Podge’s Belgian Beer Tours

Toer de Geuze & Lambicland Revisited Tour 2022

Thursday 28 April 2022 – Monday 02 May 2022

This is our classic tour exploring the world's most complex beers, the lambic beers of the Zenne Valley, west of Brussels. It is a five day, four night Tour guided by Siobhan McGinn, co-writer with her husband Podge and Tim Webb of the definitive book LambicLand (2004, 2010). Siobhan's expertise in Belgium's quirky spontaneous fermented beers goes back over 25 years and she will take you to the best lambic cafes in LambicLand to sample this unique beer style.

Thirsty work at Cafe In de Welkom, Dworp.

The tour co-incides with the now-famous bi-annual lambic brewer/blender open days, the Toer de Geuze now held over two days on the weekend of Saturday 30 April & Sunday 1 May 2022. Over the five days of the Tour we will endeavour to visit all of LambicLand's spontaneous beer brewers and blenders, with the exception of Girardin who do not like their lambic disturbed by visitors (!) and Cantillon in Brussels who do not take part in the Toer de Geuze.

This Tour is based at the luxurious four star Hotel Keizershof in the centre of Aalst, a great base for exploring LambicLand, as you can see in Podge's Aalst Bar Guide. There will be meals at the superb Café-Restaurant 3 Fonteinen in Beersel, plus a visit to specialist lambic cafe In de Verzekering tegen de Grote Dorst in Eizeringen.

We are based in Chelmsford Essex and we use Eurotunnel from Folkestone to get to and from Belgium in our UK hired coach. Most of our Travellers join the Tour at our main pick up point outside The Woolpack Pub, 23 Mildmay Road, Chelmsford CM2 0DN and most come from other parts of the UK, and some from further afield, especially USA. Lots of our Travellers stay the night before a Tour (and often the night of our return) at Chelmsford Travelodge only a few minutes walk from The Woolpack or at the Premier Inn near the Railway Station, about a 10 minute walk to the pick up point at The Woolpack. We all usually pop in to The Woolpack the night before departure for a meet, greet and a few beers with Siobhan who is your Tour Manager, Tour Guide and drinking pal for the duration.

Our Galloways luxury coach (49 seater coach with toilet) starts from Suffolk and on the way to Chelmsford picks up at the following if required:

Ipswich, Crown Street, IP1 3HS (opp. NCP Car Park)

Colchester, Southway, CO2 7BA (pull-in adjacent to Chapel Street South)

Chelmsford, The Woolpack, 23 Mildmay Road, CM2 0DN

Dartford, BP Garage (formerly Esso) 474 Princes Road, DA1 1YT. On the return leg we drop off at Dartford Railway Station DA1 1DR

Swanley, Unit 4, Moreton Industrial Estate, London Road, BR8 8DE

Maidstone Services J8, M20 Kent, ME17 1SS

Ashford (Eureka Leisure Park) Premier Inn, Eureka Leisure Park, Rutherford Rd, Ashford TN25 4BN

Stop 24 Services, J11, M20, Kent, CT21 4BL

Stationsplein, Adinkerke, Belgium

The crossing times booked on this Tour are the 10.20hr Eurotunnel from Folkestone and the 19.20hrs from Calais, so we arrive back in Folkestone at 18.55hrs UK time.

The detailed itinerary for this Tour is set out below. If you would like to join us please send Siobhan an email or call her on +44 (0) 7722 724 558 for details on how to secure a place and pay the £125pp deposit for this Tour, or if you have any questions about this Tour.

Detailed Tour Itinerary

Day 1 - Thursday 28 April 2022

06.15hr Coach pick up at The Woolpack, 23 Mildmay Road, Chelmsford, Essex CM2 0DN.

07.40hr Coach pick up at Maidstone Services J8, M20 Kent, ME17 1SS.

08.00hr Coach pick up at Premier Inn, Eureka Leisure Park, Rutherford Road, Ashford TN25 4BN.

08.30hr Arrive Folkestone Eurotunnel.

10.20hr Eurotunnel Train crossing from Folkestone.

11.55hr Arrive Calais.

