Saturday, February 14, 2009

8 hours of Belgium

It's off to Baltimore, Maryland ... for 72 Hours of Belgium.

Well, actually not quite 72 hours, but it'll be a nice afternoon of Belgian beers at the Belgian Beer Fest at Max's Taphouse.

A three day festival, it began Friday morning with a brunch and it will continue today through Sunday night. Available are over 120 different Belgian draughts, and 175 different bottles. (Go here for a semi-complete list.) There are several US premiers, including casks of Hanssens Young Lambic and Hanssens Old Kriek. And of the several beers (ha, ha!) I tasted, these two were spectacular, showing more of a soft lactic acidity than acetic sharpness.

UPDATE 2009.02.15:

Lambic and Twitter


In the interest of citizen journalism, I attempted to post tasting notes to Twitter and photos to Flickr. I was assiduous ... for awhile.

UPDATE: Statistics
  • 132 different Belgian drafts
  • 172 different bottled Belgian beers
  • 40 different Belgian breweries
  • 5 American breweries
  • 3000+ attendees
  • 4,800 gallons of draft and cask beer consumed (300+ kegs and casks)
  • 100+ cases of beer consumed
as reported by the Brews Brothers in Mid-Atlantic Brewing News, April/May 2009 (Vol.11/#2)

1 comment:

  1. So I'm a hardcore beer nerd living in Baltimore. My weakness - Belgian strong dark ales and tripels.

    I stumble upon this blog a few weeks ago and have been enjoying it.

    I return from 72 Hours of Belgium, late Friday night.... hoping to read some great updates, impressions, etc. from you and.... as of today (Sunday) - nothing!! Everything ok? :P

    ReplyDelete

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