Port

One of our favorite spots was the Solar do Vinho do Porto, which people love to hate on the internet. Like many places with excellent product, the servers get grumpy when tourists ask “what’s good?” Answer: it’s all good, it’s Port.

I don’t usually drink port, but when I do, I prefer a 1982 Dalva Colheita

Time for a port lesson, if you don’t care skip to the next image.

Port starts its life like wine. Mash up some grapes, let the yeast go to work chowing down on grape sugars, and voila, out comes alcohol. In the case of port, this glorious process is interrupted. Partway through the fermentation, high proof alcohol (typically grape brandy) is added to the mix. This brings the ABV up to about 20%. No yeast can survive that kind of environment, so fermentation stops.  This is why port is sweeter than most wine; not all the sugars from the grapes got converted to alcohol by the yeast.

Breaking it down, there are three well known kinds of Port.

1. “Ruby” port is a fresh bottling of unaged port, which may have been stored in concrete or stainless. It will probably not get better with age.
2. “Vintage” port is port from a year that was deemed exceptional by that maker, that has spent 20 months in oak. On average there are about three vintages/decade. Vintage port is not ready to drink when it goes to the bottle. It’s bottled with sediment, and the contents will mature in an unopened bottle for decades. Once opened you’re supposed to drink the bottle within 2-3 days.
3. “Tawny” port is aged port that spent its time in wooden barrels. No age statement on the bottle usually means ~3 years. Official age statements are 10, 20, 30, and “more than 40” years. Once it’s in the bottle, it’s already done all the aging it will do.  It also keeps relatively well once opened, since it oxidized thoroughly with all that time in the wood.

Our favorites were these two beauties; a 1982 Dalva Colheita tawny, and a 2007 Late Bottle Vintage (LBV) that I forgot to write down the maker on. Neither of them quite fit into the categories above.

Tawny on the left, LBV on the right

The Colheita tawnys have a harvest date (in this case 1982) that all grapes in the bottle came from. All are aged at least 7 years in oak, though often times more. Presumably this one was at least 25 in the barrel, since the bottle was relatively new.

The Late Bottle Vintage (LBV) style is also a little bit of a hybrid. Like vintage port it’s all grapes from the same year, but unlike vintage port it spends significantly longer in oak (4-6 years). It can mature a little in the bottle as well. It’s basically a poor man’s vintage port.

As for taste? The tawny had the rich raisin/nut/vanilla flavors I love in the style. The LBV had more fresh grape taste, though maybe not as much complexity. We’re generally fans of the tawny style, which I guess makes us not very classy or something.

Lambic

Our AirBnB happened to be about a block away from Lisbon’s top beer bar. I swear we didn’t plan it that way. Portugal (like most of Europe) is still on the IPA kick in the craft scene. We stuck to the belgian stuff.

The first night we went in I tried a St. Bernardus ABT 12 and Tiara picked up an Oude Beersel gueuze. While we were drinking those, I noticed they had some bottles of De Cam Oude Lambiek. This is one of the esoteric rarities you get excited about when you go too far down the beer rabbit hole. It’s not that the beer is super popular (like, say, Cantillon), it’s just that they barely make any of it. It’s basically some dude in the Belgian country side who gets barrels of wort from Girrardin, Boon, Drie Fonteinen, and Lindemans, ages them in old barrels, then blends them together. It’s not even his full time job. De Cam turns out about 128 barrels/year. Compare that to 1,500/year for a mid-sized craft brewery like Russian River, or 640,000/year for Lagunitas and you can understand why you don’t usually see De Cam on the shelf.

We came back on a rainy day to try a bottle of the Oude Lambiek.

First impressions were mixed. The style is totally flat. It’s also very dry, so the experience is closer to drinking a crisp white wine than it is to drinking a pilsner. I’m still coming around on the idea of flat beer, and honestly I think I would have preferred it with some bubbles in it. But the flavor was great. Nice tartness, good funky aromatics, and some lemony apricot fruit flavors.

Bonus Pictures

If you made it this far, you deserve some pictures.

This first one’s a railing. Nothing unusual about it. Just a railing. If you’re seeing male anatomy all over it, that’s on you.

I think they’re little towers or something.

Here’s a piece of very thorough yarn-bombing:

And lastly, Lisbon’s worst bathroom:

Careful on that climb to the second floor

Still waiting for my light cycle

Tiny Tiara feet for scale

The second neat installation is the sea organ, which was a set of steps leading into the ocean with embedded pipes. When waves came in, they put pressure on the pipes, and noise comes out.

These steps have pipes hidden in them.

Cool branding too.

The sound was hard to capture on my puny iPhone, but I did my best. I took one of my recordings surreptitiously while Tiara read facts off of wikipedia. I think it has kind of a beat poetry vibe.

