Great advice from the 1901 edition of Baedeker’s Belgium and Holland, especially the last line: “Belgian beer… is largely consumed by natives, but will probably be found unpalatable by strangers”.
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4 replies on “Avoid Belgian beer in Brussels”
How times change. I think the “problem” may have been that most of the beer consumed by the Bruxellois in those days would have been straight lambic or faro (or even Mars at that time). Even today what you might call the “ordinary” tourist would baulk at one of those. (apart from Mars of course which has now vanished)
One thing I find particularly interesting about this is that Belgian beer seems to have only two subdivisions: German-style lager and lambic. So what about dubbels and trippels and all the rest? I’ve read that these are fairly recent inventions, but didn’t really believe it before now.
Baedeker guides often have very weird information on beer. They’ll send you to Hacker-Pschorr in Bruges and advise you on where to get Bavarian beer in Berlin. Having said that….
Interesting that the only sort of lager available seems to have been Munich, which, of course, would almost certainly still have been “Dunkel” at that time – even in London you would have been able to find Pilsner and Vienna lagers as well.