Geo Quiz

Belgian beer capital

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For today’s Geo Quiz, we’re talking beer: A labor dispute in the Flemish region of Belgium is affecting the world’s largest brewery. Union workers in the city we’re looking for are upset by a plan by Anheuser-Busch – InBev to cut 263 jobs.

The international mega-brewer makes Bud and Bud Light. In Belgium, it produces the popular Stella Artois brand. But a blockade of the company’s headquarters in Belgium is disrupting supplies.

(Photo by Mark Renders/Getty Images)

Question is, where’s this blockade happening?

Here’s a hint: One of the city’s landmarks is a statue called the Fountain of Wisdom. It’s of a student reading a book while pouring liquid (wisdom) into his head. Maybe it’s beer.

The mega brewer Anheuser-Busch/InBev is headquartered in Leuven, Belgium, the answer to the Geo Quiz. A weeklong blockade of the company’s headquarters is threatening to disrupt their beer supplies to local supermarkets and bars.

But there are well over 100 breweries in Belgium producing some 600+ kinds of beer. So we asked beer expert and writer Horst Dornbusch to suggest a few of his favorites alternatives to the popular Stella Artois brand.

Dornbusch: ” Here are a few suggestions for your listeners slaking their thirst should Stella Artois and Leffe become unavailable as a result of the Anheuser-Busch-Inbev strike in Leuven, Belgium.

Because in the International blond lager with no “Belgian” characteristics, there is no shortage of alternatives, mostly from Germany, including Paulaner Pils, Hofbräuhaus Helles, Dinkelacker, Bitburger, and Beck’s. A good American craft-brew alternative is Victory Pils from Philadelphia.

Leffe, on the other hand, is a very “Belgian” blond ale. For replacements among the hundreds of Belgian beers available internationally, I would go for the following:

Chimay Grand Réserve from the Abbaye Notre Dame de Scourmont in Baileux, Belgium. This brew is a mellow, full-bodied Trappist Ale, with 9 percent alcohol by volume—an ideal ale to be sipped on a wintery night, out of a snifter, in from of a fire place. Similarly satisfying abbey ales are the Belgian Trappist brews of Achel, Orval, Rochefort, Westmalle, and Westvleteren, as well as such secular Belgian abbey ales as Corsendonk Abbey Brown Ale, Grimbergen Blond, Grimbergen Double, Saint Bernadus, and St. Feuillien Brune. New World Belgian ales like these include New Belgium Trippel and Brooklyn Triple, as well as Unibroue La Fin du Monde from Canada.

Talking about the season, a Belgian bière de saison, a farmhouse ale, would be a great choice, too, for winter. I recommend the spicy, effervescent, champagne cork-stoppered Saison Dupont, which undergoes a secondary fermentation in the bottle. From the United States, I also recommend anything brewed by Ommegang, a Belgian-style craft brewery in Cooperstown, in upstate New York.

For a nice Belgian Golden Ale, I recommend the 8.5% alcohol by volume Duvel Belgian Golden Ale, one of the best pale ales made anywhere. Other Leffe alternatives from Belgium are Palm Ale, Piraat Pale Ale, and Affligem Blond, as well as La Trappe Blond from the Trappist monastery brewery de Koningshoeven in southern Holland. “

Marco’s interview with Horst Dornbush:

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