The character was different at night. I’m not sure if it was height of the tide, or something more intentional. Definitely more mellow, and with crickets playing accompaniment.

Neither of these really captures the rich harmonics; the effect was much more soothing sounding in person. You’ll just have to take my word for it.

We day tripped from Zadar out to Krka falls; a place with a curious lack of vowels. My photo timestamps tells me this was almost a month ago now, but hey, water under the bridge right?

Krka was like Plitvice-lite, although after the recent rains a few things were really roaring. Water was literally shooting through the fence in places:

Here are some zoomed out views of those rushing falls.

Other parts were more serene. Like Plitvice it featured charming boardwalks over emerald water. (Unlike Plitvice, we weren’t freezing our fingers off in the rain).

The ridges that form the dams creating the pools/waterfalls are a sort of limestone buildup called travertine. In Krka this process is still ongoing; algae grows on the top layer, which makes a substrate for limestone deposits, which further increases the height of the dams. A sign in the park said these formations are growing about .3cm/year, which means by the time I’m dead the waterfalls could be a good 8 inches taller. Guess we’ll have to go back.

As a reward for sitting through the geology lesson, here’s a happy door from outside the park.

Yay geology!

What we found there gave us pause: Gračišće was utterly devoid of all living creatures, while evidence of struggle abounded. Our explorations left us with the grim certainty that some great horror had been unleashed upon this place.

A typical deserted street. The Temple of Belial can be seen rising in the distance.

Anyone who’s ever watched Thriller or played a scary video game will immediately know the score; Gračišće had been overrun by the living dead. Compare these two scenes:

Statue among ruins in Gračišće

Statue among ruins from the zombie survival horror game Silent Hill 2. Coincidence that the characters look like Tiara and Ian? I think not.

Every time the wind stirred or a door creaked we steeled ourselves for the inevitable attack that somehow never came.  Maybe you need more proof that this town is the harbinger of the zombie apocalypse. Let’s review the signs:

Skull and Crossbones Tombstones

Unmarked graves emblazoned with dire warnings. Yep, totally normal.

Abandoned Vehicles

Where is the owner of this car? Why did they leave in such a hurry? Who or what was in the trunk?

Anti-Zombie Fortifications

You put bars on your windows keep out thieves. You put bars plus boards plus a wall of rocks to keep out an undead horde.

Mysterious Door

Gateway to horror.

• Rotting concrete pillars and a broken light fixture? Check.
• Moldy door covered in scars? Check.
• Stained iron-work from 1833 in front of broken glass? Check.
• Rusty lock that is strangely still functional? Check.

You’re looking at the entrance to a secret occult laboratory.

Once we understood what we were seeing, we hurried back to the car. Over the squeal of tires and smell of singed rubber, we could dimly make out the faint but growing sound of shuffling footsteps, thousands strong.  Even now some 2000 kilometers away from Gračišće, we are haunted by what we witnessed.

Prague is famous for its many historic landmarks and sites of cultural significance. But we’re not interested in those. Here are our top five trivial and bizarre things we spotted while walking between the actually famous stuff.

#1: Door Covered With Creepy Heads

While it probably does deter burglars, I can’t say I’d feel safer living behind this door.

As far as we could tell this didn’t belong to any business or museum, it was just some random door.  I can only assume that behind this door is an onyx pedestal draped in black velvet holding the Necronomicon.

#2: Statue of a Giant Pixelated Pregnant Woman

Careful observers may notice the empty beer can resting on her inner right thigh. Stay classy Prague!

This was on the walk from our AirBnB to Old Town, so we got quite familiar with it.

#3: Crane Tow Truck

Need a lift?

If you’ve been to Europe you know it’s full of narrow streets and tight parking spaces. Maybe you’ve thought to yourself: “I can park here. How could they possibly tow me even if they wanted to?” And now you know the answer.

#4: Animated Statue of Peeing Men

I think this art piece speaks for itself.

Trdelník Making

This one is not as weird as the others. But it is impressive how quickly this lady was able to whip out Trdelník (pronounced “turtle-neck”, I assume).  Delicious.

Here’s the zoomed out shot showing the roasting station where the Trdelnik take on a lovely golden brown hue.

Honorary Mention: Anonymous Bar

This already got a full write-up. But… gah! So creepy.

Toasting with the 2015 Zwanze beer

While we toasted in Belgium, our friends Brian and Josh in San Francisco celebrated with us from the other side of the world. We geeked out digitally on iMessage:

You can also read Brian’s state-side write-up of the event, complete with pictures of the puny American pours.

Zwanze Pre-Party

While you can get the Zwanze beer around the world on the day of the event, in Belgium they pull out all the stops for a three-day Cantillon-fest. A lot of rarities from the cellar were on offer at Moeder Lambic, a Brussels bar that works closely with Cantillon..

