Brussels Beer City Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

This is the Brussels Beer City Podcast.

This edition of the podcast is a brief interruption to our regular broadcast schedule, as we’re not talking diaspora bars this time around. Don’t worry though, normal servicel will resume soon.

Instead, this episode is a one-off, about a very particular kind of beer that’s just about to be launched in Brussels. To mark the launch of Brussels Beer Project’s Dansaert Gueuze, I sat down with five of the people involved in making this landmark beer.

Why is it a landmark beer? Well, to get the full story, you’ll have to listen to our conversation, which took place a few weeks ago in the cellars under BBP’s Dansaert brewery in central Brussels. But suffice it to say this much by way of introduction. Lambic is Brussels’ indigenous beer tradition, and having dominated Brussels’ brewing scene 120 years ago, by the beginning of the 21st century Brasserie Cantillon stood alone as the city’s only Lambic brewer. Until BBP announced their Dansaert Lambic programme and released their first blends in December 2021. For the intervening two years, Cantillon could continue to claim their place as the city’s only remaining Gueuze producer - Gueuze being a blend of variously-aged Lambics. And now, with the launch of BBP’s Dansaert Gueuze, there are two.

But as I said, I’ll let the brewers explain it all.

It’s an episode for the beer nerds among you, and it’ a little longer than the usual format. But even if your knowledge of Lambic beer and brewing is barely skin-deep, I think you’ll find something interesting in the story behind Brussels Beer Project’s Dansaert Gueuze.

So here’s me talking to Tiago Falcone, David Santos, Jordan Keeper, Sam Fleet, and Dimirti Van Roy of Brussels Beer Project. I hope you enjoy it.

Click here to read the accompanying article.

This is the Brussels Beer City Podcast Diaspora Season: Chapter 3 - Ciao, Belga!

For almost 150 years, Italians who’ve travelled north to Brussels in search of work and better life, have been feeding the appetites and slaking the thirsts of the city’s residents.

Brussels’ Italian quarter - in the tangle of streets between the botanical gardens and North station - may have long since disappeared, but the community has made a signifcant and lasting mark on Brussels’ culinary world. And, as new arrivals from Il Bel Paese keep making their transalpine migration, what an “Italian” café in Brussels is keeps evolving.

Click here to read the accompanying article.

The Brussels Beer City Podcast: Diaspora Season is about Brussels’ immigrant communities and the places they love to drink. 

From ice cold Sagres with piglet sandwiches and pintjes in bruine kroegen, to creamy pints, fried plantains, and more, the podcast will explore the drinking cultures of just a small slice of Brussels’ diaspora communities.

Read about the project here.

Elisabeth Debourse, journalist, writer of the weekly Mordant newsletter, and host of several podcasts - one of which, Salade Tout, is currently in production for its second season - is my guest on today's episode of the Brussels Beer City Podcast.

Over a lunchtime beer at a central Brussels cheese bar, we talk about how she is very much not a food journalist but a writer engaged in societal questions of which food is one fascinating part, frustration as a creative wellspring, the need to break out of our bubbles if we want to deal with race and representation in the Belgian food world, and having to taste terrible shrimp croquettes.

Listen in!

My guest on today’s episode is Nacim Menu, co-founder of Brussels brewery Nanobrasserie L’Ermitage.

Nacim takes my to his favourite wine bar in St Gilles, where we talk escaping the Wallonian countryside for Brussels, being a young dad in Brussels, his journey from win to beer via his first Cantillon lambic, how a transformative visit to Canada changed his life and set him on the path to opening a brewery - and Brussels as a proper party town.

As you will have guessed, the podcast has moved from a weekly to a bi-weekly schedule, so it should be dropping in your podcast stream every two weeks from now on.

And with that, on with the show!

My guest on today’s episode is Rachael Moore. Rachael is the Coordinator of RainbowHouse Brussels, the city’s umbrella organization of the LGBTQI associations.

In the bar downstairs from her office, we talk about her journey from Liverpool to Brussels (and, crucially, which of the city’s football teams she supports), celebrating Pride during a pandemic, and the hate-love relationship with Brussels, which despite the city’s best efforts, leans towards love.

