Düsseldorf's brewing innovations

Picking up ou new US student at Düsseldorf airport, I found some time (his flight was 4 hours late) to drive to my favourite beer grocery in Ddorf for buying some new Schlüssel Alt, which is my favourite summer Alt, because of its light jasmine flavour.

But hey, this shop has more to give away than the nice fluid of Ddorf's Alt.

At first, I found a rare bottle, I was desparately searching for a whole year now: Uerige, my other favourite, decided last year to brew a lemonade, using malt, hops and elder flower. Not only my minor daughter was more than happy about our discovery.




It is not sweet at all, has a slight taste of caramel with a decent note of the natural elder flower that is used to brew the lemonade. A little bit, it reminds me of the German malt beer, but not as sweet as it. So it's a refreshing summer lemonade, but brewed and it has a nise foam as well :-)

The other discovery was a new brew by Füchschen, which is in fact my third favourite micro brewery in my hometown. They decided to "go to Bavaria", by brewering a Hefeweizen (yeast wheat beer) and guess what: it's delicious!!!

Most of the original Bavarian Weissbier is too sweet, or too boring for me. But this one is different. It can not hide its family background from Ddorf with the bitter, hoppy note. It definitely has its unique character, which most of the Bavarian beers don't have :-) Even my friend Peter, who I could never convince to become a fan of Alt beer, loved the Silber Füchschen.




—-- Written on iPad

De Garre

Even without any summer vacation this year, the family decided to do a day trip to Bruges and the coast at De Haan. Finally, our Stroehlein friends invited us for dinner in Bruxelles, so we had a very convenient and delicious stop on our way back home.

Before going to Flandres, I already informed myself about possible micro-breweries in the city and found one on a blog. The authors mentioned that it has even no address and would be difficult to locate because it is located not in a street or a lane, more in a backyard between two houses near the main place of Bruges.

I don't know, but without any direction I found the "lane". Looked like being transfered from one of the Harry Potter stories.





For any of you, who wanna go there, I will try to give you a hint where you might find it. It's called De Garre and beside brewing beer, they have a very small pub, too (the entrance is the one with the steps). Inside, you feel like in reformation times, the ground floor has probably six tables, the first floor not more :-)





They have about 100 different Belgian beers in bottle, and the home-brewed De Garre on tap. Obviously, we tried this one and, for the record, during one visit you are not allowed to order more than 2 glasses of it. We didn't try it, but being there at lunch time without any food in our stomach, two glasses were enough :-)





And you should really try it, it is delicious. It's a triple beer, with probably 11% alcohol, sweet at the start, then fruity with some melon tastes, the finish is a decent bitter note. It was really fun to look for that place and try its beer.

After leaving the place, it was difficult following the girls on their shopping safari, but finally I found a good place: