The Mad Brewer Explores the Low Countries
24 Hour Beer Festival Part 1

November 7, 1998

It's off to the final festival of this beer trek, the world renowned 24 Hours of Beer in Antwerp.  As luck would have it, we met up with many of the people we met at the festival in Heikant last weekend.

The festival was extremely crowded, but nobody seemed to mind it much.  It was challenging to get a beer on occasion, but we managed just fine.  The program for the festival is 32 pages long, and includes just about everything you might want to know about a beer, in Flemish.  There were 148 beers from 43 breweries listed in the program.

As festivals go, this one is run more by the brewers that the OBP.  The brewers have their own serving equipment, and wash your glass before serving their beer to you.   The festival glass is a looks like a miniture brandy snifter, and is nominally 15 cl.  Check out part 2 to see more about the beers.

After the festival closed, at 2 in the morning, all the Heikant people gathered outside in the street to wait for their bus.  We hung out for a while to say goodbye.

Paul and I enacted an old Flemish saying, that translates something like this:

Beer, Beer, Beer,
Many times you have Knoked me down,
But even though I may have to crawl home on my hands and knees,
I will continue to drink you.

Suspicious Characters Unite Again

More Beer!


Farewell, Paul


Beer, Beer, Beer

Goodbye all our new Heikant Friends.