As you will have guessed, the podcast has moved from a weekly to a bi-weekly schedule, so it should be dropping in your podcast stream every two weeks from now on.

And, I’m already looking ahead to season 2, and I want to hear from listeners who they would like to see come on as guests. So send me your suggestions in the usual channels and I’ll see what I can do!

And with that, on with the show!

My guest on today’s episode is Michiel Van Meervenne, a journalist and entrepreneur, and co-founder of the Brussels food company Kriket, making confectionary using protein sourced from crickets grown locally in Brussels,

At a central Brussels haunt from his old school days, over a Taras Boulba from local brewery Brasserie de la Senne, Michiel talks about how it took him some time to really feel like a Brussels local, why eating crickets is absurd, surreal, and very much in keeping with Brussels’ self-perception, and how suffering through the greyness of Brussels is making him feel like an old man.

Quick note for context, this episode was recorded before the Covid-19 lockdown in Brussels and the global anti-racist movement that has emerged in the wake of the murder of George Floyd.

My guest on today’s episode is Souria Cheurfi. Souria is the editor in chief of VICE Belgium and the founder of Psst madamoiselle, pluridisciplinary events organiser promoting female artists. She specialises in culture, women's and LGBTQ rights, and music.

At a Japanese izakaya on the Brussels canal, we talk about carving out a space for female performers in the Brussels music scene and the thrill of seeing them become successful and visible, why she ended up working at Vice, and how the freedom of Brussels shaped her into the person she is now.

Quick note for context, this episode was recorded before the Covid-19 lockdown in Brussels and the global anti-racist movement that has emerged in the wake of the murder of George Floyd.

My name is Eoghan Walsh, and this is the Brussels Beer City Podcast.

My guest on today’s episode is My guest on today’s episode is Joost Vandecasteele. Joost is a hard man to pin down, as you’ll hear. A comedian, writer, playwright, activist and now video game developer, Joost takes me to his safe space in Anderlecht.

Over a coffee and a kriek, we have a freewheeling conversation that touches on being a radical softie, Brussels as a masculine city and why it’s like Los Angeles, by way of Qanon, William Gibson and JG Ballard.

Joost’s latest project, The Almost Gone - a puzzle video game - is available now on Steam, Nintendo Switch, and on the Google and Apple app stores.

Quick note for context, this episode was recorded before the Covid-19 lockdown in Brussels and the global anti-racist movement that has emerged in the wake of the murder of George Floyd.

My name is Eoghan Walsh, and this is the Brussels Beer City Podcast.

Each week, a fascinating Brussels resident invites me, your host, to their favourite Brussels bar. Where, over a drink or two, we talk about the importance of the bar to them, and their relationship to Brussels - what they love, what they hate, and why they couldn’t live anywhere else.

My guest on today’s episode is Reine Nkiambote, press spokesperson for Brussels Secretary of State for Urbanism and Heritage and co-host of the Yaya Talks podcast.

On a cold, wet spring day, over a drink and shrimp sandwich, we talked about how a sandwich shop transforms into an afro-beat enclave, why she skipped town from Antwerp and landed in Brussels, and why she started her own podcast to give voices to under-represented women in the Belgian media.

Quick note for context, this episode was recorded before the Covid-19 lockdown in Brussels and the global anti-racist movement that has emerged in the wake of the murder of George Floyd.

My name is Eoghan Walsh, and this is the Brussels Beer City Podcast.

Each week, a fascinating Brussels resident invites me, your host, to their favourite Brussels bar. Where, over a drink or two, we talk about the importance of the bar to them, and their relationship to Brussels - what they love, what they hate, and why they couldn’t live anywhere else.

My guest on today’s episode is brewer Dimitri Van Roy of Brussels Beer Project. Dimitri is a familiar face in the Belgian beer community, thanks to his role as self-described “Geek-in-chief and ubiquitous presence at Brussels Beer Project’s central Brussels brewery and taproom.

Over a couple of beers - including some of his own work - at his Schaarbeek local, Dimitri and I talk about his formative beer drinking experience, how he chose Brussels over the US, and where the Brussels beer scene is at in 2020.

Quick note for context, this episode was recorded before the Covid-19 lockdown in Brussels and the global anti-racist movement that has emerged in the wake of the murder of George Floyd.