Weekend in Bruges

Nothing to do with the movie starring Colin Farrell. No, instead it was a very messy weekend in Belgium for my birthday in 2006 (original trip report). I travelled with my (now) wife and two very good friends. Before leaving, the boys set themselves a challenge of drinking as many Belgian beers as possible. This soon reduced down to 100 beers, then to 50 beers. In the end, we managed to get through 37 different beers in just over 24 hours.

The 125 breweries in Belgium produce around 800 standard beers or over 8700 beers if you include one-off brews. 60% of this is exported! The average Belgian consumes just under 100 litres of beer per year! Sounds like heaven to me.

Anyway, when we started tasting the beers in Bruges that weekend (most were consumed in a beer cafe called ‘t Brugs Beertje), we also made tasting notes and scored each beer. We also started on the lighter, low-alcohol beers – pacing ourselves. However, by late night we had turned into babbling gooses. I have a photo of me with a beer glass in my mouth. I also have video footage of that weekend, but it’s not great blog material.

Below are the scores. As you can see, things started to get pretty “technical” later in the evening. Scores with seven decimal places? (Maredsous Bruin at 7.6454728 out of 10)

As you can also see, we definitely preferred the darker beers. And I still do!

*Footnote: All ratings are our own personal experience. Some were
made while under the influence of alcohol. The initial before the
beer name indicates who chose the beer. The percentage is the ABV
as indicated on the bottle. Scores were accurate at the time of
consumption.