Beer festival in Hasselt yesterday – it’s getting to be a tradition, I have a good friend in Alken, and every year we go and have an extended sampling sessions. Beer festivals are not scarce in Belgium, but the Hasselt beer festival is one of the better ones, with about 140 beers on the list, carefully selected by an association of beer lovers.

I even took notes ! The order below is from the booklet, not the order we tasted it in.
For documentation purposes, these are the beers I sampled in mine and in my friend’s glasses:

• huardis (on tap) – cloudy blond : nice, but not extraordinary white beer, with almost no aftertaste.
• De Graal Quest (on tap) – blond: quite complete beer, sweet with a bitter aftertaste.
• Chouffe Houblon (on tap) – blond: slightly bitter, but relatively light taste, pleasant
• Amburon (on tap) – blond: a pils-like, pleasant but not memorable beer.
• Vicaris Generaal (on tap) – brown: burnt, scotch-like beer – a bit too strongly so to be pleasant in more than little quantities.
• Jambe-de-Bois tripel (on tap) – amber: quite bitter and full taste, with sweetish aftertones, nice if you like bitter beers.
• Den Drupneuze – dark blond: a complete beer, sweet first taste, full and yeasty in mouth with slightly bitter aftertaste
• Hanssens Oude Geuze – geuze: geuze, and this one is a good one, with a complex taste with sour overtones. You love it or you hate it.
• Kriek Mariage Parfait – red kriek: very, very nice kriek, not sweet at all and with a natural cherry flavour combined with the typical sour taste.
• Oudegodje – cloudy blond: quite light of taste for a triple
• Schinus Blond – blond (duh): supposed to be brewed with red pepper, but we couldn’t detect it.
• Corsendonk Rousse – copper: brewed for the italian market, and much too sweet.
• Tiense Kweiker Amber – dark amber: burnt, sweetish, pleasant
• Omer – blond: quite light with a bitter, aromatic taste.
• Den Bir – dark blond: sweetish with slightly bitter aftertaste
• Schuppenboer tripel – cloudy blond: strong overtastes of coriander over the tripel taste (reminding of Hoegaarde, although not a white)
• Schuppenboer tripel 2009 – blond: sweet, full in the mouth tripel.
• Bitter Truth – blond: quite sharply bitter, full in the mouth. I like.

Needless to say I didn’t drink a glass of each, or I’d have been crawling in the gutter. At such a tasting, the more friends, the better, to exchange glasses, give a show of tasting and swap opinions.
Unsurprisingly: at the end, my notes get a bit short, like ‘very good’, and the writing is not up to usual standards.