Late to the party as usual, but here's my piece for Session 91.

It was about 1990 or 1991, when Tesco came to Doncaster town centre. Flush with first job cash, I decided to get a selection from their pretty remarkable selection of beer for my Christmas holiday drinking delectation. For the time, and for a small town boozer, there was a considerable choice, certainly a different world from the £2.49 4-pack of Sainsbury's Dutch lager that sustained me most weekends.

I can certainly remember there was a kriek in my haul, and a 75cl bottle of Chimay Red but not much else any more. The Chimay was drunk with Christmas dinner (and relatively slowly over the afternoon for a change) as it was a novelty, a big bottle of beer with a champagne cork stopper. I think there might have been a Chimay Blue as well, saved for New Year's Eve because of its daunting 9% ABV. I seem to remember that the Chimay Red was a little disappointing as it was a darker ale than I was expecting and as you may or may not know, it has that odd 'gritty' carbonation and little of the flavours associated with many Belgian beers.

I spent much of the 90s in London and saw little Belgian beer at all, despite certainly going on a couple of trips to Belgo in Camden Town and indeed on a tour up the E40 from Cherbourg to Amsterdam where I spent one evening in a pleasant bar in Bruges' Grote Markt drinking Jupiler because I didn't know what to order. Then in the late 90s I found myself living near the Doves in London Fields, which had prided itself on its selection of Belgian beers and indeed the matching glasses, (although just the one Kwak glass with its stand) and became an occasional visitor, but the next event that really sticks in my mind was the appearance of Hoegaarden on many bars. It was undoubtedly a premium beer, costing as a much as a pound a pint more than other beers of a similar strength in a lot of pubs, but also for being seemingly the only alternative to lager, whereever it came from, and Guinness in many central London pubs. Thinking about it now, I really can't remember whether most pubs, with the noble exception of Samuel Smith's and Young's, even had a token bitter or ale, as often or not Caffreys or similar or maybe a lonely Directors or Pride handpull. Maybe I had just stopped looking. It was certainly the beer of choice in the summer of 1999 and I drank it regularly for quite some time, even when moving back to Yorkshire. I have a half pint glass I got free for drinking, well, several in some promotion or other.

As craft beer has regained its place in pubs and bars and its popularity has grown, I have also found an interest in brewing from elsewhere, and Belgium is of course especially of interest if only for the range and diversity of beer. The book 'All Belgian Beers' is a joy to flick through, as much an art project as a guide, and the discovery of Belgian Beer Factory's vast catalogue has give me another source of drinking pleasure to explore, plus the joy of trying to explain Orval to people. I even made a reasonably successful Belgian blonde as an early brew as a house kept warm for a young child also provides the right climate for Belgian yeast to do its thing. There is an incredible diversity in Belgian beers that is worth the time to explore. I'd better get back to the book...