the drinking the beer. Becoming very quickly drunk. They get no happiness.

Cassidy: You're very proud of Belgian beers.

27:50

Jan: Yes of course. They are the best in the world. Correct, yes.

Credits:

Reporter: Barrie Cassidy

Camera: Tim Bates

Sound Tim Bates

Editor: Tim Bates