Belgian Beer Festival is lurve Written on September 29, 2008, by fangela fangula.

Folks looking for images of the actual event can find them at my Flickr page. The review that I wrote with a friend for the Bostonist is below:

Belgium is a beautiful country. It brings us chocolate, freedom fries, waffles, and a weird molecule sculpture. It brings us the intoxicating idea of the European Union, and the even more intoxicating beverage known as beer. We had the opportunity to savor the incredibly diverse and complex varieties of beer at Saturday’s little Belgium-in-Boston, Beer Advocate’s Belgian Beer Festival.

Fangela’s tasting partner in crime on this whirlwind tour of Belgian beverages is the semi-anonymous N., a nice atheist boy she met at church (Mr. Deity or Ceiling Cat or Whomever It May Concern bless those uber-inclusive Unitarians). N. feigns a lack of experience in beer, but never fails to platonically impress all in the room with the vastness of his booze trivia. Truly his fridge overfloweth (in moderation).

We’re greeted at Saturday’s evening session by a man with a long beard and faux-monk robes. The atmosphere is all dubbel and tripel and oud bruin and generally pretty snazzy. We grab our 2-oz tasting cups and begin devising a strategy of appreciative ingestion.

We start out at B. United International, an importer manned by two charming fellows who introduce us to the Saison de Pipaix by Brasserie a Vapeur, a brew made by what the pourers describe as a crazy dude with missing fingers. It later turns out to be N.’s favorite of the evening. Although this company is an importer of multiple brands, Fangela adores the graphic design of their promotional materials.

Fangela becomes inexplicably won over by the offerings of Sam Adams. Fangela confesses that she thought that Sam’s Belgian brews might be a bit too mainstream at first, but he manages to win over her heart (and her taste buds) with the cherry-soaked Knee Deep Kriek. Fangela has a strong interest in Sam for the first part of the evening, but after a while his personality starts to seem really flat. Do you see the tentative-yet-tender embrace that Fangela shares with Sam in the pictures posted here? He doesn’t even seem to notice.

N. eventually finds his other favorite brew of the evening at Shelton Brothers of Belchertown, MA, an importer that offers a number of beers with divine names such as Mikkeller Monk’s Brew, Serafijn Celtic Angel, and St. Somewhere Lectio Divina. N.’s brew of choice is the Celtic Angel, in which he detects mysteriously chocolatey undertones despite its halo-like color in the glass.

A dude behind the Wetten Importers counter applies pink elephant temporary tattoos, the logo of the fairly well-known Delirium Tremens Golden Ale. We discover this from a very smart woman who proudly wears the little pink pachyderm just below her right collar bone.

This same woman introduces us to a lavender beer by The Bruery, which also turns out to offer a Thai basil beer. On our way to The Bruery table, Fangela accidentally stumbles upon her favorite, a rosemary beer called The Ten Comandments by The Lost Abbey, a decadent beverage that makes her want to harvest all her rosemary plants from the summer and start brewing in the basement. Fangela makes clear her intents to pass out bottles of this stuff at her next gathering of lady friends, as a contemporary alternative to tea.

We take a break and go for some grub. First we enjoy sausages from the Sunset Grill. We find they taste like sausage, and we like sausage. N. says he wants the pig intestines to absorb some of the alcohol so his own intestines don’t have to. We also try the pumpkin stout ice, which causes us both to swoon. The dark stout flavors pair excellently with sweet and spicy pumpkin pie flavors, and it’s all perfectly mellowed by the underlying dairyness.

Fangela nearly stuffs herself on chocolate drizzled waffles, made to order by Waffle Haus of Vermont. Fangela’s dedication to her own waffle iron definitely decreased quite a bit, and we plan to visit Waffle Haus again soon to decadently nom amongst a canopy of turning autumn leaves.

Beer drinkers hoping to temp fate should try the Corsendonk Apple White by the Brouwerij Corsendonk of Phoenix Imports. The wafts of the uncorked bottle tease Fangela from a booth away. N. remarks that Fangela apparently really like this brewer, as she doesn’t hesitate to shuffle her own “corsendonk” back to this table several times.

Also notable was the Belgian Chocolate Stout by Harpoon Brewery. It featured Dry-nibs from Taza Chocolate, a Somerville-based company.

The crowd becomes noticeably bumbly somewhere around 9pm. The atmosphere also becomes increasingly congenial, with women showing each other their pink elephant fake tattoos, which begin appearing in increasingly scandalous locations.

We sample a huge number of varieties from other superb vendors, but recording the details becomes difficult as free tables became occupied. Oh, and also the profusion of cute, smart, and (indeed) inebriated folks in the room distract us somewhat. We make several attempts to grab phone numbers, but are generally too shy to follow through. Either that, or our tactics just confuse people.

After our evening at the Beer Advocate’s Belgian Beer Festival, we’d like to kick it with a bunch of rowdy monks, as well as a whole lot of uniquely Belgian brews, by the Waterfalls of Coo. That said, we’re willing to settle for next year’s Beer Advocate Belgian Beer Fest as an alternative.

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