Belgian bulge

BELGIANS are invading York. Under cover of night, they are taking up positions on our shelves and fillings our fridges. They come in many disguises and are taking no prisoners.

These powerful little devils are single-minded in their determination to corrupt our minds and change our drinking habits, and you, yes you, are buying into their wicked ways.

Pubs across the city are selling Belgian beers of all colours and persuasion, and most have only one thing in common, an ability to seriously distort your evening.

York Brewery pub The Three-legged Mare is a case in point and landlord James Butler says demand for his formidable range of Belgian beers is spiralling beyond all expectations.

He is shifting more than a dozen cases each week and puts the phenomenon down to drinkers' rapidly-evolving tastes and a desire to try something new.

"A lot of people out there don't know what they are looking for, see the beers on offer and decide to give them a try," he says.

"The market is getting bigger and bigger as people are becoming more discerning about what they want to drink."

Part of the experience of drinking a decent Belgian beer is a novel glass, whether it's a heavy goblet, lighter French-style beer glass or bizarre test-tube arrangement with a supporting wooden frame.

James says the latter has become so popular with drinkers that a "shoe deposit" system is in place. If you use the glass, you leave your shoe behind the bar until it is returned.

"This often leaves a couple of single-shoed customers wandering the bar in a daze at the end of the night," says James.

Never being backward in coming forward, we at Bar Talk invited along a few friends to find out for ourselves what this was all about with a carefully planned taste test, at least to begin with.

On offer was a selection from across the board of Belgian beers, a blond beer, a brown, a wheat beer and a fruit lambic - don't worry all will become clear.

Chimay produces some of the most popular beers and they come in red, white and blue varieties, which rise from seven to eight and nine per cent alcohol by volume (ABV) respectively.

The blue is a big, bold popular drop which overflowed from the bottle when opened, and was dark and inviting, almost like a port.

Meanwhile noses were being turned away from the drier white which comes with a lot of sediment and quite an acidic kick, while the red was the colour of light demerara sugar with a grassy smell and strong malt taste. Good stuff.

Then came a Duvel, or "Devil Beer" (8.5 per cent ABV), which was smooth and easy drinking, followed by Kwak (eight per cent), sweet, dark red in colour and very distinctive.

Kwak comes in the memorable wooden frame and test tube glass arrangement which, while a great novelty, led us into a huge row about whether anyone could ever be taken seriously drinking from it.

The simple answer was that by now we were beginning not to care, and the colourful selection of Timmermans fruit beers reinforced that theory. "It's like a fruit punch," said chief taster Mike, and with peach, cherry, raspberry, blackcurrant and wheat varieties, he wasn't far off.

The peach was popular, sweet and fizzy, cherry was labelled too sweet "like dissolved cherry drops" and the blackcurrant held firmly at arms length.

These are all Lambic beers produced to a 13th century method in Belgium. It's complicated and often creates an unusual sharp and tart flavour, most prominent in the "gueuze" or wheat flavour, which was something new to most of us.

As our tasting notes became more unclear there were a few less familiar bottles which James had brought in as an experiment.

Unfortunately the St Feuillen Blonde was promptly described as "like Poirot's pee" by Mike while Rachel and Cat were not big fans of the hefty Golden Draak which weighed in at 10.5 per cent.

Among the final bottles a paper-wrapped Liefmans kriek with a remarkable sharp cherry flavour, almost like real fruit, stood out.

Overall the beers, which came in 250ml or 330ml bottles, were good quality and full of flavour, although not necessarily all to our taste. But at £2.50 a bottle, drinkers have a chance to try something new.

At the end of the night, our tasters staggered out of the High Petergate boozer, while I hung behind, checking we had as many shoes as we walked in with.

Updated: 10:00 Saturday, January 04, 2003