Friday September 14th 2007
Friday was a day of contemplation with a visit to the abbey of Westvleteren. But first we drove to Poperinge for a visit to the just recently renovated Hop museum.
The history of hops, the plant, how it came to us, how important the hops culture used to be for this part of Flanders, everything is explained here in an interesting and interactive way.
It must be said that we had a very good guide who explained things very thoroughly.
After tasting a Hommelbier (brewed by Brouwerij Van Eecke with fresh Belgian hops) we drove to Westvleteren to take a glance at the Sint Sixtus Abbey. After a walk around the abbey, we drove to Oostvleteren, east of the abbey, and stopped at a nice Tavern called Vleterhof to taste the Westvleteren trappists. Regnier had arranged for a case of the different types (blonde 6% vol., dark 8% vol. and dark 10.% vol.) to be served with lunch. It is so rare nowadays that even the restaurant 2 miles away from the abbey can’t get it anymore, at least not on a regular base.
The first real brewery on the program that day was Brouwerij Deca in Woesten. It is a drinks distributor with a small old brewery on the back. The drink-center makes their own beer, called Antiek Blond and Dubbel , but they also rent out the facilities to brewers that want to come and brew there. One of them is “De Struise Brouwers” of Veurne. They make an excellent beer called Pannepot, a 10.5 massive dark ale with spices and long lagering. They also make a wheat beer called Struise Witte, a blonde called Kloeke Blonde, and an amber Struise Rosse. With Xmas there is also the strong blonde ale called TJeeses. It is a typical example of a cascade brewery, with the brew house on top and all the other stages of the brewing lower down to benefit gravity for letting flow the wort from one stage to a next one. We were expected at 5 PM at brewery Van Eecke in nearby Watou but Michel, de brewmaster, had called Regnier to invite us to a hopfarm first, where we could follow the actual harvesting and processing of the hops!! One of the highlights of the tour for sure!!
The bus stopped at a small farmhouse in the middle of the hops fields and we saw the tractor bringing in the hops plants that had just been harvested.
Those were going through a noisy machine in order to separate the flowers from the plant itself and later on the flowers were dried in a walk-in over, similar to the kilning towers used for drying wet malt. Very spectacular!
Later Michel showed us around the brewery, explained us that the bottling facilities were in the other plant in Boezinge.
He joined us for a fabulous beer dinner in the world famous Hommelhof restaurant just opposite the square of Watou.
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