Beer-lovers haven in Belgium

With more than 100 breweries producing at least 450 different varieties of beer, Belgium will seem like a beer snob's version of heaven on Earth.

Brussels plays host as the capital of the European Union. Antwerp lays claim to being a major player in the diamond trade. The real finds, however, aren't just in Belgium's larger cities. Travelers will be rewarded by renting a car or hopping off the train to find the delectable treasures of the countryside.

Restaurants often offer hundreds of different beers 

Using the college town of Leuven - about 30 minutes from Brussels - as a base, my wife and I and another couple set out to explore the Belgian countryside in search of a heavenly beer experience. For three days, the four of us sat down at cafes an average of three times a day.

Each would order a different variety of beer, and not once did we have the same beer twice.
Restaurants often offer hundreds of beers, each in a unique glass bearing the brewery's name.

Learning the finer points of Belgian beer can be daunting. Lambic beers are more like wine in taste. Fruit lambics come with the taste of cherries or raspberries and are often served in flute-style glasses. Gueuze beer can range from a sparkling crispness to a vinegary sourness. The white or wheat beers are often fermented with orange peels or other spices. The Trappist beers are distinctive for their history, taste and two-stage brewing.

For this trip, we set off for the southwestern, mainly French-speaking region of Wallonia and the Ardennes. In Mons, a fairly large city, travelers can take in the cafe society, where coffee is served as a quartet: coffee, sugar, cream and chocolate or a bite-size cookie.

Because we owe a debt of thanks to monks for the creation of beer, we wanted to take in the Trappist beer experience. One of the better-known and available beers in the United States is Chimay. While visitors are not allowed to see the beer-making process at the Abbey of Scourmont, you can tour the bottling and cheese-making operation in Baileux.

Four or five tanker truckloads move from the abbey to the bottling plant daily to produce 14 million bottles a year. It's a relatively small operation that employs fewer than 10 workers on the bottling line. A short film introduces the history and growth of Chimay's beer and cheese products. After the free tour, visitors can travel to the homey, if somewhat touristy, Auberge de Poteaupre, where your ticket will get you a free tasting of beer and cheese.

Though the selection of Chimay varieties ranged from the light and refreshing to the hearty and stout, the experience wasn't quite what this group of faithful beer lovers had desired. The next day, we set out for Falmignoul, a small town of the Namur region, where we found the holy grail of beer production.

Co-owners Francois Tonglet and Jean-Pierre Debras run the Brasserie Caracole. In the former Moussoux brewery, the two men run produce about 39,000 gallons (147,630 liters) beer each year - a small brewery, but within buildings dating from the 1820s, visitors can see, smell, touch, hear and taste the fruits of beer-making at its most primitive. The owners bill it as the last brewery in Europe that boils malt and water by wood fire.

"We are producing beer with very old equipment," Tonglet said. It takes them eight hours just to mill the malt on a grinder built in 1913.

Old equipment or not, Caracole beer is a finer beer than any mass-produced malty beverage from the United States.

More than 50 percent of the beer is exported to France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Japan and the United States.

The brewery draws its name from the Spanish word for snail because the people from the Namur region are known for their distinctive, slow way of speaking.

They use a two-step fermentation process, similar to Chimay's, in which the final fermentation occurs in the bottle and the beer is allowed to age for two or three months. The surroundings are less than pristine, but the years of dust and cobwebs add to the brewery's charm. Beer lovers who are fascinated with the brewing process will find the atmosphere cozy and unforgettable.

After drinking Brasserie Caracole's atmosphere and beer, we headed back to Mons, then on to Bruges and Ghent. As a prime tourist destination in the Flanders region, Bruges can be overwhelming for the traveler seeking rest and quiet. Belgian lace, Flemish art and tapestries are meant to draw tourists' eyes and dollars. Enduring the Belgian version of kitsch was worth it after we found delightful chocolates.

While Leonidas' stores can be found aplenty, I recommend any of the smaller, homegrown chocolatiers. In Bruges and elsewhere, we found chocolate-covered cherries, stem and pit included, bursting with a divine liqueur.
Transporting chocolates is difficult in warm weather; we devoured ours nearly as soon as we bought them.

The authentic Belgian food experience wouldn't be complete without trying the ubiquitous moules and frites (translation, mussels and fries). You can find them steamed in wine, beer or butter and garlic with celery and onions.

For an exquisite dining experience in Leuven, try the Oesterbar, with its brightly lit French oak and marble interior. The meals weren't just cooked or prepared - they were created. Tuna was lightly grilled and served with tiny waffle-like potato crisps, giving the dish a multilayered and unexpected texture. Tender, almost butter-like salmon was drizzled with a fresh basil pesto.
Boiled seabass sat atop a short cylinder of potatoes and was garnished with chives. And fresh dill gave the cod a superb flavor. We topped the meal off with divine truffles lightly infused with lavender and dusted in bitter chocolate.

Chef Luc Van Innis can be seen giving life to the meals in the small kitchen to the back of the restaurant. Friends stopped by late in the evening to chat with him, taste a new creation and sip a bit of wine. The restaurant is small by most American standards, but what we found at the Oesterbar puts to shame the American axiom "bigger is better."

In essence, that became the overriding theme of our journey. While Belgium's larger cities boasted great works of art, culture and architecture, we found the smaller, out-of-the-way treasures more to our liking and our tastes.