13.15hr Arrive at our first stop in glorious Belgium in Flanders for a stop for a group meal and a first beer! We will pop into the Furna Pub on the pretty main square (Grote Markt) in Veurne. We’ll have a go at their beer list, and try not to drain them dry. We’ll also have a group meal here!

15.45hr Leave Furna in Veurne.

16.45hr Arrive for a quick beer stop at Herberg de Avonden in Zulte. The ‘Evening Café’ has a big selection of beers and looks comfy.

17.45hr Leave Herberg de Avonden in Zulte.

18.30hr Arrive in Aalst and make our way to the centrally located luxury four star, centrally located Hotel Keizershof. I think this is my favourite hotel in Belgium - and I've seen a few! Travellers have the evening free to explore the cafes, bars and restaurants of Aalst armed with Podge’s Aalst Bar Guide and Map*.

Oude Beersel Geuze

Day 2 - Friday 29 April 2022

10.00hr After a leisurely breakfast* we leave the hotel by coach for a look into the mysteries of lambic beers:

10.45hr Arrive at Den Herberg, a pub and lambic brewery in Buizingen. They were admitted as members of HORAL (Hoge Raad voor Ambachtelijke Lambikbieren or High Council for Traditional Lambic Beers) as recently as January 2022. Herberg translates as 'The Inn' and it was started and is still run by the Devillé family and father Bart is the brewer.

The family bought this vacant property in Buizingen in 2000 and Bart went to brewing school. At first he produced small batch top-fermented home brewed beers. This hobby soon grew and took over the space they had originally bought as a storage unit for their construction business. As the property was an old disused café with a banqueting hall at the back they created a brewery and reopened the café in 2007. In February 2008 Podge’s Belgian Beer Tours did a brewery visit here when they were brewing a blonde, amber and wheat beer. This is what Podge wrote in an email just after our visit to someone enquiring about our visit “The brewery is huge and they are installing a half mezzanine floor which they are aiming to turn into a restaurant which may overlook the brewing hall. Although the equipment is ex dairy the tiled covering sets off the vessels superbly. They have plans for an auto bottling plant too. The couple who run the café are also the brewers. He has a day job as a builder too and makes violins in his spare time, they also have seven kids. I'm taking a bit of a wild guess that they haven't got a telly”.

Because the café was located only 150m from the Senne river in the Payottenland they decided to expand Den Herberg’s beer range with own-brewed lambic. They started brewing lambic in 2017 and released their first geuze in 2020. Their lambic wort is aged in 400L French wine barrels made of French and American oak, but as they only have room to store around 60 barrels at the brewery café, there is a second storage facility of 250 barrels in the Devillé family farm in Lembeek. The farm has an orchard of 400 Schaarbeekse cherry trees which they plan to use in fruit lambics in the near future. Den Herberg’s current beer range consists of top-fermented, bottom-fermented, mixed-fermentation beers, lambic, and geuze. So you can try their ordinary bottled beers or the following:

• Cuvée Devillé, first brewed in 2014, is a mixed fermentation beer fermented with top-fermenting yeast and wild yeast. It makes the perfect bridge towards the true lambic beers,

• Oude Lambiek Devillé. Released on the market in 2018, an 18-24 month old unblended lambic, with no carbonation, from a 5L bag-in-box (5L).

• Oude Geuze Devillé. Released in 2020, available in 37.5cl bottles. Only 10% goes for export, so try some here.

12.35hr Leave Den Herberg in Buizingen.

12.40hr Arrive 3Fonteinen Lambic O Droom in Lot. This place was opened in 2016 by legendary brewer and blender Armand Debelder, who sadly passed away in March 2022. He was the heart of lambic beer, and Podge’s Belgian beer Tours visited him at his old premises in Beersel many times. He and his business partners, who have run the place for a couple of years, converted a former ice cream warehouse in Lot into a new complex designed to centralise the breweries operations and allow visitors to see the end-to-end processes of Lambic beer making. It houses a coolship, blending facilities, barrel-ageing rooms, a bottling plant, a bar, tasting rooms and a shop.

