Scotland may be a small fist of a nation on the edge of the Atlantic, but when it comes to global recognition it punches above its weight compared to, say, Belgium. The country that gave us Tintin, Jacques Brel and Eddie Merxx besides bureaucrats and Brussels sprouts can appear a bit underwhelming at times.
Its saving grace is its beer, and I’m not talking of Stella Artois which most people assume is French and is, in any case, brewed in the UK. No, proper Belgian brews are packed with flavours and aromas and range from spicy wheat beers and deeply malty Trappist ales to the downright funky lambic beers fermented with wild yeast. Blame it on the water, the mix of Germanic and Latin cultures or those enlightened monks in their monasteries, but Belgium’s brewing scene is second to none.
That’s certainly the view of Robert Lindsay (not the one who starred as Wolfie in Citizen Smith), who spent three years in Brussels in the late 1990s and fell in love with the country’s rich beer culture. At the time Scotland lived under the duopoly of Tennents and Belhaven Best, and had all but trashed its brewing history during the course of the 20th century. “There’s that depth of quality, drinkability and balance,” he says of Belgian beer. “You can put loads of hops or malt in anything, but total balance requires a lot more subtlety.”
Lindsay returned to take over the Creel Inn near Stonehaven in 2002 followed by the port’s Marine Hotel by the harbour five years later. Any Belgian tourist stumbling into the bar would have been stunned to see 170 bottled beers from home and six on cask. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the hotel’s owner was trying to perfect his own beery homage to Belgium.
Home brew eventually led to the Six Degrees North brewery in 2013, and a bar of the same name on Aberdeen’s Littlejohn Street. Oddbins has helped spread the word with its Oddbins No.6 brew commissioned from the brewery, and Lindsay is about to expand his empire southwards.
There will be a new Six Degrees North bar on Edinburgh’s Howe Street next month, with one to follow in Glasgow in March. Belgium may be guilty of hiding what it does best from the rest of us, but it should be proud of its new craft beer satellite in the north.
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