DRAFT Magazine: Brussels on a Shoestring.

Check out the Sept/Oct issue of DRAFT Magazine for my article on how to do Brussels and its beers on the cheap. You won't find it on draftmag.com, but that's OK since you were just on your way out the door to your nearest quality bookstore anyway. Hunt for it next to the fancy wine and food magazines. While you're at it, go here and subscribe.

Among other gold worth mining out of that issue is a feature on a American beer gardens. These are very much on my mind at the moment, not just because it's October, but because I've been reading Maureen Ogle's fascinating Ambitious Brew. Aside from her historian credentials she's a smooth storyteller and does an admirable job of painting a picture I've always wanted to see: What were our German immigrant forefathers up to in the 1800s?

As it turns out, at least part of the time, they were hanging out in massive beer gardens and beer halls built in and around large American cities. Of course the breweries built them. The folks were socializing, bowling, playing cards, walking their toddlers around, and drinking hearty amber lagers of about 3 percent strength.

Honestly, that sounds like my scene.

Pictured is part of the beer list hanging over the bar at Monk, one of the cafés featured in the article. A lot of really great beers there for les than €3.