In 2016 when they moved they also started using two colours of bottles: green for blends containing wort brewed at other breweries, and brown for blends containing wort brewed solely by 3 Fonteinen. Not sure if this is still in operation. In 2019, 3 Fonteinen left membership of HORAL and no longer bought wort from Boon, but began to take wort from De Troch. Also in 2020 they acquired wort from Lambiek Fabriek as well as De Troch.

We visited in 2017 and 2019 and hopefully the Schaerbeek cherry orchard is coming now producing fruit as it were. Though their 3Fonteinen Schaerbeekse Kriek is a premium price, it is counted by many as one of the world's great beers. They are interested in sourcing old strains of grain from local farmers and have developed a programme for the local sourcing of more Schaerbeek cherries. They are working with 75 families to grow, pick and source these awkward little buggers from their gardens. They also gave away 100 of their first root cuttings to anyone with a garden as long as they can track the trees. These are not standard grafted cherry trees, mind, they are a wild variant, a low-stemmed bushy tree which must be harvested manually.

We’ll have a tour * and taste* of their superb lambic here. The tour takes about an hour and a half and we’ll have 2 tasters; a glass of young lambic and an Oude Geuze Cuvée Armand & Gaston (named after Armand and his beloved father).

14.20hr Leave 3Fonteinen Lambic-O-Droom in Lot.

14.30hr We will have lunch at the world famous 3Fonteinen Restaurant in the traditional heartland lambic town, Beersel. Here we will have our pre-booked beer cuisine lunch and a chance to sample a great selection of lambic beers but best go for the yong or young lambic on draught which is around one year old, or as the brewers prefer to say 'has seen one summer'.

17.00hr Leave 3Fonteinen Restaurant in Beersel.

17.05hr We pay a visit to the fantastic new/old Bierhuis Oud Beersel, the recently reopened (February 2022) brewery tap of the Oud Beersel Brewery a few doors down. They offer a wide range of beers of both traditional and innovative lambic beers, as well as their top and mixed fermentation Bersalis range. We are popping in here for a swift lambic. They have 12 taps! This is a historical lambic café which we used to visit on Podge’s Belgian Beer Tours before it closed 20 years ago. Gert Christiaens of Oud Beersel had long dreamed of acquiring this superb red & white tiled-front café and bought the place and it seems spent much of lockdown returning it to a working café. It looks very much like it did, and even still has the original wooden bar which survived it being a florist shop! I well remember an impressive huge round wood and ironwork table in the middle of the room, made from old foeders (barrels) where one of our travellers once proposed marriage – and amazingly it had been stored in pieces and is now back in place! For those of you who remember the stupendous Mortier (Antwerp made) 1927 Dance Organ, it got sold to an enthusiast in Kansas City years ago, but due to popular demand they have a big picture of it in the café and music from it is available to listen to!

18.45hr Leave Bierhuis Oud Beersel.

19.15hr Arrive back in the friendly city of Aalst for a crack at its great beer cafes and restaurants.

3Fonteinen Oude Geuze Bottles 37.5cl having a rest.

Day 3 - Saturday 30 April 2022

10.00hr After a leisurely breakfast* we leave the hotel by coach for the first of the official biennial HORAL Toer de Geuze days. Over the years the Toer de Geuze has attracted more and more people and each venue gets quite crowded with people enjoying these open days and beers. We hope to have about an hour and a half at each venue and will announce exact times to be back on the bus on the day. At most of the venues you can buy a snack to eat on the hoof. For each Toer de Geuze all of the members of HORAL contribute towards a special Oude Geuze beer brewed for the occasion and you should see bottles for sale at each of the venues of HORAL Mega Blend.

10.30hr Arrive De Troch at Wambeek. This is a small, attractive lambic brewery housed in a still-recognizable farm around three sides of a square. It has a listed chimney, square in profile, pre-dating the more ubiquitous round brewery chimney. Most of their production used to go into sweet commercial beers under the Chapeau label, which best avoid, but the real lambic they make is superb and if you want to try their proper geuze, go, as always for the OUDE on the label. Worth knowing that their wort is now bought by 3Fonteninen to blend their geuzes and krieks, so it must be good.

