HALVE MAAN BREWERY, BRUGGE, BELGIUM

To start, I like beer. I seek out beer. New beer, old beer, good beer, or bad, I want to know more about beer. The Halve Mann brewery took me to school.

Portland, Oregon beer has had a bad month, including the recent brewery closings. This link to Willamette Week lists the sad news for brews.

I remember drinking a pint with three pals in the early days of craft beer. We sat at a beer drenched lopsided table in Northwest Portland, learning Spanish. One of the guys knew Spanish and laughed after hearing our attempts.

“You guys can’t even cuss right in Spanish,” he said, making us feel lame.

The other guy said “How do you say, “I wet my pants” in Spanish?” He gave me a look.

“That’s stupid. Why would you want to know that?”

“It’s not for us,” I said, and rocked the table toward him so the spilled beer drained onto his lap.

Just a little beer fun with the guys. Last month, I had more beer fun at the Halve Mann Brewery in Brugge, Belgium. Wife and I took the tour. It was the end talk from the guide that nailed the fun.

At the end of the tour, the guide explained the beer bottling process for Halve Mann, which was located in a tight place in the middle of Brugge.

They used to bring trucks in, then they built a pipeline to their bottling plant.

This post from Atlas Obscure explains the process.

Brouwerij De Halve Maan opened in Bruges in 1856. A century and a half later, in 2016, a crowdsourcing campaign was launched to raise funds for the beer pipeline. The 500+ donors received a priceless thank you gift: free beer for life. Today, visitors can glimpse a section of the pipeline through a transparent manhole cover cut into the cobblestone street.

From the guide:

“The pipeline is three kilometers long, and there is one place where it is near the surface. We’ve been worried about people trying to tap the pipeline, but it’s a problem for them, too.

“You see, instead of one big pipe, we have several smaller pipes in one big pipe. One brings water into the brewery, one takes beer out. When we switch beers in the pipe, we need to clean it with special soap.

“If a beer hijacker makes the mistake of tapping the pipe during a cleaning phase, they get that solution instead of beer. Around here, we call that Heineken.”

What makes it funnier still, is their Bruge Zot Blonde beer. In the bottle it’s okay; in the brewery it’s unfiltered and unpasteurized. Even better, the Halve Mann brewery is the only place in the world with that beer. If that’s not enough, it is a great beer, a new standard of excellence.

I got back to Portland during fresh hop season and tested out those beers at Tigard’s Tapphoria on Hwy99. As great as the beers are during fresh hop days, I’m torn.

There’s no way Halve Mann makes a fresh hop beer, but their Blonde had the same flavor profile I fell in love with at first fresh hop sighting.

If you’re in California, Virgina, or Illinois, and not running from the fires, the marchers, or Chicago, drop a note on a favorite beer.

Just don’t copy me.

Anything worth noting in the Portland of the Midwest, Minneapolis? Or the Portland of the south?

Come on, Asheville.