First Time in Belgium

From the Midi station Brussels, you can either take the #50 bus to the Lot station, which takes about 40 min, and walk about 7 or 8 minutes to the Lambik-o-droom. You can also take an IC train to the Lot station, which takes about 15 minutes. I suggest bringing some cheese, bread, and charcuterie and make it a lunch thing.

 

One bit of general advice: although Belgian beer is great, there's actually quite a lot of fairly average stuff too - by-the-numbers contract brews and faux-authentic macro stuff, for instance. Beer bars - even good ones - have a tendency to pad out their beer lists by stocking anything they can get their hands on, and beer menus are generally just a list of beer names, maybe divided into blonde / amber / brown if you're lucky, so unless you can get a good recommendation from the staff it can be hard to pick the most interesting stuff from a list of unfamiliar beers. (Except maybe if you can see the bottles in which case the one with the most amateurish label is often a good bet.)

Hence if you don't already have a fairly good idea of what you're looking for, and would rather not just take pot luck, it might be worth getting some sort of beer guide to help you to sort the wheat from the chaff. I've used Joe Stange and TIm Webb's Good Beer Guide Belgium in the past - it's absolutely great and there's a new edition just out if you can get hold of a copy.

Apologies if this is all super-obvious.

 

Make sure you hit up Malt Attacks in Brussels. They're a great bottle shop and the proprietor is super knowledgeable about beer whether it's local or international.

 

Hey man, from one Bay Area guy to another, I'm hitting Brussels for 48 hours on my way to Croatia with the wife in Oct. and thought I'd bug you for some brussels insight. Have you been to Beer Planet (battleship) in Brussels. I was curious if you felt Malt Attacks might be better than Beer Planet (my buddy went there 1.5 mos ago).

Most importantly, I'm planning on hitting Moeder Lambic but didn't realize there were two locations. One is near the Mannekin Pis and Grand Palace (est in 2009) at Place Fountainas 8, 1000 Brussels and the other is apparently the original location (est in 2006) at Rue de Savoie, 68, 1060 Saint Gilles. Did you go to either...I'm trying to decide which one I should go to.

 

You know, I was intending on going to Beer Planet on my last full day there but opted to go to Bruges instead. From what I remember, though, Beer Planet is in central Brussels while Malt Attacks is close to the edge of Saint Gilles which is a more appealing, low key neighborhood. As for Moeder Lambic, I had a better time at the Saint Gilles location, but if you're running out of time and need a place to go while in central Brussels, the other location is fine. They both have good bottle lists. If you have a lot planned in the central district, I'd recommend going to Nüetnigenough for dinner. Great food and nice bottle list too. If you wanna chat about Brussels over a beer, let me know. I can maybe help you devise an efficient itinerary. Cheers.

 

Thanks man I appreciate that. I believe you’re in SF right. SF is always a little tough for me to swing but regardless I’ll see what I can do.

 

I’m actually in Albany but moving to Oakland at the end of the week. I hardly ever make it to the City myself.

 

All fine suggestions. I realize I'm too late for OP, but FWIW, the local view: Malt Attacks is the place to find a well-curated sample (as opposed to the full gamut) of the new things filtering into the craft scene, and check out some things from abroad. Beer Planet (among other specialists) has a much wider selection of Belgians, including the classics and sometimes higher-priced, whalezy things. I suggest going to a big grocery store before somewhere like BP, lest you accidentally pay tourist prices for widely available Trappists and such. But MA won't have things you'll see in a supermarket. ... In my view, Moeder in the center is best for a beer-hunter diving really deep into the Belgian catalogue. For a first visit, you can go somewhere more atmospheric that still has days' worth great stuff that will be new to you. Search more in this thread as required.

 

Question, and thanks everyone for helping the OP (and people like me piggy-backing on the recos!)... suggestions for dinner and/or drinks in central area that are fun atmosphere's and good for both beer geeks and non-geeks?

Just found out a friend of mine and his co-workers will be in Brussels same week as I will be there. I like good beer, he's happy pounding Coors Light all night. He'll try different beers and doesn't hate anything, but I'm sure he'd be happy just having fun in bar/pub where great beer isn't the focus.

If I was planning on meeting him in a big American city, for example, I'd probably try and find a YardHouse or equivalent, where I can get some good beer, but he can have fish and chips, and maybe dip his toes into an IPA between rounds of whatever lager.

 

Most places in Brussels that are aimed at a mixed market will have some sort of generic industrial-style lager on tap, so you've got quite a lot of options! Het Goudblommeke in Papier might be a good bet - very "old Brussels" decor, Magritte used to hang out there, fairly lively, a short but decent beer list, and good honest Flemish food. If you want to move on, you can go a couple of doors up to La Porte Noire which is an ancient brick-vaulted cellar with a load of good beer (plus probably a generic lager on tap), some risk of live jazz, and a studenty, left-bankish vibe.

 

Does anyone have any recommendations on places to drink or buy Westy 12 in brussels?

 

Westvleteren: More or less everywhere. The Belgian Chocolate shop in the Midi train station had them (yellow/green/blue) for 18 € a bottle to go. In de Verzekering tegen de Grote Dorst charge less than 10 € to drink in. And most beer shops have them for something in between.

 

Do you mean Aux Vieux Temps in central Brussels, maybe? It does usually have it for around 10. It wouldn't even have occurred to me ask about it at Dorst but anyway that's (well) outside Brussels.