12.00hr Leave De Troch Brewery in Wambeek.

12.15hr We pay a visit to the giant and ever-expanding 200 year old Lindemans Brewery in Vlezenbeek. Now being run by the 7th generation, they started as a barley farm which made lambic on the side during the winter to employ workers year-round. By the 1930s, brewing was so successful, they gave up farming. Go for the Cuvée René Geuze or Kriek Cuvée René if you want the real deal. Late 2022 will see the opening of a second production site in Ruisbroek, called Lindemans Satellite Brewery. Cousins Dirk and Geert Lindemans will be spending 28 million euros.   They’ve run out of storage space (as all breweries do) at the current site, so the new site will brew top-fermented beers, but no lambic, which will remain in Vlezenbeek. They are looking to produce new types of beers and products based on mixed fermentation, blended with lambic. When space is freed up and renovations of the historic site in Vlezenbeek is finished, Lindemans will purchase additional wooden foeders. 

13.45hr Leave Lindemans Brewery in Vlezenbeek.

14.00hr Arrive at Lambiek Fabriek in Eugène Ghijsstraat 71, Sint-Pieters-Leeuw, one of the latest and growing lambic producers. They have their lambic coolship in the brewery yard, 12 feet up under a makeshift roof, but you need ladder access for a full view. Lambiek Fabriek started with two local lads who wanted to make geuze. They started in 2016 and they make Brett-Elle geuze and the newer Fontan-Elle. Ram skull on bottle label. Very distinctive. Their beers are:

• Brett-Elle Oude Geuze. Their first beer. Early batches were a blend of 1- and 2-year old lambics with 4 year old lambic from a separate lambic producer.

• Fontan-Elle Young & Wild. Blended from is a selection of barrels containing 1- and 2-year old lambic chosen for their fruitier characteristics and bottled without the addition of older lambic. Only in 75cl bottles.

• Natur-Elle Organic Geuze. Certified organic.

• Oude Kriek Jart-Elle – Cherry beer

• Juicy & Wild Black-Belle – Black currant beer

• Juicy & Wild Muri-Elle – blackberry lambic

• Juicy & Wild Muscar-Elle - aged on macerated Muscaris grapes sourced in Belgium

• Juicy & Wild Pluri-Elle – The Works, black currant, red currant, strawberry, raspberry, blackberry and wild blueberry.

15.30hr Leave Lambiek Fabriek Brewery.

15.50hr Arrive at probably the biggest lambic, Geuze and Kriek producer, Boon Brewery in Lembeek. The great Frank Boon retired aged 67 this year, and has passed the brewery to his two sons Karel & Jos, who grew up in the brewery. Frank took over the brewery/blending business of the great René De Vits at the age of 21 in 1975. Rene made only 25,000 litres of geuze each year – Boon makes twice that every day now. Try their Black Label Geuze which they have been making since 2016 and for which they win awards regularly. Boon Oude Geuze Black Label Edition N°7 has just been launched, bottled June 2021. For the Black Label series they select lambic with a high degree of final fermentation which ensures a dry aftertaste. Look out for their new beer Apogee (High Point) which is a limited edition Oude Geuze created by Frank Boon, bottled on April 29, 2019, created by blending lambic from their oldest and their youngest foeder. They also do Vat numbered beers which are geuzes made from a single barrel. Personally I love the Frambozen and am down to my last few bottles at home. Lush.

17.15hr Leave Boon Brewery in Lembeek.

17.30hr Arrive at the most southerly member of the traditional geuze and kriek makers, Tilquin in Bierghes (Rebecq). Pierre Tilquin holds a two-day open brewery event on the weekend of the Toer de Geuze, where you can have a tour of his blendery and barrel rooms. His beers will be for sale at the bar and you can buy bottles to take away at the shop. They have food stalls and a bouncy castle. Look out for his

• Oude Gueuze à l'ancienne. The proper stuff. Currently the only commercial geuze on the market to contain lambic from Cantillon.

• Gueuze Tilquin (Draught Version). You need to know that this is 50% lambic blended with a low alcohol lambic beer called Meerts from Boon. No 3-year-old lambic is used in the draught version. 5.3%abv.

