AFAR Magazine

Initially, I thought the story was a satire, something pulled from The Onion by an unwitting intern and republished by a credible news source. It was sometime in 2007 and I was casually browsing the Internet when I spotted an article describing the imminent collapse of Belgium. I paused. And snickered. Belgium? On the verge of implosion? I spent the next hour dutifully fact-checking. Sure enough, Belgium’s two main regions, Flanders and Wallonia, were at loggerheads. Flemish-speaking politicians from the north were threatening to secede. They accused their French-speaking compatriots in Wallonia of being lazy, a drain on the economy of more prosperous Flanders. Belgium, a founding member of NATO and home base to the European Union, was supposed to be a symbol of European unity. Yet here was a crisis threatening to tear it asunder. In February 2010, the country set a record by failing to form a coalition government in 250 days after holding elections, beating out the previous mark set by postwar Iraq.

Then the true gravity of the situation dawned on me. If Belgium crumbled, what would happen to my favorite beers?

I tasted my first Belgian beer about eight years ago, when I was working at a brewery in Chicago. The beer was remarkably smooth, a tad spicy, and inhumanly strong. My obsession kindled, I made a point of getting chummy with the local high-end beer merchants. I learned about obscure bottles and seasonal releases; I even brewed a couple of batches of Belgian-style beer at home. I plunged headfirst into the gastronomical world of dubbels and tripels, gueuzes and krieks, saisons and wits. Thus, as I read more about Belgium’s impending demise, I knew I would need to investigate further.

My plan was to intrepidly traverse Belgium, seek out the artisans who make the world’s finest beers, and find out whether Belgian beer, like the Belgian state, was also teetering on an existential ledge. And, as a disciplined researcher, I knew that would entail drinking a beer or two or three along the way. It was a sacrifice I was willing to make.

It was a sunless, dreary morning, but that would not deter me from my plan: to go to church and drink. I hopped on a bus in Antwerp, a city in northern Belgium, and rode 45 minutes northeast, until the driver stopped in front of the abbey at Westmalle. Westmalle is one of six Trappist monasteries that brew beer in Belgium. This one and two others are located in Flanders, the other three in Wallonia. (There is another Trappist brewery in the Netherlands and dozens of nonbrewing Trappist monasteries around the world.)

Trappist monks at Westmalle make beer as part of the life of prayer and work prescribed by Saint Benedict.

A green lawn the size of several football fields spread out before the abbey walls. I walked up a narrow brick road lined with oak trees that resembled plucked grape stems. The morning fog dampened the sound of my footfalls. I reached the gate, which was tucked behind another row of skeletal trees, and rang the doorbell. Marleen Hurdak, a cheery woman with shoulder-length dark-blonde hair who works in the sales division at Westmalle, greeted me and ushered me inside.

A wall separates the brewery from the area where the monks live and pray. Visitors are rarely granted access to the brewery at all and are almost never allowed on the other side of the wall. But Hurdak let me get a glimpse. She escorted me through a door into a courtyard that encircled a Hogwarts-esque monastery replete with stained glass and dark brick. I felt as though I were on a bird-watching expedition, except that I was on the lookout for monks. “Is that one?” I whispered. A man in a blue jumpsuit crossed the grounds pushing a wheelbarrow. Hurdak nodded.

Westmalle is Belgium’s second-largest Trappist brewery, after Chimay. The Westmalle monks have been brewing beer since 1836 and selling it to the public since 1856. Revenues from the brewery so far exceed the monks’ expenses that they use the surplus to support monasteries around the world and a foundation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo—after which they still have money left over for charity. (Perhaps the Girl Scouts of America should consider making cognac in lieu of Thin Mints.) Westmalle brews two beers for sale: a golden, moderately sweet tripel and a dark, nutty dubbel. The monks drink a bitter “Extra” brewed exclusively for them.

After we had walked the grounds, Hurdak and I retired to the tasting room, where one wall was adorned with donated steins and glassware, and the windows were hung with red-and-white-checked curtains. She poured out a glass of the tripel. The beer’s slight caramel finish paired perfectly with the plate of monk-made cheese and mustard that Hurdak served.

We talked politics for a few minutes, and I gathered from Hurdak that the abbots at this medieval compound wouldn’t care one way or another if Belgium ceased to exist. Their loyalties were to the Big Guy first, their monastic order second, and the rest, well, it didn’t much matter to them. Perhaps my worries about secessionist brewers were unfounded after all.

That afternoon, I headed 20 miles southwest of Antwerp to the town of Buggenhout, home to a small brewery called Malheur that has earned a reputation for making strong, eccentric beers. A driver from Malheur picked me up at the train station and drove me to the outskirts of town, where I met Manu De Landtsheer, the owner. De Landtsheer is a towering man with brown hair swept back from his forehead and bifocals that rest on the tip of his nose. He is a genuine bon vivant who presides over Belgium’s largest Cuban-cigar smokers’ club and sips beer like a wine connoisseur, aerating it through his lips to release its flavors. Malheur, he told me, means “a positive accident.” “Like when your teenage daughter gets pregnant,” he chuckled. “That’s malheur!”

While politicians squabble over national identity, brewers like Manu De Landtsheer ensure that "Belgian beer" remains synonymous with the world's best.

De Landtsheer walked me through the brewery. To one side, a 20-foot-high, cylindrical fermentation vat bubbled with Malheur 6, a variety of blond beer. To the other, a half dozen American oak barrels were aging an experimental batch of one of De Landtsheer’s brut biers, strong, bubbly brews with a production process that mirrors that of champagne.

Sitting in the tasting room overlooking the brewery, De Landtsheer popped the cork and poured us each a glass of his lighter brut. The beer surprised me with its effervescence, which then mellowed into the taste of green apples with a touch of lemon and a dash of pepper. I asked him about the incredible variety of Belgian beers. “There’s a historical explanation. One of the most important borders in Europe was this street,” De Landtsheer said, pointing out the window at the road running adjacent to the brewery. Dusk had begun smudging the day away. In the Middle Ages, according to De Landtsheer, one side of the road was French territory ruled from Paris, and the other was German land ruled from Cologne. The Germans prohibited the use of spices in their beers; the French prohibited the use of German hops in theirs. But brewers in border towns like this one—and much of Flanders, for that matter—“ignored the rules and used whatever hops and spices they wanted.”

De Landtsheer’s eyes twinkled with an unmistakable disdain for such political silliness. He granted that today’s Flemish and Walloon nationalists had inflated their grievances into a crisis, but he scoffed at them. De Landtsheer is Flemish, but he’s not ready to secede. “My passport is Belgian, and I do not support any extremist,” he said. “I will never sell Flemish beer. It would make no sense. Our style of beer is Belgian.”