Day Five of Belgian Beer Tour 2008

Day Five Monday September 22nd, 2008

Brewery Bavik 

In the morning, we visited another great brewery, Bavik the town of Bavikhove, near Kortrijk. Assistant brewer Yves Benoit gave us a very nice tour of this large Flemish brewery, which was founded in 1894 and is now in the fourth generation of the Debrabander family.
We walked from the brew house to the impressive fermentation line and bottling line.

Highlights of the tour were the big oak vessels. The Petrus Aged Pale, the result of this fermentation with lactic acids, is sold  in the States and imported by Global Beer Network.
Afterwards, in the tasting room, we were able to taste all the beers: Wittekerke, the excellent wheat beer and the new raspberry flavoured Rosé, the Petrus products, the Pilaarbijters and also the very good un-pasteurized Pilsner. Another great visit and very friendly reception!!!

We had a great lunch afterwards in a local restaurant which is also an outlet of the Bavik brewery so we could taste all the beers.

Brewery Roman 

In the afternoon we visited the Roman brewery in Oudenaarde, in the province of Eastern Flanders. This is one of the largest family breweries in Belgium and they produce some of the finest beers like Ename Abbey Beer and Sloeber Golden Ale. The buildings date from the 1930’s but are in mint condition. The huge old steam engines that used to power the whole brewery have been preserved in what is now the museum part of the brewery. This is truly impressive! Their pilsner ROMY PILS is their biggest seller. They own several hundreds of pubs all over Flanders and the pilsner is what people drink most. They also bottle spring water and produce a range of sodas and soft drinks. We saw the bottling line and the keg filling line as well as the warehouses. In the majestic tasting room on the first floor we were able to taste all those fantastic beers and Mr. Lode Roman, who had kindly given us the tour of the brewery, along with his commercial director and the brew master, answered all our questions.

After the visit to this great place, the bus took us to Ghent, the capital of Eastern Flanders. It is now a city of over 200,000 inhabitants and since the middle-ages it has been an important town and centre of commerce and industry ( mainly textile). The city guide was waiting for us in the lobby of the hotel as we checked in. She took us on a tour through the old medieval centre and we admired the prestiguous gables from the medieval guildhouses and saw the “Gulde Draak” ( = golden dragon) statue on top of the Bellfrey  tower, as well as the cathedral and many other magnificent churches.The extensive walk finally brought us to the “Gravensteen” ( = the castle of the Lords), this is a unique fortress that has survived for over 10 centuries!!!

Pictures in Ghent:

Opposite the castle is a famous beer bar calld Waterhuis aan de Bierkant and we tasted the housebeer called “Klokke Roeland” there. It is brewed by Brouwerij Van Steenberge.
We had dinner at Chez Leontine, a restaurant next to the pub and owned by the same enthusiastic people. We had a traditional “Gentse Waterzooi’ there and were joined by Jef Versele from the brewery Van Steenberge and his salesman Gert. After dinner Jef took us for an unforgettable pubcrawl through Ghent.

Click for Day Six