I love beer, but I'm not a fan of high alcohol beers, something around the ABV of a Guinness works for me, somewhere in the neighborhood of 4-5%. Going to Belgium for three days, I know little about Belgian beers, are there beers in that ABV range you would recommend or is that just not a Belgian thing?
Paul
The good news is you have about 3,000 options to try, however most of them will exceed 5%.
I really like Trappistes Rochefort, and they make it in 6%, 8% and 10% (strength). If you find yourself in Bruges, head straight to 't Brugs Beertje and order the 6% variety. They'll pour it in the proper glass, which makes it so smooth you won't be overwhelmed by the alcohol content. Order their cheese sampler to go with it, and it'll taste even better. Have a great trip!
The fruit beers are also around 4% (a kriek is a cherry beer, une framboise / een framboos is a raspberry beer, and you can also get peach, but much less) and I think unique to Belgium. In schools they used to serve table beer (1.5%) until the 1980s!
Lavandula
My favorite beers when I was in Belgium as an exchange student were Kriek and Palm. Kriek is known as a “women’s beer”, because of it’s lower alcohol content. I liked it because it wasn’t hoppy and didn’t taste like beer. My host family warned me against drinking Duvel because it was strong and would “make you stand on your head.” I hated Jupiler (a very common beer) but I liked just about every other beer that I tried. Cafes will have a sign out front telling you what the house beer is, so if you walk in and ask for “een pintje”, you’ll get a glass of it.
On of the best lower ABV Belgian beers is Westverleten Blonde or Singel. Generally, Singels will be lower ABV than Dubbels, which are lower than Tripels, etc. They are brewed in most Abbeys and often tend to be consumed by the monks rather than served or sold to the beer loving crowds. These styles may have other names at each brewery or abbey and Blondes are usually lower ABV in most breweries.
Here in the US we tend to buy the higher ABV Belgians, so few low ABVs are imported or brewed by local craft breweries. Just ask your server what is on offer and ask If they have a low ABV on tap.
Have a great time.
The variety of available beers is truly amazing. There are hyper-strong beers, labeled dubbel or tripel, and even quadrupel, brewed with two to fours times as much malt, yielding darker colors and flavors, along with considerably more alcohol, but there are lots of less intense (but still very worthy) beers. And every brand has its own specific glass, sized and shaped to accentuate the features of each particular beer.
There are also alcohol-free brews (“zero-zero,” or 0.0%) beers from many major producers, in addition to their regular beers. Hoegaarden is one. They claim to have all the flavor and novelty of the akcohol. If you want some level of alcohol in your glass, there are still lots of options that aren’t super-alcoholic.
The Kreik (Dutch/Flemish for “sour cherry”), Framboise (French for “raspberry”), and Peche (French for “peach”), are “Lambic” beers, and are outstanding for their color, flavor complexity, and drinkability, and are not like a drinking a glass of of fruit juice. Lindeman’s is one brand you might find in Atlanta, and a particular beer that’s kriek-based, but is so much more, is Duchesse de Bourgogne. We used to live two blocks from a major liquor store in the Denver area, a superstore 20 years before that was was a Thing (and they’ve expanded even more now), and after our 2008 trip to Belgium, were delighted to discover that they were starting to carry Belgian beers, including the Lindeman’s and Duchesse I mentioned above. Then they stopped. They were still carrying Duvel (“devil”), Orval, Delirium Tremons (logo is a pink elephant - I kid you not), and other higher-alcohol beers, but not the Lambics. The manager said that the regulations (not sure if it was Colorado liquor laws or national, or what) made those beers too high in alcohol level to be soda pop, but too low to be actual “beers,” so they stopped stocking them. Well, that somehow got resolved, and they’re available here again.
We were at a restaurant one evening, ordering lots of different beers, and two men who’d overheard us came over to say “Hi,” in perfect English. They made some recommendations, and told us the story about the Orval logo, and the legend of a fish that recovered a distraught woman’s lost ring in the water. They also talked about a brewery that was releasing a once-a-year limited beer, with a one-case limit per person (or was it one six-pack?), and how they made a big trip, with wives in-tow, so they could get there in time to score the maximum number of bottles allowed.
Jupiler was mentioned above. We saw lots of empty cans lying around Bruges, and young people (drinking age? maybe) quaffing from cans, and quickly surmised that it was the brand for kids wanting a cheap buzz. Think Coors Light, Miller High Life … actually, think Keystone or Pabst Blue Ribbon.
You server at a bar or rest will be pleased to explain what’s available, and the attributes of each beer. If you want less alcohol than a dubbel, they’ll have lots of suitable alternatives. Just don’t go with a Jupiler.
Most traditional Belgian lagers have an alcohol content of 5.2% ('een pintje', as mentioned above)
Also Palm, the amber beer, is 5.2%
The major exceptions to this are :
For lower alcohol content, look no further than fruit beers.
Most popular exemples are
And last but not least, bear in mind that virtually every Belgian beer brand now offers one or more alcohol-free (0.0%) and/or low-alcohol (up to 0.5%) versions.
If you find yourself in Bruges, head straight to 't Brugs Beertje and order the 6% variety. They'll pour it in the proper glass, which makes it so smooth you won't be overwhelmed by the alcohol content.
Quite funny remark ... In Belgium, every beer is served in their own glass in ALL pubs.
