🍻 Belgian Beers 🍻

A journey through my favorite beverage

A quick overview 🤓

Beer in Belgium includes pale ales, lambics, Flemish red ales, sour brown ales, strong ales and stouts. In 2018, there were 304 active breweries in Belgium, including international companies, such as AB InBev, and traditional breweries including Trappist monasteries. On average, Belgians drink 68 litres of beer each year, down from around 200 each year in 1900. Most beers are bought or served in bottles, rather than cans, and almost every beer has its own branded, sometimes uniquely shaped, glass. In 2016, UNESCO inscribed Belgian beer culture on their list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity.

Want to know more about it? Check the Wikipedia page. 📚

How I came to know and love Belgian beers 😎

It was 2015, and I had recently graduated from my University. After spending 10 months in Erasmus, I was hungry for an international experience,. I found an amazing two-years master's program in a small Belgian city called Louvain-la-Neuve. That is where and when I met my favourite beverage of all time: Belgian beer.
While in Belgium, I used to spend a lot of time with my friends, discussing about politics and International Relations - those were the my master's majors. During those conversations, we would always have a beer. Of course, in Belgium we had the chance to discover hundreds of different brands and tastes. Needless to say, it was an amazing discovery journey. We enjoyed it at the point that we started collecting the empty bottles that we would drink. At the end of the two years, we had 110 different empty bottles in our collection.
As you know, each Belgian beer requires a different kind of glass. It may seem stupid, but matching the beer with the right glass entirely transforms the tasting experience. So, together with the empty bottles, I started collecting my favorite beers' glasses. That collection is still with me, and it counts 18 glasses. They traveled with me around Europe and they are a constant reminder of one of the best years and experiences of my life.

Need some inspiration to start? Here are some classics suggestions from your Coder 🍺:

🍻 Thank you for reading and...see you at the brewery! 🍻