Last weekend our home was ready to be formally introduced to our new friends. Into our small apartment we gathered some of people who we have met through the web, French class, expat meetups, and at work. We filled our fridge full of Belgian beer and served it in the collection of specialised glasses that we have collected over the months. We ordered in sushi and Adrian baked pizza. It seemed to be a good recipe for a fun night. So many people, like ourselves, arrive in this country with limited social networks. We were glad that we were able to provide a forum for expats and locals to meet and exchange stories. We had people born in thirteen different countries, many of whom speak English as a second (or fifth) language. Hopefully this will just be the first of many shindigs that we can host in our new Belgian nest.

Some people at my work organised a private tour of the Lindemans brewery in Brussels. Lindemans brew lambics, a beer that uses “spontaneous fermentation”, rather than the introduction of a specific yeast. It is a family-owned business that is still based on the farm where the beer was first brewed seven generations ago. As there were no crops to tend during winter, the family turned to brewing lambics during the colder months. They became so successful that they stopped farming altogether in 1930 to focus on their brewing full time.

The beer is only brewed between October and May when the conditions are perfect. In summer it is too hot, and the wrong bacteria will enter and spoil the beer. After the water from their own well is mixed with and wheat and barley are boiled in giant copper boilers, the liquid is then poured into a broad shallow pool up in the attic. The windows are opened, and 86 different types of wild yeast drift inside to impregnate the liquid. Wooden beams line the rafters to act as a sponge and slowly release the microorganisms over the day. In order to prevent spoilage, aged dry hops are added to the beer to prevent bacterial spoilage.

The department of health decided that this process was not safe for public consumption. So the association of lambic brewers went to the European Commission to plead the case. The EC recognised that it was a unique and important process, and granted them permission to continue brewing in this method. They drafted strict rules to ensure that any beer marked as a traditional lambic had to follow a specific brewing process, including a round of pasteurization to sterilise the beer.

We sampled four different beers. Faro, Gueuze Cuvée René, the traditional Kriek Cuvée René, and the modern Kriek.

Faro is one of the simplest types of lambics to brew, based upon the recipe discovered in the middle ages. It is a blonde beer that is quick and easy to make, with candied sugar added at the end of the process to make it sweeter. The Belgians call it a light, low alcohol beer, as it is only 4.2%.

The gueuze is a mixture of lambics of different ages to give a particular sweetness and taste. The young beer contains enough sugar to permit fermentation for another year in the bottle, producing bubbles and peals. Our guide called it the champagne of beer.

The traditional old-style kreik lambic is fermented for at least three years in giant wooden barrels along with whole black cherries, then fermented again in the bottle. It is not filtered and all the sugar has been fermented into alcohol. It is dark and murky, and tastes muddy and sour.

The new modern kreik is much sweeter and is fermented for less than a year in metal drums. Cherry juice and sugar are added to the broth, and the result is a very sweet and delicious drink. While it was interesting to taste the traditionally-brewed lambics, I still prefer the taste of the modern sugary kriek.

I arrived in Europe with almost no knowledge of world history. While walking through Leuven, I noticed that a bunch of buildings contained identical stones that said “1914″, with some strange symbols on them. It looked like a bushel of wheat or something. A bumper crop year? Adrian had to sit down with me and explain that in that year, most of Leuven had been destroyed by the Germans in World War I. The buildings that were subsequently rebuilt all integrated this stone into their facades, in memory of the destruction.

Every October, Hasselt hosts a Jeneverfeesten. Jenever is a liquor that is typically made from fermented barley, rye, and corn, and then redistilled. It is then flavoured with additives as diverse as coriander, carroway, passionfruit, lemon, or vanilla. The only jenever that I knew of before moving here was what we call gin, which is jenever that is flavoured with juniper berries. Now I have become very partial to chocolate jenever, which at 17% alcohol is delicious but dangerous.

We spent the day in Hasselt, sampling a wide range of their delicious jenevers, and snacking on freshly baked speculoos cookies. My favourite part was watching the cocktail jugglers assemble the winning cocktail, a mojito-inspired concoction of lime and mint.