A note from Guild member Siobhan McGinn about Podge’s Belgian Beer Tours
I have been working on the LambicLand Tour which is almost complete. If you need to restock your beer cellar after a long winter, remember we always visit a quality beer warehouse on each Tour so you can buy some of your favourites to take home. I know I’ll be getting some more Orval and lambic beers, for as the Bard states:
“Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And my beer stock hath all too short a date” (William Shakespeare, Sonnet 18)
Tour 96 / LambicLand Revisited – Toer de Geuze – Wednesday 1 May 2019 – Monday 6 May 2019
Since the last newsletter I have arranged visits to the following top breweries, beer cafes and restaurants:
- Group meal at 3 Fonteinen restaurant in Beersel;
- Brewery visit and tasting at Armand DeBelder’s Lambic o Droom in Lot.
- Group meal at lambic restaurant Boelekewis in Alsemberg;
- Brewery visit and tasting at Jef Van den Steen’s Glazen Toren Brewery in Erpe- Mere;
- Brewery visit and tasting at Belgoo/Lambiek Fabriek
- Brewery visit and tasting at Verzet Brewery in Anzegem
- Group meal at great beer cafe and restaurant in ‘t Smiske (The Smithy) in Geluwe, with a beer card of 130 choices.
- Visit to Bierhalle Deconinck beer warehouse in Vichte with a choice of 1400 beers so you can stock up on beers to take home, particularly any special lambics you didn’t get to try on Tour (an unlikely event).
Resistance is futile. Come and join me on Tour. Remember I have a special treat for those on tour and have found in our cellars (actually the back bedroom) some bottles of twenty-year-old HORAL Mega Blend from 2009, the first time it was ever blended for the Toer de Geuze from a melange of all the lambics of the extant breweries. We can have a taste of this rarity on Tour! The Tour cost is £885 per person sharing a twin or double room. The Single Supplement is £225. If you are travelling alone and want to share a room with another traveller please contact me as we are regularly able to pair up travellers in twin rooms to avoid the need for payments of Single Supplements. If you want to join us on this Tour please send the deposit of £120 per person to secure your place. Read More.<http://www.podgebeer.co.uk/tour-96-lambicland-revisited-2019.html>
Tour 97 / The Waterloo Tour: Breweries, Beer and Battlefields of Brabant
Thursday 8 August – Tuesday 13 August 2019
The Tour cost is £895 per person based on sharing in a twin or double room. The Single Supplement is £225. If you are travelling alone and want to share a room with another traveller please contact us as we are regularly able to pair up travellers in twin rooms to avoid the need for payments of Single Supplements. I’m aiming to include a visit to Hougoumont Farm, the key to the battlefield. I’ve also just found a Salamanca Eagle carved from wood from the gates of Hougoumont nestled within the Essex regiment Museum down the road here in Chelmsford, find out more on Tour! If you want to join us on this Tour please send a deposit of £130 per person to secure your place. Read More.<http://www.podgebeer.co.uk/tour-97-the-waterloo-tour-brabants-breweries-beer-battlefields.html>
Tour 98 / The In Flanders (Hop) Fields Tour
Friday 27 September – Tuesday 1 October 2019
This Tour is a four-night Tour staying at the pretty Oude Abdij Hotel in Lo at a beautiful time of year. It will explore the beers and hops of West Flanders at the end of the hop picking season, but will also include a unique chance to find out what was going on with beer 100 years ago in this area. More particularly, what British soldiers were drinking in Flanders which caused so many courts martials for drunkenness to take place, making it one of the top ‘crimes’ in the British Army. Siobhan will give a couple of evening lectures revealing new information coming to light in her researches into alcohol and the British army in the Great War from findings at The National Archives in Kew. Let me know if you want to go on the interested list for this one- price to be set later in 2019! I have booked us in at the new Bar Bernard the bar with 360 degree views over the Flanders plain built on top of the St Bernardus Brewery in Watou. We’ll have a group beer cuisine meal here.
Tour 99 / Christmas in Antwerp
Sunday 22 December – Friday 27 December 2019
We will once again be spending Christmas in Antwerp in 2019. I have plans for a meal at a restaurant in the grounds of a beautiful East Flanders castle with the oldest wrought iron suspension bridge in Europe and as if that were not exciting enough, the restaurant is in the brick tower dove-cot with room for 700 pigeons. I can’t wait. We are already booked in at the castle Slot Ostende in Goes for a Christmas Day brewery visit, beer tasting and luxury hot and cold buffet. Read More.
For those of you who travel to Belgium independently, or if you just want to know more about beer cafes and beer tourism in Belgium, check out Podge’s Belgian City Bar Guide online maps which cover the whole country. Read More.
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CHEERS! Siobhan McGinn (Mrs Podge)
Podge’s Belgian Beer Tours
Driving people to drink since 1994
www.podgebeer.co.uk<http://www.podgebeer.co.uk>
01245 354677
mobile 00 44 (0)772 272 4558