I got my husband a set of Belgian beer glasses for Christmas one year. So far, we still have all of them; no accidents with shards scattered around. These include:
I don’t think there’s an English Pint glass in Belgium, unless you maybe ordered something British
The one thing that possibly has a greater variety than the number of available beers is the number of sauces you can get with your fries. In addition to the pedestrian mayo or ketchup, there are tons more. Samurai Sauce seemed to be the spiciest.
Cyn,
If you want to make your own Samurai Sauce:
Optional: a pinch of paprika, cayenne pepper or a dash of Sriracha sauce
I don’t think there’s an English Pint glass in Belgium
Oh yes, not a Pint glass, but 1/2 litre (almost the same)
Examples:
Not to mention that all lager beers (Jupiler, Stella Artois, Cristal Alken, Primus Haacht, ...) have their own 50cl beer glasses. You’ll find them mainly in university towns. Be sure to visit Europe's longest bar (Leuven)
https://www.visitleuven.be/en/oude-markt
And don’t forget: most Belgian beers (except the lagers) are made for sipping, not for drinking.
I don't think Jupiler is a "beer for kids" as such. It's just a mass market commercial beer, popular with a wide demographic. That's what I drank in Brussels and the Belgians I was with drank too. I'm no connoisseur, and I've pretty much given up the booze, but I would often drink Hoegaarden or Leffe when I saw it on tap in the UK. They're brewed by big commercial companies too and are stronger than American or British beers, but are dead easy to drink and tasty.
I have no problem with 250ml glasses rather than a pint or 500ml. Even the less strong commercial beers are better drunk in the smaller glasses in my opinion, unless you're out to get hammered.
Myself I can't abide the odour let alone the taste of traditional beer, and alcohol in any significant quantity and/or on an empty stomach makes me quite ill, but when we were in Belgium I developed a fondness for Leffe Ruby which is a fruit beer and at 5% a single bottle along with a meal had no ill effect.
Lots of good comments, but there are some styles of beer to look for that will be at the lower end of the ABV scale, but most will run just slightly above 5% (which is a natural target for brewing, you have to work a bit to get more, or less than that)
The basics for you would be any beer labeled a Whit (white), a Blonde, or a Golden. These tend to be lower alcohol, more refreshing. Also would be both a Saison, a farmhouse beer with a natural yeast, and a Gueuze, also natural yeast but tangier. Both of these can be a bit of a shock to your system.
In the Gueuze category is also the ones loaded with fruit, Raspberry, Cherry, Peach, etc. Fruit tones down the funkiness of the Gueuze.
Probably the common ones to avoid would be the Dubbels and Triples, maybe worth a try, but definitely higher alcohol.
Yo may find that due to the flavors developed in Belgian beer, what you do not like about higher alcohol beers just is not as much an issue. In the US high ABV craft beers tend to be dark stouts and porters loaded with heavy flavors or aged in boozy casks, there are some of those in Belgium, just much more variety.
If you let us know where you will be, I can recommend some beer bars or breweries.
One thing to know about the Belgian beers is that their water content is lower than you may be used to. For that reason they are served in smaller glasses. Whereas in other countries you may get 1/2l, in Belgium it is more likely going to be 1/3 or 1/4l per serving.
@WengenK
... this has to be the biggest load of rubbish I’ve ever heard about our beers.
Worldwide, every beer – whether brewed in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland or the US – is generally made up of 90% to 95% water. The differences in taste and quality between countries do not lie in the amount of water, but in the composition of that water and the brewing process.
You may well have heard (but completely misunderstood) that, thanks to its production process, Belgium has managed to limit the amount of water required to produce 1 litre of beer to 3 litres. This includes the water needed for cleaning, rinsing and cooling. In breweries outside Belgium, this can amount to 6 litres of water or more.
I've drunk bottled Duvel a few times too. That's another one of the popular brands you see a lot. That's quite a bit stronger than a Jupiler though and you can taste it. It's quite punchy, yet it's a blond. Nice really cold, but you need to be careful if you've got a pack of 6 of them for yourself.
Duvel ... That's quite a bit stronger than a Jupiler though and you can taste it
Not necessarily... there’s also Duvel 6.66 (as well as the standard version, which is 8.5%).
https://www.duvel.com/nl-be/het-bier/duvel-666#flyout
We had fun with beers in Bruges a few years ago. My husband and I each ordered a different beer at each meal. We wrote the names and a comment on each. Since we shared the beers we tasted more than 16 different flavors. Our reverence is towards darker hardier brews. Funny flavors were not tasted. Also non alcoholic beers were nixed. It was a beer adventure! No, we didn’t keep the beer notes 🎶
If you're in Bruges you may want to go to https://www.letrappistebrugge.be/, very cool ambiance in the basement of a former monastery. There are about 300 beers on the menu and if I remember correctly, the alcohol content was listed for each.
there’s also Duvel 6.66
Ah I hadn't heard of that. It might be a bit mellower for the OP.
... this has to be the biggest load of rubbish I’ve ever heard about
our beers.
Look. I was born and raised in Belgium.
You completely missed the jokeI. n Belgium the serving sizes for beer are smaller than in eg. the UK or Germany, and the beer is stronger. So you get served less water...
And "Lower water content" is just a tongue-in-cheek way of saying "more alcohol".