• Quetsche à l'ancienne a lambic with Plums, refermented in the bottle and

• Mûre à l'ancienne, a blackberry lambic refermented in the bottle.

• Gueuzérable – bottled geuze with maple syrup. Really?

• Tilquin don’t do a kriek beer but use various experimental fruits from time to time. Some will be available.

19.00hr Leave Tilquin in Bierghes, when the Toer de Geuze closes for the day.

19.40hr Arrive back in the friendly city of Aalst for a crack at its great beer cafes and restaurants.

Day 4 - Sunday 01 May 2022

10.00hr After a leisurely breakfast* we leave the hotel by coach for the second and last of the official HORAL Toer de Geuze days:

10.30hr Arrive at the famed In de Verzekering Tegen de Grote Dorst (The Insurance Against Thirst) in Eizeringen run by the Paneels family who re-opened this gorgeous café in 2000 and have an unrivalled selection of lambics, geuzes and krieks. They have vintage beers and hopefully they still have some Eylenbosch left from the closed lambic brewery down the road. Look out for unusual lambics especially those from

• Sako, a small brewery started in 2018 within an old Payottenland farm in Bogaarden run by Koen Christiaens and his wife, Sandrine. Koen started homebrewing, beginning with a top fermented blonde beer, but has brewed some lambic in Spring 2019 under the tutelage of brewing expert and legend Willem Van Herreweghen, who founded De Cam in 1996, and who is Brewmaster at Timmermans. This had to wait to be blended with younger lambics for bottled Oude Geuze in 2022.

• Bofkont (Lucky Dog) Kontich, south of Antwerp (so not LambicLand). A chap called Sam has been blending lambic in his cellar with fruit, aging it in oak barrels and bottling it. Named after his toy dog which he found in the attic when tidying up and looking for a name for his beers.

• Bokke, from Hasselt in Limburg. (also not LambicLand). Lambic blender Raf Souvereyns works under the name Bokke (formerly Methode Goat, then Bokkereyder) since 2013, far from the Zenne valley. You'll recognise his bottles from the logo of a goat hiding behind a tree. Raf worked previously in a winery, and so uses local fruit in his blends: grapes, cherries, raspberries, and apricots.

• Antidoot Wilde Fermenten, Kortenaken Flemish Brabant. Brewers and blenders who like to experiment with wild fermentation.

12.00hr Leave In de Verzekering Tegen de Grote Dorst.

12.15hr Arrive at De Cam in Gooik. This is a tiny blender and is a good one to pick if you want a mini tour. By the way, Karel the blender is passionate about lambic beer, almost out-doing Armand DeBelder in his enthusiasm for this beer and I would say that his Raspberry Lambic was the best beer I have ever tasted, a few years ago in the yard at De Cam.

13.45hr Leave De Cam, in Gooik.

14.15hr Arrive at Hanssens in Dworp. There will be a chance to try rare beers from this blender including Hanssens Lambic Cassis, Hanssens Lambic Raspberry and Hanssens Kriek Lambic Schaerbeekse (in limited quantities) for tastings and purchases. I have always thought their beers in the top two lambic beers ever since I first tasted it about 25 years ago when the bottles had no labels, just a white chalk paint stripe for geuze and a pink one for the Kriek, which would come off when you handled the bottle.

15.45hr Leave Hanssens in Dworp.

16.15hr Arrive at Mort Subite in Kobbegem. The brewery was sold to the Alken-Maes group in 1989 (taken over by Scottish & Newcastle in 2000, who were taken over by Carlsberg & Heineken Group in 2007). Around this time the brewery began to suffer from numerous infections. It was discovered that the old coolship was too small and too deep to handle the large amount of wort going through it. So to help spread the load half the wort was pumped instead into a stainless steel tank which was then filled with the local air. And behold, this beer was found to have just as much wild yeast as the stuff in the coolship, which was then retired. So Mort Subite lambic can be brewed all year not just 'in season'. Scottish & Newcastle invested heavily in the brewery and fortunately a wee bit of production goes to Oude kriek and Oude Geuze. Bottling is done at Boon. They do a limited run of Oude Kriek Schaerbeekse beer made with the real deal Belgian cherries. Get it if you can.

