Huisbrouwerij De Halve Maan and on to G(h)ent

Today was our last day in Bruges and first day in Ghent (though locally spelled "Gent"). We spent the majority of the morning about as far from our B&B as possible, as the two last sites we wanted to visit were 15-20 minutes away.

The view of the Market Square facing away from the Belfort

First on our list was the brewery in Bruges -- Huisbrouwerij De Halve Maan (henceforth referred to as Halve Maan). The name roughly translates as "The brewing house of the half moon" and is the only brewery currently in the city of Bruges. In fact, our tour guide said there were other breweries at one time and that in order to stay competitive Halve Maan actually operated a delivery service . . . TO YOUR DOORSTEP! How rad is that?! Another cool fact about the brewery is that it was founded in 1856 and has been in the same family ever since. 

Henri Maes founded the brewery and passed it down to his son, Henri Maes, who passed it down to his son Henri...well, you get the picture

Anyway, the tour was really fun. Our tour guide was an American, but we weren't able to ask her how she got her job. The tour started off in a room with four giant tanks. They were very clean and attractive. Their aesthetic quality was primarily for the tour; to give those coming through the brewery something pretty to look at initially. We then went up to the roof of the brewery, stopping off in a few rooms on the way as the history of the brewery and what the beer making process is like. She talked about how there were approximately 1500 different beers in Belgium, and despite the claim that each type of beer has it's own type of glass, the practical and demonstrable purposes for having a specific and unique glass for a specific beer is limited. Different shapes do alter the experience but for some beers is it is merely a marketing ploy. 

view from the brewery roof

In the room just before the roof the floor had been turned into an enormous shallow reservoir made of copper. Once on the roof we were presented with a commanding view of the city. We even saw part of the canal our tour from the previous day went through. Our tour guide explained the copper reservoir at this point.  Libby and I disagree on this point but since I'm writing this I'm going to write my version. I contend that she explained that the copper vat was a result of the brewery attempt to create a beer where yeast was "spontaneously" added.* There was another contraption that acted as a radiator to cool the wort. This is what I think she said was used normally. 

After reaching the roof we went all the way back down to the basement. Going through the brewery was like going through a submarine at times. The difference being a whole lot of up and down rather than side to side. There were a few staircases where we were asked to walk down them backwards due to the pitch of the staircase.  

We ended the tour by going through the part of the brewery currently in use just below where we started, and finally were presented with a beer. The beer in question was their Bruges Zot Blonde. The Zot Blonde was introduced in 2005 and seems to have been responsible for a great influx of cash.  They currently have to ship the beer to a bottling plant 3 kilometers away to be bottled and distributed, but largely due to the success of the Zot Blonde they are building a beer pipeline--yes, I said BEER. PIPE. LINE--from the brewery to a new bottling plant on the edge of town. 

After the tour, and our lovely beer, we visited the grounds of the convent of Begijnhof. The grounds you accessible to the public consisted of  domiciles outlining three sides of a square, with the fourth side their church. In the center was a path and road that lie between the nun's homes and a  large plot of grass with very tall trees. We walked on a path that cut the square in half and listened to the breeze rustle through the leaves..That was pretty much the only sound we could hear which made the whole grounds very peaceful. The church was small but smelled wonderful and had some great art in it.

We left the church and got lunch near by. We both had a curry chicken sandwich and shared a small waffle with chocolate on top.  Libby was very excited about lunch because not only was it a very good value for money (as the saying goes here), but it reminded her of Coronation Chicken in England. Libby here, I LOVE baguette sandwiches!!!!

After lunch we made the trek back to where we had stored our bags and caught a bus to the train station to continue our travels to Ghent!

Once in Ghent we walked ten minutes or so to our host's (Tomas) home. We're on the fourth floor in the attic. The room is literally an attic with no original door separating it from the rest of the stairwell let alone the house. A door has since been added and a block of wood placed over the gap between the hand rail and the steps to provide more privacy. It's more jerry-rigged than anything else, but works well enough I suppose.  

After we rested a bit we went to check out the museum pass. We read that it came with a tram ticket for 48 hours. We were advised to get it in the morning the next day to maximize our time with it. Before we left we met an Anglican priest from Canada that stopped to talk to us because of our North American accent. We chatted a bit and he gave us a tip and even gave us one of his tram cards that had 2 trips left. He told us about "black riding" the tram which apparently is when you get on the tram and don't pay. The term isn't racially infused at all and is more connected to the "Black Market." It sounds like tram tickets are very infrequently checked. He himself had only been checked once in three years. Apparently, not paying for your tram ride is the local way to do it.

We left the museum and took a tram to the historic center, wandered around a bit and grabbed a bite to eat at a place called Ellis. They specialize in burgers, and even mention the name "hamburger" originating from Walla Walla, Washington on their menu. Libby had a cheese burger, and I had the "Bollywood Special." It consisted of chicken marinated in some Indian spices, a chutney and some lettuce and tomato. It wasn't bad. I didn't like the onion though. We both had the same beer but we can't remember the name off hand. After dinner we came home.

*(If you want to know more about Lambic beers read on, otherwise stop.) Lambic beer is beer where the addition of yeast to the wort is done spontaneously. Yeast floating through the air acts makes contact with the cooling wort and acts as the fermenting agent rather than yeast being manually added to the wort. (Wort is the liquid from the mash before the yeast has been added.) The challenge here is to get enough yeast added while not allowing the beer to become contaminated. It turns out,  that for some reason there is a very high concentration of naturally occurring yeast in the air around Brussels in the Zenne valley. This is why most Lambics are brewed around and to the southwest of Brussels.