Beer Review: West Vleteren

The most beautiful empty crate I have ever emptied

For my birthday last year, Annelies suprised me with not just one sucker punch, but twenty-four, each bottled in a glass bottle marked ‘West Vleteren’.

West Vleteren beer is regarded by many Beer snobs as the beer to beat, consistently rated the best beer in the world (BeerAdvocate.com #1, RateBeer.com #1).

The 10.5% brew was an absolute joy to drink, tasting like a Rochefort with a caramal aftertaste.  The taste of alcohol is not at all overpowering, however this is no simple lager – the many complex flavours and thick malt make it a difficult to drink more than one bottle in a sitting.  I worked my way through half a carton in less than a month, however the last twelve lasted a good deal longer – the scarcity of the brew started to dawn on me.

One of the key ingredients that makes the beer all the more appealing is the difficult path one must take to actually aquire a bottle. For starters, the only place in the world to buy the brew is from the manufacturer themselves, a small monastory in West Flanders. Secondly, a maximum of two crates can be bought by any one car (not person) at a time. And after all that, West Vleteren is only available if you have made a pre-arranged appointment with the monastory, often several weeks in advance.

According to their website, there is no available beer between now and March, and quite possibly longer. It looks as though I’ll be waiting quite some time for my next West Vleteren fix!

Would you play with Humo’s balls?

"Will Mrs Ghentleman later play with our balls?"

This seemingly innocent letter arrived for Mrs Ghentleman this morning, asking if she’d like to come and play with Humo Magazine’s balls.

Aaah, Belgium.

Extreme right-wing students pelted with pies

Last night the University of Gent was the stage of a dramatic battle of ideological pasties, when several extreme-right NSV students were pelted with tarts from some local PCF anarchists.

Wouter Opdenacker, chairman of the NSV declared his disapproval of the act. ” We were not injured, but find it childish and tasteless”.

This could very well be a rally cry for bakers in the area to step up and prepare some tastier pies for the next scheduled match, on 24th of February outside the Gent University’s St. Peter’s square.

Book it in your diaries, and bring along your tasty pastries.

Lees meer (NL) || Read more (EN)

Record of the day: Citay ‘Dream Get Together’

I’ve been listening to Citay’s new record ‘Dream Get Together’ a little too much this week, neglecting almost everything else in its wake. Sprawling guitar solos, over the top 70s inspired prog-rock and quirky boy ‘n girl lyric interchange. This could be another one of those binge albums that I’ll over-consume and never listen to again, however only time will tell.

In the meantime, I thoroughly suggest you give it a listen. If I were a numbers man (WHICH I AM!) I’d go out of my way to rate this a steady 7 out of 10.

Myspace vs. Amazon vs eMusic.com (Chhheeaaap!) vs (highly unethical, but free!) download

Fried Mozzarella Balls

Fried Mozzarella Balls!

OMG BUYING A FRYER!

Flemish Culture Prize = Giant Wang

That's the Belgian minister of Culture giving some guy a statue of a penis in the name of culture

Aaah Belgium, you never fail to impress.

Haiku Beer Review: Hommelbier

Hommelbier

Thought it great at first,
Now – a dry, boring Orval
Only one will do.

I’ve been back to this drop once or twice in the past few months, though despite always being a little disappointed by the blandness, there’s something that gets me buying it again and again. At 7.5% alcohol volume, it’s not exactly a beer that can be sneezed at, however it doesn’t sooth a thirsty throat like a non eleven percent-er should.

Interesting (?) to note is that you can read about Hommelbier on wikipedia in both eastern Flemish, and Western. Flanders. What a place, eh?

Junior Eurovision – Not so European afterall

I’m having a particularly “European moment” this evening, counting down the former-Russian-state entrants for this years Junior Eurovision, anxiously waiting for the appearance of the Belgian entrant.

Somehow in the past week there has been enough publicity behind the Belgian entrant that my girlfriend even knows the words to the song.

What makes this evening all the more interesting is that of the 13 entrants, only 6 are actually in the European Union. And of those six, both Netherlands *and* Belgium are eager entrants, televising the event at primetime on channel 1 (een).

The children in the studio-audience have been dancing in synchronization with the movements of my stomach. What an evening.

Pieter Embrechts and his lovely pants stain

This evening whilst watching a bottle of wine empty before me, I couldn’t help but notice the above semen stain live on television.
Thanks Pieter Embrechts, you made my evening!

Domino Day 2009

When I was a child I remember seeing short ten second clips of ‘domino record attempts’ at the end of television news broadcasts, in the light-hearted segment reserved for post-sports news filler.  However here in Belgium, this ten-second clip is reserved for an entire day.

This Friday was ‘The Domino Day’, where teams from Belgium and Netherlands try to out-do each other with plastic blocks and their wacky ways of knocking them over.

Apparently this spectacle has been held annually since 1974, with every year tonne of falling plastic added to the record books. To save you a trip to wikipedia, I graphed the number of dominoes fallen per year. Now you know that  by 2012 there will be one fallen domino for every person on the planet.

End of times prophesy? WHO CAN SAY!

WHO CAN SAY!