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"mr happy":3fidyzpf wrote: Sorry to go completely off topic but the hop festival was a great experience. Its a bit like a cross between a small scale Paddy's day parade, a lovely girls contest and a beer festival. The beer festival takes place on the main square on the Saturday and Sunday afternoon. It was very busy but there was a good atmosphere and a lot of beer from a wide range of Belgian breweries. The trappist breweries were all at one stall including Westvleteren Blond. There was also a lady selling fresh and pelleted local hops. I picked up 150g of Goldings for 3 euros and am a bit sorry now that I didn't get a bit more. The town itself is a nice small Flemish town with an attractive central square.

The view as you approach Poppering is a lot like the picture on the hommelbier bottle and while hops aren't the dominant feature of the countryside there are a lot of them. As a homebrewer who had never seen hop production before it was really interesting.

We stayed in Westvleteren which is about 8km from Poperinge. Unfortunately the famous monastery closes its cafe and beer sales for two weeks starting the weekend of the hop festival but we did drop by to have a peek and as I mentioned above there were other legitimate opportunties to sample their beers so I don't feel we missed out. We also visited the De Struise brewers "retail outlet" which is concealed off the main street in nearby Oostvleteren and picked up a few of their brews as well as some De Molen and a oak aged Southern Tier Imperial IPA.

Nice part of the world, and I would definitely recommend it although I think that unfortunately the festival is only held every three years.[/quote:3fidyzpf]

I've driven through there myself, on the way to Westvlettern but the festival sounds absolutely AMAZING.

It's really a great countryside out there in the West of Belgium (very similar to the area around Munster, Germany; eerily similar).

You just feel healthy being out there.


Adam