For quite some while, I had been pondering getting a tattoo celebrating my love for some of the Brussels breweries. After mailing back and forth with the tattoo artist—Laïs at Koko Tattoo Shop—and a project discussion in person, I finally had it done mid June. After three hours on the table, I had a beautiful tattoo on my left triceps, featuring seven of my favourite breweries in Brussels: Cantillon, Brasserie de la Senne, La Source, L’Ermitage, La Mule, Surréaliste, and—being a pure brewpub, the odd one out—Mazette.
To celebrate my new tattoo, I decided to try to visit and have a beer in all of those breweries in one epic taproom crawl! I puzzled an itinerary together, created a Facebook event to invite some drinking buddies along, and I even had a T-shirt printed for the occasion… A healthy breakfast pizza to line the stomach, a cold brew tonic to fully wake up, and I was ready to start…
After a lot of anticipation, on Friday morning, FyneFest finally started for real!
Friday
After a pancake with bacon and maple syrup from Hector & Harriet for breakfast, and securing some T-shirts from the merch tent, it was time to get properly started. The ‘doors’ of the main tent opened at 11.00, and I managed to order the very first beer of the first official festival day there! The line of keg pumps and beer engines was impressive, as were the beers listed behind the bar, but as it would be a long weekend, and the servings relatively large for a beer festival—1/3 pint (19cl) or 1/2 pint (28cl)—I decided to take it slow, alternating and combining beer tastings with concerts and food… Speaking about the music: one of the first acts was a proper ceilidh band!
Saturday
The second festival day had plenty of variation as well. Pellicle’s Matt Curtis was hosting a couple of interesting talks with brewers, and in between I walked up to the Walkers Bar, five kilometre upstream, where they served some gravity poured cask beers.
In the evening the highlight without a doubt was the Massaoke show, which got the whole crowd singing their lungs out.
Sunday
The last day of the festival started with an awesome bacon roll with egg from Prime Street Food. The beer boards were a bit more sparse, since it was basically leftover day. Still enough beers I hadn’t tried yet to keep me occupied for a while though!
I also booked a Fyne Ales brewery tour this day, so I could see where our host’s beers come from.
After having gone through most of the festival beers, I spent some time in the brewery courtyard to enjoy some of their Origins beers.
After six, the Brewers Lounge tent was the only place still open, but there still was beer—just to drink and enjoy, done with rating—live music, loads of happy and nice people, and a gorgeous sunset!
The last day in Glasgow was spent mostly out of the city. First up was a visit to BrewDog’s Hop Hub, their Scottish, refrigerated distribution centre, which of course also has a bar. It’s a bit in the middle of nowhere though, not particularly public transport user friendly… But I hadn’t visited it yet—it was still closed during my Flying Scotsman Trip—and they had a 2-4-1 pizza offer on, so I had to go!
Once back in Glasgow, after a way too tight connection, another Citylink bus brought us to the Fyne Ales brewery, where FyneFest was about to start for the early birds. A nice cold can as a welcome was very much appreciated! The brewery taproom was only open until six, but luckily the Brewers Lounge was serving some beers after that, already with some live music to kick off the fun.
Cell reception isn’t great, but expect a full report of the next three festival days on Monday! Off for some more beers now…
Craft beer and live music make for a great combination!
I thoroughly enjoyed being at Razernij again, a beer and music festival I had only been able to visit once before. Usually it coincides with BXLBeerFest, but since that sadly was eventually cancelled this year, it freed up some of my time to spend an afternoon in Rumst.
I brought my own version of a ploughman’s platter, to soften the blow of the alcohol a bit. It helped… a bit!
We only had a couple of hours on our first day in London, but we managed to squeeze in a fish meal at Hook Camden, a visit to BrewDog Camden — with some familiar Glaswegian faces — and a last drink at a pub near our hotel, The Queen’s Head, with live piano music.
