Beer post: "Drie Fonteinen"

When planning a day trip involving bikes (aka making a beer bike pilgrimage) to a beer place well known for lambics, it's extremely useful to make sure that you have found the *right* destination. Journeying ~ 40 km to the wrong destination is truly hilarious. Because when you show up and realize your wrong you can't really do anything but laugh. You're exhausted, tired, obviously thirsty, and your top-up pay as you go internet connection ran out just in time to fact check where the heck you ended up (wtf BASE?).

The hubs and I biked to "Drie Fonteinen." There is a huge park in Vilvoorde with the same name, where the Brasserie Drie Fonteinen is also located (except in Vilvoorde). We intended to bike to 3Fonteinen in Beersel (drie = 3, fonteinen = fountains in Dutch). In the Flemish parts of Belgium, the Fietsnet is indispensable as a guide for planning a biking route (see end of post). Biking one-way and then taking the train back is a good day-trip option. Most cities in Belgium will be connected with trains, and a day pass for bikes is EUR 8.

In researching the destination and route of travel the hubs and I independently found the same location and didn't think twice about it. We even did this over several days. In fact, we wrongly read both sites and thought they were the same thing. So once we got to the Brasserie Drie Fonteinen we realized our mistake. We sat down and looked off the single lambic on the menu, and then ordered up some Grimbergens. We chuckled. What the heck else can you really do? So while the Brasserie Drie Fonteinen is not 3Fonteinen, it is a nice restaurant with a huge terrace and garden. And the mostly flat ride was quite enjoyable.

Beersel would have been too far anyways. Bieke, thank you for calling me when my minutes ran out and telling us the opening hours of our intended destination, and not laughing hysterically at me. You are too kind.












The Fietsnet is basically a Google map overlaid with connected bike-number systems. I wrote about using it here; on the zoek locatie (find location) tab type the city or area where you want to start. The map will zoom into the location and a series of red dots will appear. Click each red dot to choose the route. It may take a few tries. White lanes mean paved roads, orange means gravel or semi-hard (which can sometimes mean dirt or biking through a corn field), and blue is cobblestone. Sometime the Fietsnet will take you around a city if the city doesn't have good bike lanes. It's optimized for the bike rider because it avoids heavy car traffic areas, and it always opts for the most quiet and scenic riding situations. It is the single best way to explore Belgium. Exporting to GPS is possible. If you have questions or notice that signs are missing, take a minute to report it here. Check out there list of cycling websites too. Now, don't you want this idea of an online connected updated useful bike number trail system in the city/region/area/state you live? It makes travel without a car a complete and total reality? It is seriously the best thing ever.

Beer Post: Cafe Nieuwhuys and Brewery

I love visiting breweries. It never gets old, and to see and meet the brewers of a beer, and to hear them talk about their craft always makes me appreciate beer that much more. In Belgium, where beer is the norm, I'm constantly impressed at how gracious small family-owned breweries are when they open up their breweries and take time to give you a personalized tour. Nieuwhuys brews one of my favorite darker beers, Alpaide, a porter-esque dark beer with a hint of hops, and a neutral malt backbone.

Karl surprised me with this visit in June. We rode, along with our bikes, on the train from Leuven to Tienen, and took the fietsnet bike numbered trail that connects all of Flanders. It's approx. 11 km round trip, and the ride goes through Tienen before taking you through beautiful country-side. If you are coming there from Leuven or any surrounding towns, make it a full-day beer-bike Belgian country-side tour. Round-trip from Leuven is 45 km. Summer is excellent for long bike trips with the daylight lasting until 10 pm. Fruit trees of apple, cherry, and plum fall lazily into bike lanes. Hoegaarden is small; there is a cathedral, botanical garden with a nice terrace, a Saturday market in the middle of town which you can't miss, 2 breweries, and mostly homes. The visitor center is in the middle of town and can suggest sites. I almost forgot, of course, there are places to sample frites met curry mayo too!

To use the Fietsnet (bike net), type the location you want to go into the right hand side search box labeled Zoek op plaatsnaam (search a place). So in this instance, Leuven. The map should zoom or hover to that location. Click the red number. Then in the Zoek op plaatsnaam type where you want to go, e.g. Hoegaarden, or wherever it is you want to end up. Click the red number. A route will appear under Wegbeschrijving (or route details), located just under the search box. Fietsnet generates a route based on the route. When you're on your bike you follow the numbered trails. If you need to make any changes to the route, for instance to only be on paved bike lanes, then you can select it on the map manually. You can export to a gps, save the map on your iphone, print it, or just write down all the numbers. The Fietsnet does not have any maps for the Brussels region, or Wallonia, but it connects up with Holland. The Fietsnet is the best thing ever, and shouldn't you be shaking your fist to the sky and screaming why don't I have this where I live?!?!?! The bike trails can vary immensely, mostly it is paved, but you can end up on cobblestone, or dirt paths, but nothing too crazy.

