Forty Handles and a Mule.

Forty? Egads. That won't sound like a lot to My Fellow Americans, spoiled as we are by pricey but prolific specialist beer bars carrying everything from Bamberg to Boston to Brussels to Burton. (We make everything bigger. Especially our children.) But in Belgium, proud home of secondary bottle fermentation for "specialty" beers... Well, 40 is a lot of tap handles.

(Here's a poor joke, made poorer by a stereotypical French accent: An old Belgian guy walks into the new Moeder Lambic Fontainas. He sees all the taps and says, "Wow! Zat ees a lot of Jupiler!")*

Anyway, I snuck a peak at the new place the other day, hence the photo. Expect 40 kegs of quality. Disregard the Coca-Cola, which will not be one of them. As I reported back in July, Moeder Lambic Fontainas is set to open in October. That looks to be on track, although it will be later in the month rather than earlier. The exact day depends on the last-minute stuff—including, apparently, the gas company. Official opening party probably on November 7.

For a lot more photos of the Fontainas in progress, there is a Facebook (shhh!) page here. (Just don't tell anyone else about Facebook. It's a secret, only for cool kids and all their relatives and exes and high school classmates and so on.)

*I'm really, really sorry.