Barbar Bok, Duivels bier, Deugniet

Barbar Bok is a sparkling dark beer. It is made out of honey imported from Mexico . This beer was originally produced only in winter, but since people also enjoy it in summer, it has been produced all year since 2008. This one is a nice beer, but there are nicer dark beers around.

Duivels is a Belgium classic. It has been produced since 1883, it has a very nice taste. Is a good dark beer, not the best of them for my taste but it is definitely a beer with is own soul, and it is definitely worth trying.

The last beer in this picture is a blond beer called Deugniet. This one is a blond beer that to my taste does not have something special. I did not like it but that is just me.

St Bernardus Tripel, St Bernardus 8, and Leffe 9.

These three beers are just good stuff! Good quality, the St Bernardus tripel is a nice aromatic 8 % alcohol tripel. It is definitely a good option to try if you want a soft good beer.
St Bernardus 8 is a dubbel beer with a nice dark amber color. It has a caramelised taste that is not too sweet. One will definitely enjoy this beer.
Leffe 9 Is a nice blond beer, it is in the middle between a soft and a strong beer, it has a very nice texture a bit smoky but enjoyable. Definitely a good option.

Jan , Gulden Draak.

Gulden Draak is one of Gent Classics, it is an excellent dark beer, with 10.5 % alcohol. It has a sweet caramel flavour that will definetly amuse anyone that enjoys good beer. If you come to Ghent and you walk around in the city center, you will see a high tower in Belfry which has a golden dragon on the top. This beer owes its name to this dragon.

"The legend says the golden dragon first featured on the prow of the ship with which the Norwegian king Sigrid Magnusson left on a crusade in 1111. He offered the statue to the emperor of Constantinople (the current Istanbul) to put it on the cupola of the Aya Sophia. Some hundred years later, the Flemish count Baldwin IX had the showpiece transported to our regions. Here, the Norwegian dragon ended up in the hands of Brugges. After the battle on the field of Beverhout in 1382, the inhabitants of Ghent took the dragon as war booty and put it on top of their Belfry. In the Belfry all communal charters were kept. The dragon had to protect these documents" (taken from http://guldendraak.be/en/gulden-draak-0 ).

The second beer of the night was Jan Van Oudenaarde, this one is a blond beer, it is quite new, it seems it came to enlarge the list of belgium beers only in 2012! , so this is really new stuff. This beer has 8 % of alcohol It has a sparkling taste that is not to strong to start a night with. I think this one is not the best beer you can get, but if you try it once , it will enrich your beer list!.

Corsendonk Pater and Ename dubbel.

These two beers are excellent. They are both dubbel (they have two grains in the list of ingredients) and are fermented in the bottle.
They both have a sweet taste, not too bitter just perfectly enjoyable. Corsendonk pater has 7.5 % of alcohol, and Ename dubbel has a nice 6.5 %. Therefore they are both in the not that dangerous zone in which you can enjoy a couple of beers without getting too drunk.

If you come to Belgium these two beers are definitely a good option.

Pollo Violado

As a parenthesis to our beer tasting, I will make a post about a recipe. Some friend came home a few days ago and proposed to cook a chicken with a Guinness inside of it. Since the idea was crazy enough, we tested.

The recipe is simple, provide yourself a Guinness, and another beer in a can. Drink the beer in the can just to get in the mood, then cut the can as you can see in the picture. Fill it with the Guinness and insert it inside the chicken. This is what gives the name to the recipe.
Cook the chicken in the oven and then enjoy.
I personally think that this recipe can be improved, but I am  not a cook, so it is up to whoever is skilled in this matter!

Kasteel Tripel

Sweet good stuff! A nice tripel, a strong one as well, it has 11 % of alcohol on it.  So be careful three of them will make you happy! If you come to Belgium you should definitely try it (that is my opinion).

Leffe Bruin

Belgium people may not agree with me, but this one is actually good. Is probably the beer that is most well known outside Belgium so avoid it when you come here. But that does not mean it is a bad beer. It has 6,5 degrees of alcohol. Taste good.

Regardless of the previous paragraph... after a few years of beers, Leffe is not a good option anymore... Now the smoky taste feels more like burned grains... It is still good to begin with if you have never had a Belgium beer before.

Chimay Blue

One of the classics! Good stuff, this is one of the trappist beers, It has been made by monks with an ancient recipe. You will definitely enjoy this one. It has 9% of alcohol. You can find this one outside Belgium so if you want a good dark one maybe you wanna try a troubadour obscura or a Kasteel donker or.... ask the bar tender. But Chimay is definitely a must try!

Kasteel Donker

Gooood and sweet stuff! If you like dark beers this is definitely a good one. 11 % of alcohol so do not exaggerate but you will definitely enjoy this one.

Ename Blond and Duvel

Good stuff both of them! I wrote about Ename before, all I have to say now is that if you can choose between Ename on the bottle or v'de vat, take the one of the bottle it tastes better. Duvel is one of the classics, is that good that you can easily find it outside Belgium, so if you come to Belgium in search for the golden Duvel, think twice, take the Ename instead! Duvel has 8.5 % of alcohol, it is a bit strong and very tasty, it has a descriptive name. Some people said that the name actually comes from Duivel which means devil. It you wanna know why it has this name, just drink 4 or 5 of them, and wait till the next day, and you will get your answer.

Jupiler!