The brewery is located in a converted, modernized, and revamped farmhouse. They have a couple of small-scale fermentation tanks, which they also use to distill genever. Nieuwhuys invested in a small bottling machine, but they still do a lot of the transfer of bottles by hand. In between the bottling area, and the fermenting and mashing quarters, is a fancy fully-equipped brewers lab. The owners and brewers of Nieuwhuys were both into their careers, when the husband began brewing beer full-time. They set up their brewery to literally exist in the shadow of the larger brewery (Hoegaarden), but to serve as a place to get together and enjoy the finer things. It is a charming, welcoming, and friendly brewery. Pick up bottles of the Alpaide blonde or dark, and the Rosdel, and perhaps a few of their fine Speculoos genevers?

To set up a visit, call ahead. You'll probably be given a time, and when you arrive, you'll do the beer sampling first. The Cafe Nieuwhuys serves food, so you can sit down to a fine meal inside or out (I recommend the Thai curry). The Nieuwhuys beers aren't too widely available, although beer cafe's with a monster beer menu will likely have it. In Leuven, I've found it at De Weiring and DeFiere Margriet. Nearby, it is stocked at ABS beer store in Winksele. 

Rosdel

Alpaide, blonde and regular

Alpaide

Speculaas genever, essentially gingerbread flavored liqueur

Brewery lab

The lab looking towards the bottling areas

Bottling

Bottle capper

Cafe Nieuwhuys

Fietsnet numbers for the fietsknooppunten

Typical bike trail on the fietsknooppunten

Passing country-side

Exploring some old cathedral and abbey ruins in Tienen

Apple Pie and Bike Rides

Karl and I biked to Brussels this past weekend using the Knooppunt bike-number-trail system.  It took us almost 3 hours (a train ride from Leuven to Brussels is all of 20 minutes).  We have made several past attempts, each of them getting us about an hour outside of Leuven before we gave up and headed back.


Biking around Belgium is the best way to see the country-side and go through areas we would probably never visit.  It is truly one of the best things about living here. The bike trails take you off the beaten path, and you usually go through neighborhoods, farms, and lesser traveled roads.  We also had the luxury of having apple and cherry trees along the ride and so we picked up a lot of apples (the tree was hanging off the property onto "public" property, fyi). On the other side of the apple tree was a chicken coop and a mass of overgrown stinging nettle (which is true to its name). The bike ride offered us some rare glimpses of Brussels as we came through the parks in Tervuren, passed the beautiful arch in Jubelpark, the EU Commission, and finally made it towards Brussels Central Station.  Parking our bikes here, we bought train tickets for the return trip and then acted like true Brusseleirs: we got some beers and sat at a terrace.


The filling for the pie comes from Bill Neal's Biscuits, Spoonbread and Sweet Potato Pie cookbook (with minor additions), and the pastry dough comes from tweaking a samosa recipe. The pastry dough is light and crisp, and comes together easily. The yogurt and oil make rolling the dough simple, while the pastry flour gives a light crisp crust.  The apples are not cooked, but instead mixed with the spices and flour. Instead of fried pie - this is baked, but I think it turns out better than fried.  If you buy store apples, peel them, if you buy locally grown owns with no waxy coating, leave the skins on.  If you are going to share your pies, you might as well rope some help in. Get someone to make the dough. It is a huge timesaver.  

apples are looking a little bruised, so ready for pie filling!

pies are ready to go in the oven, crimped, slashed and dressed. 

Yield: 8 pies
Pastry dough:
2 cups pastry flour
2 T sugar
pinch salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup yogurt


You'll need extra flour for rolling, and a rolling pin and fork. 
Directions: 

1. Mix pastry dough, sugar, salt and spices together. 
2. Stir in yogurt and oil, knead 5 minutes
3. Set aside to rest about 30 minutes. 
4. When ready, roll dough into a log about 12 inches long. Cut in half, then cut each half in half, until you have 8 pieces. 
5. Roll pieces into balls and set aside.
6. When ready, dip each ball into flour, flatten lightly with hand, and roll out on lightly floured surface. Roll out into a 6 inch or 7 inch circle.  Directions continue below the pie filling. 

Apple Pie Filling:

3 1/2 - 4 cups apple slices, peeled and sliced thin (use a tart apple, or a variety of tart apples)

juice of 1/2 of a lemon

3/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup flour

pinch salt

1 t cinnamon

1/8 t nutmeg

2 T amaretto

Egg wash:

1 egg white

1 T milk or water

3 T sugar 

Directions:

1. Place apple slices in a large mixing bowl and squeeze lemon juice over slices, mix to combine.
2. Sift together sugar, flour, spices and salt. Sift over apples, and mix to combine. 
3. Pre-heat oven to 400 F. Start rolling out the dough. When the first circle is ready, stir in amaretto to the apple mixture, and stir to combine.  Prep egg wash by combining 1 egg white with 1 T milk, set aside. 
4. Assemble pies by place 2 T of filling on the lower half of the circle. Fold over and seal edges together with the tines of a fork. Place on a greased baking sheet. When the baking sheet is full of pies, slash the tops of the pies to allow steam to escape. Brush the tops with egg wash and sprinkle with sugar. 
5. Bake at 400 F for 25-35 minutes, or until pies are golden.