Beer Tours

As a Belgian, I would advise to rent a car and do a DIY tour. Belgium is flooded with a lot of breweries and it's a small country. So it's easy to visit quite a few of them. Additionally, the tours will only do the well known ones while it's often nice to also visit a few of the smaller ones.

If you like to cycle ... check out beercycling.www they have 5–10-day tours of biking and beers in Belgium & Germany

Certainly look at tours, but have to admit, we just did our own thing, one time in Germany, the other trip in Belgium. Most of the tours we saw were walking tours focusing on a city, usually including food with the beer. I do recall some multiday tours, but they were pricey, and focused mainly on the big breweries.

You could easily list 2-5 breweries in each of Brussels, Ghent, Bruges, and Antwerp, and visit, using only public transport. If you have a car, then you could get out to breweries around Ypres, or outside of Brussels to Three Fonteinen and Tilquin.

A couple of challenges though...the "taproom" culture you have at breweries in the US is not as prevalent. Most smaller breweries are working shops that distribute beers. They might have the tap room open only a day or two a week, but many have no taproom. The Abbey breweries do not give tours (one might) and do not allow you on the grounds, there usually though is a gift shop or "sort-of" affiliated restaurant/bar nearby. But still, we found a good number of breweries to visit, but did most of our beer tasting in the many excellent beer bars in the cities.

If interested, I could probably come up with a list of places we went.

Dupont brewery in Tourpes (east of Tournai/Doornik) has an excellent tour and tasting if you have a car. A bit out of way, but well worth the trip. Caution: They serve very generous samples! 🍻🍺
https://www.brasserie-dupont.com/en

I’d be interested in any ‘must visit’ breweries or pubs for sampling beers, understanding that many don’t have the US-style tap rooms. Thanks!