My advice is , if you see this , run in  the opposite direction! ok.... let us be objective. If you want to drink beer in a BBQ or a social occasion in which you do not want to be drunk neither feel you have had too many beers, this may be the one to drink, this beer taste like water that has been poor on a beer barrel to wash it, and then has been sold as beer. However if you like soft beers this may be a good option. It has 5.2 % of alcohol on it so you can drink lots of it.

Straffe Hendrik

Another excellent tripel. This one also comes from Brugge family brewery called De Halve Maan. It is a high fermentation beer, fermented on the bottle etc... etc....
I have to say, this beer is very tasty. I definitely recommend it if you come to belgium.
It has 9 degrees of alcohol, so I will say is in the middle of the rank, I have seen worse.
Cheers!

brugse zot

Seems to be a good night since three out of three beers have been good. This time we tried Brugse Zot, in the label is written that this beer has been re-fermented on the bottle , and has been made traditionally by a family brewery called De Halve Maan. This brewery has been located in the center of Brugge since 1856 so if you pass by Brugge maybe you wanna pass by. It is a soft beer , 6% alcohol but it taste good, I wont have it as my first option if I come to Belgium for a few days, but If I stay long enough, it is definitely worth trying. Cheers!

St Bernardus Tripel!!

Two words, GOOD STUFF! Or in the words of my girlfriend "This one is tasty!". For me St Bernardus is a synonym of quality! and I am not disapointed about this one.
If you like barley malt, hops, and yeast this beer is a master piece of this ingredients. 8% Alcohol and 100% quality.
St. Bernardus tripel

zwintje

We were in the mood to try a random beer, nothing more random that this one. It was hidden in a corner in a supermarket so we went for it. The first thing we noticed is that in the front label the beer is named zwÿntje, but in the back label the name changes to zwintje, this randomness together with the fact that the promotional image of the beer is a pig convinced us.
So about the beer... is actually not bad, a bit bitter, blond 8% of alcohol. We had it, we enjoyed it , and it does not feel too strong afterwards so good suggestion for a nice regular blondy.

Belgium flag at texas.

Thanks to Sven Goran Eriksson that just came back with a cowboy hat and a nice picture of the Belgium beers that you can find in Texas.

Kastel Rouge , Ename blond

One of my girlfriends favorite is the Ename blond, this one is a soft good blond beer, 6.5 % of alcohol, nice taste, refreshing... However if you can have it from the bottle directly it will taste better than trying to get v' de vat.

A different story is the Kastel Rouge beer, I personally did not like it, it is too sweet for me. It has 8.0 % of alcohol plus a lot of sugar!

Gageleer, Troubadour Magma, Delirium tremens, Troubadour Westkust...

June 8 had an excellent night!, It was more like June 9 had and excellent start but that is just a detail, 1 am still feels like the night of the previous day for me. So as the title says Gageleer, Delirium tremens, and troubadour Magma and Westkust were some of the beers that flow through our table, there were a few more, but I will only talk about these because these are the ones I remember the most, and some of the other ones deserve and entry on their own. We were at one of my Gent favorite places, Trollekelden
(a place you want to check out if you pass by Gent).
I started with a Triple Karmelit, my girlfriend started with a Delirium Tremens, I won't say anything about triple karmelit now, that deserves a post on its own.

Delirium Tremens is a nice 8.5% alcohol pale blond beer. You taste it you like it , it goes to the point, good beer, not too strong... just good. It is personally not one of my favorites but is a most if you come to Belgium for several days. You will definitely enjoy it.

The second beer I took was a Gageleer, this one was an experiment, never had it before, I just saw some people in the table next to us drinking it and went for it. It is not a bad choice, it has a fruity flavour quite nice to taste, nothing sweet or too fruity, it has its own soul in that sense. It is a bio beer (no clue on what that means)  with a 7.5 % of alcohol on it. It is worth trying.

Third beer of the night that was tasted was the Troubadour Westkust. This one is a nice one, it is a bitter dark beer with a nice character , I am personally a fan of dark beers so this one went straight in to my top list. However if it is your first in Belgium, probably you will enjoy other beers before you get to this one. If you have the chance tough is worth it. Be aware that it has a nice 9.2 % of alcohol.

Since we were in the troubadour mood, and also in the blond mood, I asked for a troubadour magma , it is a nice bitter amber 9.0 %  of alcohol beer. Worth trying.

We got a bit of other beers, but as you can imagine, once you start you can only remember a few because the senses start to be a bit numb after a bit of alcohol, so I will talk about the other ones in a different opportunity.

Beers at Gent (Cervezas en Gent)

After spending some time at Gent and having taste some excellent beers here, I decided that is time to share all the gathered "knowledge" (if you can call it that way), with people that may want to pass by Gent, have a nice time, drink some beers, etc... but and are searching for some advice, some hint to start. I will probably not be the best advice you can find, but I can definitely guarantee you that my advise is the one of an amateur that enjoys beer very much and wants to share that knowledge. At the end the only one that can decide if you like something is yourself but I will just tell you guys my experience.


Después de vivir por un tiempo en Gent (Gante), me di cuenta que llevo mucho tiempo disfrutando cervezas que no son muy famosas en el resto del mundo pero que son excelentes para pasar un buen rato. Esto es una lástima porque estoy seguro que al resto del mundo le encantaría compartir un poco de esta felicidad belga. Dicho esto, decidí empezar a compartir esta experiencia con cualquiera que esté interesado en leer este blog. La verdad es que las cosas tienen mas sentido cuando se comparten, de alguna forma todas estas cervezas sabrán mejor para mi...