17.00hr Leave Mort Subite Brewery in Kobbegem, when the Toer de Geuze closes.

17.30hr Arrive back in Aalst for a free evening on the tiles town.

Wooden casks of Boon lambic beer.

Day 5 - Monday 02 May 2022

10.00hr After breakfast* check out of hotel. Coach leaves for our last day.

10.30hr Call in at Dranken Geers at Oostakker outside Gent, run by the excellent Dominiek Geers and his family. He is well-respected in the beer (especially the lambic) world. Here we have an opportunity to stock up on beers for home use (see new duty allowances at the foot of this itinerary). A chance to get hold of any special lambics you didn't get to try on Tour (an unlikely event) hiding amongst the hundreds of beers he has in stock.

11.15hr Leave at Dranken Geers in Oostakker.

12.15hr Arrive at the Wijnendale Wandeling café opposite the beautiful Castle Wijnendale in Torhout. They have a beer card of over 50, so we can have a crack at that, and possibly a walk across the road to have a peek at the picture-postcard moated castle, which should be finished its renovations by the time we visit. Hopefully the grounds, or ‘domein’ as the Belgians say should be open for strolling.

13.15hr Leave the Wijnendale Wandeling café in Torhout.

13.30hr Our last stop of the Tour is De Buuzestove next to the station (defunct since 1985) in Eernegem, deepest West Flanders. They have a great big beer list and we’ll have a meal there. Look out for the eponymous Buuzestove, it’s a beauty.

16.30hr Leave De Buuzestove in Eernegem.

17.00hr Drop A. Traveller at Veurne Railway Station.

18.00hr Arrive Calais.

19.20hr Leave Calais on Eurotunnel train crossing. (confirmed)

18.55hr Arrive Folkestone.

19.25hr Coach drop Premier Inn, Eureka Leisure Park, Rutherford Rd, Ashford TN25 4BN.

19.45hr Coach drop Maidstone Services J8, M20 Kent, ME17 1SS.

21.00hr Coach drop Mildmay Road, Chelmsford CM2 0EA.

21.20hr Coach drop Premier Inn Victoria Road, Chelmsford CM1 1NY.

Tour Price is £885 per person sharing a twin or double room

Single Supplement: £225

We regret that we need to charge a single supplement for travellers who would like their own hotel room. This is because increasingly hotel room prices are quoted with very little difference between single person or two person occupancy. If you are travelling alone and want to share a room with another traveller please contact Siobhan as we are regularly able to pair up travellers in twin rooms to avoid the need for payment of the Single Supplement.

Included in the cost of this Tour are:

Hotel accommodation and breakfasts;

Hotel city taxes;

Luxury coach travel on a 49 seater coach with toilet;

All brewery visits, tours and brewery beer tastings;

Entrance fees to attractions, museums and historical sites;

All items marked with an asterisk above and on the individual detailed tour itinerary when issued;

Copies of Podge’s City Bar Guides and Maps for the town where we stay or spend some time;

Still and sparkling water on the coach;

Pick up from Ipswich (at bus shelter outside Crown House, Crown Street, Ipswich, Suffolk, IP1 3HS (opposite NCP Car Park), Colchester (Southway Chapel St South Layby) or Chelmsford (The Woolpack, Mildmay Road). Arrangements can be made for different joining points on the way to Folkestone or even on the other side of the channel.

Travellers are responsible for the costs of all food and drink apart from items marked with an asterisk on the detailed itinerary plus all passport and insurance costs.

All itinerary times are local and approximate.

Personal insurance is not included in the Tour price but is strongly advised, as is carrying the free UK Global Health Insurance Card (GHIC) which is the 2021 replacement for the old EHIC. You can still use your EHIC card so long as it is in date, then you need to apply for the GHIC replacement online.

If you have any questions or would like to join us please send Siobhan an email or call on +44 (0)7722 724 558.

All Tours are subject to our Terms and Conditions.