Boak and Bailey's Beer Blog - Night falls on St Mystere

Visit the Boak and Bailey's Beer Blog site

http://www.boakandbailey.com/wp-cont...deroverste.jpg

We were twitching to get back to continental Europe a couple of weeks ago and so arranged a relatively spontaneous long weekend in Antwerp.* It’s a very Flemish Belgian city, which you can reach in less than three hours from London, if your connections work out.

We spent our first evening at Groote Witte Arend near the Grote Markt, in a lovely, tranquil courtyard full of twinkling lights and distant classical music.* It boasts of 80 beers, although we spent a while dealing with sheepish waiters until we found anything they actually had in stock.

On tap, there were a couple of interesting beers we hadn’t had before. Moeder Overste has a pronounced bitter-orange flavour and reminded us a little of Young’s Special London.* We don’t have much more specific to say other than that we really enjoyed it.* Arend Blonde (the house brand) is much as you’d expect from the name, except perhaps crisper and lighter than you’d normally expect from a 6% Leffe-alike.

As night fell and the time came to leave, we asked ourselves, somewhat wistfully, where in Britain could we hope to drink in such peaceful surroundings?



More...