This is likely the best Cantillon list anywhere in the world.

We happened to catch a brief patch of sun at Moeder, so we made the best of it and powered through some ‘loons.

Fou Foune (left) and 2009 Loue Pepe Kriek (right). Sausage made with Cantillon gueuze (front)

That bright orange beer on the left is summer in a cup. It’s a 1 week old apricot beer, and the fruit flavor was just bursting out.  Smelling it was a huge whiff of fresh ripe apricots. Just an outstanding beer.

On the right is a 6 year old cherry beer. The Lou Pepe series is designed to hold up to aging; they use extra fruit so the flavor will last, and unblended lambic so each vintage varies a little. The result is a really complex fruity beer that’s bone dry.

Cantillon Saint Gilloise 2009 and Cuvee Bija (Zwanze 2014)

Our next round was an aged Saint Gilloise, which is a dry-hopped lambic, plus last year’s Zwanze beer.  The aged Saint Gilloise was still a damn fine beer, though I think I prefer it fresh.

Last year’s Zwanze is also a dry-hopped beer (Grand Cru Iris base), with the addition of a small amount of cherries. The result is a delightful tart beer with hints of caramel. It tastes like cherry pie in the best possible way.

Saint Lamvinus

We were going to call it quits after two rounds, but Saint Lamvinus was on the menu, a beer I’d heard a lot about and never had the chance to try. Saint Lamvinus is a lambic with Merlot grapes aged in Bordeaux barrels.

This beer has the most amazing nose of anything I’ve ever tried. Tiara described it as “tromping through a muddy vineyard.” I took one sniff and got a huge smell memory of being a kid walking home from the bus after the rain. The taste is all grapes with only a hint of that earthy mustiness, but I kept going back to the glass just to smell it.  I need to figure out how to get my hands/nose on some more of this stuff.

Bonus: “The Best Beer in the World” – Westvleteren 12

For several years running Westvleteren 12 (or Westy 12 to the in-crowd) was rated #1 in the world by the beer community site Ratebeer (it currently hovers at a paltry #2). It is as obnoxiously rare as it is good; the beer is only sold by monks on site by appointment. Limit 1 order per person/license plate per 60 days. Yeesh.  We spotted a bar in Brussels that had a couple bottles available, so we gave it a try.

The only branding on Westvleterens beer itself is on the cap; the bottles are blank.

I wrote down my “tasting notes” like a good little beer geek. I got lots of banana, chocolate, molasses, blackstrap rum, and malt.  It was good, maybe even great. I would not choose it as the world’s best beer, but honestly the crazy dark/strong belgian beers are not my favorite category, so it probably never had a chance.

It is probably the best abt/quad I’ve had, YMMV. I’ve read that the recipe is the same as St Bernardus 12, which is a lot easier to get your hands on, so start there first before deciding you need to make a pilgrimage.

Alternatively, if you want a strong dark beer in a hurry, you can just grab a Chimay Blue at the airport.

Oh Brussels, we will miss you and your amazing beer culture

Unlike most breweries in Belgium, at Cantillon you can just show up and walk around on their “self guided tour.” 7 euros gets you a booklet, entrance to the brewery floor, and three ~6oz pours of lambic and geuze.

Mash Tun

The mash tun; this is where the magic starts

The first step in brewing is extracting sugar from your grains by soaking them in hot water; you’re essentially making a big ‘ol batch of grain tea.  Some beers aim to emphasize grain character and use lots of flavorful and/or roasted grains – think stouts and porters. Cantillon brews lambics, which are all about the yeast and bacteria (henceforth “bugs”).  The grain bill is composed of mild grains (wheat and barley) that won’t compete with the flavors being produced by the bugs.

The sugary liquid that comes out at the end of this step is known as wort.

Brew Kettle

The brew kettle

After you make your sugary wort, you need to boil it to sterilize the liquid to ensure you’re only adding the yeast and bacteria you want in your fermentation.

Boiling is also where you add your “boil addition” hops. Hops do three things to beer: (1) they have antibacterial properties that inhibit certain nasties from growing in the beer (2) they make the beer bitter, and (3) they impart flavor. Again, lambic is all about the bugs, so Cantillon uses hops that have been aged for 3 years to lose most of their aromatic flavors.

Coolship

This is about half of the open inoculation vessel; it stretches right of frame

Nearly all beers are made by cooling down the wort and adding carefully selected yeast and bacteria in a sterile environment. Cantillon is not like most other beers. They employ a process known as “spontaneous fermentation.” In this case, they have a big shallow open-top copper dish in the attic that they pump the hot wort into. The high exposed surface area makes the wort cool down faster, and also lets in a bunch of yeast and bacteria from the air. These bugs will become the fermenters that turn the wort into beer.

