Belgium's rich beer culture is intoxicating, to say the least

I know I might invite criticism if I promote alcohol, but I also believe it would be a dereliction of duty on my part to bid farewell to Belgium after nearly seven years without writing about its beer culture.

I remember well when the Belgian embassy official who interviewed me in Beijing seven years ago for issuing a journalist visa asked me how long I would be stationed in Brussels, I told him in a lighter vein, "Until I finish all the Belgian beers".

His response was prompt: "That's impossible."

I knew that Belgium brews about 1,600 types of beer, so it would take a little more than four years to taste all of them even if you try a different beer every day. But the fact that a lot of new varieties enter the market every year makes it almost impossible for someone like me to taste all of them.

The official then asked me what I would write about during my posting in Belgium. I said that "my job is to cover the European Union but I might also write about Belgian beer if there is not much news". He got quite excited, saying that I must send him a copy if I write a column on Belgian beer.

I did try different beer brands during my initial days in Belgium in late 2018. I love those Trappist beers brewed by monks in monasteries and the Abbey beers, known for their rigid brewing styles. But they are strong. In fact, Belgian beers are known to be strong, often with 6 to 12 percent ABV(alcohol by volume), compared with German beers, which often have 4-5 percent alcohol.

I have to admit that I was deterred by some beers, especially some Lambic and Gueuze beers. They tasted weird to me.

I have taken friends visiting from China to the Delirium Café in Brussels, which boasts 2,000 beers from around the world and holds the Guinness World Records for the number of beers available for tasting. The mood inside the cafe and the decoration, with many old advertising plates and glasses, are as impressive as the beers.

The Bier Central, where I had dinner on Monday, serves 300 different types of beer. The Belgian beer culture was included on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity list in 2016. Beer is like a religion in Belgium. Drinking beer is a social event. People meet in bars, cafes and restaurants over a beer. The same is true for the gatherings in parks, such as in the Parc du Cinquantenaire near my apartment.

The country of 11 million people, half of my hometown Shanghai's population, had 417 breweries at the end of 2023, most of them micro-breweries, with 73 percent of beer produced in Belgium being exported, mostly to neighboring countries such as France and the Netherlands, but also, increasingly, to new markets like China.

Belgian beers Hoegaarden and Vedett are now being brewed in China to meet the growing demand in Chinese and other Asian markets. A Belgian friend who visited China for the first time last month sent me a photo of him drinking Duvel in a Beijing bar.

Belgian company AB InBev is the world's largest producer of beer, brewing 49.5 billion liters of beer in 2024, which accounted for more than a quarter of the global production.

An amazing thing about Belgium is that a brand of beer is always served in a glass with the beer brand's logo, unlike in most other countries. And pouring beer is often like an art, not to mention the annual competition of so-called draught masters.

I gave up the mission impossible of sampling all the Belgian beers long ago. But I have been fascinated by the country's beer culture.

While writing this column, I realized that this year, International Beer Day happens to fall on Aug 1 — the first Friday of August. The timing couldn't have been better for my last column from Brussels.

The author is chief of China Daily EU Bureau based in Brussels.