Highlight #12: Best of the Browns.

Q: What's better than a shiny, modern, specialist beer café with hundreds of great bottles and taps from which to choose?

A: An utterly brown one, with a small handful of great beers.

I'd like you to meet the Brumaire. This is a real neighborhood brown café in Saint-Gilles, a corner bar that looks like so many others, with Stella Artois signage and smoky regulars sitting out front, holding court. Once inside you have the requisite gaming machine and little bags of potato chips or sausage bites. Inexplicably for such a small place, there are stage lights and a disco ball.

I counted 37 beers on the wall-mounted list, made from those slats and little plastic letters like you used to see in hospitals and elementary schools. To my shame, I took no photo of this. But among the usuals were Jambe de Bois, Witkap Stimulo, Hommelbier, and a few Trappists than included Orval, Rochefort 10, Westmalle Tripel, and Chimays blue and white, the latter being on draft.

Plus Saison Dupont.

Translations are imperfect, but maybe this is like an American hole-in-the-wall dive that happens to have Sierra Nevada on draft, or a British "community pub" that happens to have well-kept Taylor's Landlord. A jewel.

So there I was in the middle of a long foot-trek from central Brussels to Moeder Lambic St-Gilles -- which is just a couple of blocks away -- drinking a Saison Dupont in one of the brownest cafés in Brussels, which automatically puts it in the running for brownest worldwide. Nibbling on those awful, wonderful little sausage bites. Trying to figure out where they boogie when the disco ball goes into effect.

So for me, that's a highlight. More to come. Here's an explanation if you're wondering what I'm up to.

Brussels, Mussels and September.

I often wish I were back in Brussels. Here from my bed in Escazú, I have pleasant dreams about visiting old cafés, drinking lambic, and scribbling notes. My subconscious is researching another guidebook, even if I'm not (yet). No doubt the wife and tots prefer it that way.

Right now, though... I mean, if you had to pick one time of year... hey, mussels are in season. So are beer festivals. This is the time of year that Bruxellensis happens, in that parallel universe where Bruxellensis is a regular occurrence. (Hey, maybe next year.) And the Belgian Beer Weekend kicks off this Friday on the Grand Place. I don't love all of the breweries that tend to participate, but... it's not like I go thirsty, is it? And you can't really beat the Grand Place for a beer-fest backdrop.

Just up the hill from the Grand Place party is Bier Circus, of course. This morning I got their newsletter. Mussels are on. Cooked in Girardin lambic, in Witbier and watercress, or in Rochefort and stone-ground mustard.

Back to the Grand Place for a peek at the list: Lots of clutter there, but I could do with a St. Bernardus 8, a Witkap Stimulo, or a Saison Dupont. Or several. For something different, a Cascade-hopped Armand from De Dool. Then a Hercule Stout to punctuate the evening.

For now I have some hoarded lambics and a few bottles of Saison Dupont smuggled from the States. Tonight, before bedtime, I may have to open a bottle, bending my thoughts toward shellfish and tiny snifters of 10-centiliter servings.

More Geuzey News. And Ponderings.

Here's a roundup of some Belgian beery news you can use... and some you can't, but maybe you'll enjoy it anyway.

Gueuzerie Tilquin opens its doors. Wallonia's first latter-day lambic blender plans an open house weekend on May 28 and 29, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. each day. Go and see Pierre's big barrels and taste his work in Rebecq-Rognon, southwest of Halle. Conveniently for those of you lucky enough to go, those dates are the same as the Weekend of Spontaneous Fermentation in Buggenhout. You can do it all.

Speaking of the Weekend of Spontaneous Fermentation, there's a beer list here. That's an early tentative list, so I think you could expect more surprises. Just scanning that thing makes me hungry for cheese. I wonder if Drie Fonteinen's new Armand'4 Oude Geuze Lente will be there? That would be the first of four high-priced special blends aimed at re-starting brewing operations there.

Geuze-barrel woodchips in the grocery store. Really. Our man Phil Madden in Antwerp says he found them at a Carrefour Express. And he's a barbecue maven. He's also wondering whether they could be used to inoculate some homebrew. Apparently it was a barrel from Timmermans that gave its life for Phil's smoking habit.

What's Mom got on tap? I find it healthy to check what guest beers Moeder Lambic is pouring now and then. Keeps me motivated to make some money and get back there soon. In St-Gilles: Bink Bloesem from Kerkom, Hop Ruiter from Scheldebrouwerij, and Zona Cesarini from Birrificio Toccalmatto. Besides the usual Senne beers and other beauties. At Fontainas, at last check: Mikkeller Sorachi Ace IPA, Schlenkerla Fastenbier, Bi-Du Artigian ale, Schneider Weisse, Uerige Alt, Foufoune, Vigneronne, Cuvée St Gilloise, Bons Voeux, Saison Dupont Dry Hopping 2011, Biolégère, Witkap Triple, Cuvée de Ranke, De Ryck Arend Triple, Sainte Hélène Grognarde.

