OK, now that we’re rested, time to visit some museums.

I don’t think there are any dedicated to chocolate (there IS one for fries, though!).

But there are TWO for beer and brewing!

Let’s do the smaller one first.

The Brewer’s House is right on the Grand-Place. The former home of the Brewers Guild, it’s now the HQ of the Belgian Brewers Association. No real difference, if you ask me.

The museum is in the basement. It’s just a room of antique brewing equipment, and one room of more modern stuff to illustrate the brewing process. Very little I didn’t know – but I did like the video playing in one nook about the malting process at an industrial scale. The price of admission includes a beer at their bar…..

If you are both more and less serious about your beer, you’ll want to visit the Belgian Beer World in the old Bourse building. You start walking through simple displays on the history of beer and brewing in Belgium (I question the accuracy of some of their information on the history of beer making).

When you get to more recent times (the 19^th century), they start getting more into the branding and development of beer styles. All those different shapes of bottles and glasses were part of creating a brand identity.

I was happy to note that they gave a passing reference to Michael Jackson – not the singer, but the English writer who, in the 1970s and 1980s wrote about all the different beer styles in the world and their history. Looking at the sorry state of Belgian brewing at the time, he pretty much slapped them around and said “You have this incredible history of beer making, and all these wonderful styles! Why are you letting it die?”

That pretty much woke them up. Belgium declared 1986 to be the “Year of Belgian Beer”, and they now have an annual “Weekend of Beer” in Brussels the first weekend in September.

Once the history is taken care of, there’s a bunch of displays (even interactive ones) on the modern commercial brewing process. I particularly liked the one called (in essence) “So You Want to Open a Brewery”, which is a set of quizzes and puzzles on the challenges facing a wannabe brewer. Things like “What permits do you need?” and “What will you do with the spent grain?”

The final display before the gift shop is a sort of bar where a virtual bartender asks you about your beer preferences. Not just what flavors you prefer, but if you like beer with food, do you think that a head on your beer is important, etc. That’s important, because your ticket has a QR code on it. The “bar” is activated by scanning it, and a computer keeps track of your responses. When you’re all done, you get a list of suggested beers that meet your “requirements”.

Hold on to it, because your ticket ALSO includes one free beer at the rooftop bar!

By the way, the bar also offers some food options: cheese, sausage, or cheese AND sausage. The cheese is your basic semi-soft cheddar type; the sausage is a really nice bit of a hard salami-type.

Well worth the cost.

There are some fine views from there – but you can’t really see the “King’s House”. It’s now the City Museum of Brussels, and the subject of the next post.