It’s not all random chance; because Cantillon has been brewing here for over 100 years, the rafters above the vessel host colonies of yeast and bacteria friendly to the brewing process.

Fermentation

Once the inoculated with wild bacteria and yeast, the proto-beer is pumped into wooden barrels. It is in these barrels that the yeast and bacteria will convert the sugar extracted from the grain into alcohol – the miracle of fermentation! Wild bugs tend to act slower than their commercial counterparts, but they are given plenty of time to do their job (3 years, at Cantillon). While most beers have some unfermented sugars left at the end, Cantillon’s are incredibly dry, with nearly all of the sugars converted to alcohol.

Blending and Fruiting

Once the lambic is ready, it can be put into bottles and shipped out to the world. The classic beer made from lambic is gueuze, a blend of 1, 2, and 3 year old lambic.

Cantillon also bottles beer that have had fresh fruit. When we were there they had just received a bunch of wine grapes that they were destemming for addition to the lambic.

Bottling and Labeling

If you’re a Cantillon fanboy like I am, the picture of a wall of Fou’foune will make you start salivating. Otherwise I guess it just looks like a lot of bottles:

I have seen the promised land

The labeling operation has that classic old factory look. Here you can see labels waiting to be applied to those lovely ‘foone bottles.

Love the beer glass next to the bottling line. Gotta stay hydrated on the shift.

Again, limited audience that will be excited about these things, but OMG WTF FOUNE JÉROBOAM!

A jéroboam is 3 liters (twice the size of a magnum). Don’t worry, I had to look it up too.

???

They called me mad at the academy. I’ll show them!

I saw this machine in the brewery. I have no idea what it is. It looks like something operated by a man with a white lab coat and unmanageable hair.

Drinking

The most important step in any brewing process. Cantillon has a lovely little space downstairs for enjoying the wonders on sale. In addition to a nice tap selection (lambic, geuze, kriek, and st gilloise for ~2.5 EUR), they also have bottles of rare and hard to find stuff.

No, I don’t know what I’m doing.

We started with the Carignan, a beer that has only been sold at the brewery itself. It’s a 2 year old single-barrel lambic with the addition of red wine grapes. Those grapes were front and center, definitely the most “wine-y” beer I have tasted. Just lovely.

We also got a bottle of the Lou Pepe Framboise (think juicy funky raspberries), and did some sharing with other tables to sample more of the goods. We also tried:

• Zwanze 2012, a lambic with organic rhubarb (?!). Bizarre stuff, lots of vegetal flavor. Still delicious.
• Grand Cru Bruscella from 2012. This is an aged lambic that is not bottle conditioned (read: flat). The flavors were interesting, but totally flat beer is still a hard one for me.
• Iris. A dry-hopped Cantillon that would be a great every day beer if you could find it.

Buying

Also a very important step. I got a case of the good juice. Now I just need to get it home.

I still need to do a write-up on my excellent MEI Voyager pack, but the key take-away is it holds a case of Cantillon.

Verdict

There is no reason not to go here if you are in Belgium. Even if you (*gasp*) don’t like sour beer, it’s a classic brewery that’s worth the visit.

No Segways

Prague is so overrun with dopey tourists tilting around on Segways that custom signage is necessary:

Who you gonna call? I’m picturing two nerds with proton packs vacuuming up tourists.

No Private Detectives

This is a private club, coppa. You got a membership card?

I think this is actually a no smoking sign, but why’d they have to make him so dapper? Looking at this sign makes me want to buy a pack of cigarettes.

Yes Wiener Institute

This isn’t actually forbidding anything, but it really appeals to my inner 12 year old.

Institute for the study and advancement of wieners

Lenin, Meet Zuckerberg

If you missed Tiara’s Memento Park post, it’s worth a review.  I particularly liked their sign promoting their social media accounts.

You can almost hear him rolling over in his grave.

Outside of Krakow

Pacman 2.0 doesn’t run from ghosts, he makes them. (Warsaw)

Apartment building tower of babel? Spotted in Czestochowa

Snapped from a train outside Katowice.

Krakow

I assume this depicts the illuminati rapture

Wascally Wabbit

This guy was everywhere. I think I saw at least six of them.

I can’t look at the guy in this without thinking Michael Cera

Near the contemporary museum. This is a tunnel where cutouts in the ceiling are used to project Auschwitz

The streetlight at night hits from the opposite side, flipping the letters

The Romani people seem to be the current pariahs of Europe. I don’t claim to know what this means in that context, but hey, font joke.

I especially like the doubledeer. Reminds me of the teleporter bit from the Simpsons (and follow-on gag).

???