Are you buying fewer Belgian beers? Maybe because it's too expensive? Here's why I ask: Duvel reports that it's selling more of its strong ales--but not as much as it had hoped, thanks to a weak dollar. Maybe you have fewer duckets to spend, and maybe those duckets don't go as far as you like when facing the price tags of specialty European beers. Just wondering.

I mean, we can say "drink local" and mean it, but it's still nice to splurge now and then on an Orval or whatever your indulgence of choice might be. Right? But maybe we're doing so less often these days.

It's a critical question for Belgian craft brewers, many of whom are largely dependent on the U.S. export market.

*Photo courtesy of Pierre Tilquin.

Sly Foxes, Disappearing Drunken Tour Guides, Trumpeteers in Cossack Outfits, and Other Belgitude.

Didn't have to be a bender on Saturday. But plow some fine people with plenty of lambic and €1.50 goblets of Witkap Stimulo, and that tends to happen.

We begin at the Rare Vos café in Schepdaal for some tasty vittles and a unique beverage found on cask there. This place is a bit legendary among the geeks; Michael Jackson wrote about it, Ommegang named a beer for it, and Tim Webb gives it a strong recommendation. The weather is perfect so we're more than pleased when they hide the loud Americans on the back terrace.

Girardin makes a special drink, named for the café, by blending lambic, gueuze (which is a refermented blend of old and young lambic), and faro (which is old lambic with some candy sugar in it). Confused? Me too. I'm not sure how old that base lambic is. But the final product comes out fruity, refreshing, and damned interesting. You can even get mussels cooked in the stuff. Me, I can't pass up the raw ones next to some 3 Fonteinen gueuze. After and before glasses of Rare Vos, naturally.

Then we're off to the open house at Slaghmuylder, where the Stimulo has begun to flow and some odd folk in costumes are carrying in various wind instruments. Inside the brewhouse, an old steam engine chugs away on an alternator. It's not clear whether this is a quaint antique or actually connected to the brewery. We'd like to find out, and a young curly-headed dude offers to give us a tour in English... once he finishes this next beer. Trouble is, he keeps getting a next one, and a next one. So do we. Before long, all hope of a proper tour is flushed down the port-a-potties, and we're lost in a crowd of drinkers enjoying a bizarrely costumed Balkan-style oompah band called Yah Tararah. To be frank, we are unprepared for that level of raw, eccentric belgitude. Somehow I manage to make a short video before we escape.

Finally in a stroke of pure indulgence we stop at the Heeren van Liedekercke on the way home. Yet another legend of beer geekery, thanks to its incredible cellar of vintage Belgian ales. By then I'm loose enough to drop the extra duckets on a special one-off gueuze made by 3 Fonteinen five years ago. This is the intense and ponderous J&J Oude Gueuze Roze. The other members of my crack drinking squad go for cheese and salami, but I'm trying to save myself for dinner...

Dinner? Oh hell, we're having friends over. Nearly forgot. I'm in charge of pairings: 3 Fonteinen gueuze (again? uh-oh) with fresh goat cheese, La Rulles Triple with a spicy Thai squid dish, and Struise Black Albert stout with homemade burnt-sugar ice cream. (Yeah, that's how we roll. You should come over sometime.)

Next morning, I'm trying to think of something better for a Sunday hangover than non-stop Olympics coverage on TV.

Nope. Drawing a blank.

Going Where Unsmiling Women Dance for Hops in the Fields.

This weekend we're off to the open-doors day at Slaghmuylder, makers of the underrated Witkap beers. I've got a soft spot for the hoppy and sessionable blonde Stimulo. Nice from the bottle and even nicer fresh on tap.

The brewery's a straight 25-minute drive west of Brussels in Ninove, roughly where Flemish Brabant starts to become East Flanders. Like the Stimulo itself, this region is underrated. Between Brussels and well-traveled West Flanders you've got the lambic country of Pajottenland and the dark, barrel-aged ales of East Flanders. And plenty of other oddities, like the bone-dry "Flemish saisons" of Glazen Toren, whose brewery shop we aim to visit. Another possibility is the Casino café in Eine, home of the Cnudde old brown ale. Sadly we're told by friend and tourmeister Podge that the village's Kaffee Barbier beer café/barber shop has shuttered.

Maybe while we're out there we'll also see some unsmiling Flemish women dancing for the children, hops and wheat in the fields. Or something like that. That's right! Again with the Brel.