We had three great visits today in Belgium. First with Pierre who sat down with us for about three hours and went over a lot of technical aspects of his production and some of his future plans. There's a lot to digest and we will do a full summary of everything and post it for each brewery at some point, but specifically for Tilquin
there will be more squared and blackberry in the future.
Next up was De Troch. I will say that it was probably one of the coolest places I've been to so far. It was really interesting to be around a place that old and see the amount of work that goes into brewing their lambic on a coal fired system. We also learned that they don't use artificial sweetener but rather just sugar and juice depending on the age of the lambic. Also got to try a freshly bottled (two weeks ago) Oude Kriek made from fresh Schaerbeekse Cherries which is their first in 25-30 years. About 15,000 bottles were bottled. They are also continuing to provide the lambic for the Lambickx bottlings.
Finally we had a little late night tasting/tour with Oud Beersel. Not much new to report there, but their renovated space is great, their barreled lambic is fantastic, and the museum is continuing to expand as they add old breweriana bits and equipment.