Our first adventure was a trip to a Belgian chocolate manufacturer. We were treated to samples immediately upon entry. We walked around the museum/building seeing such things as chocolate statues, chocolate miniature statues, chocolate sculptures, and probably more stuff made out of chocolate. Our favorite was this really bad chocolate sculpture of President Obama! There were also some automated chocolate making machines in action.
We stumbled upon a video of praline making which was pretty cool. After the video, we lucked out and there was a live demonstration of the same thing. We observed a chocolatier making pralines on a set straight outta the food channel! Afterwards, she had a few to sample for us too.
We walked upstairs to the museum portion. It was 3 floors of chocolate making info, history of chocolate, and some cool old advertising materials. Evidently, chocolate had a medicinal use dating way back. Ailments cured/treated ranged from depression and nausea to erectile disfunction. Hmmm?
We also learned in the museum about the introduction of chocolate to Europe from the Americas. The Aztecs (or was it the Mayans?) used chocolate beans in cermonial proceedings, as a special treat for royalty, to feed the soldiers, and even as currency! I believe it was Cortez who brought it back to Europe with him. It was said that Columbus was treated to some chocolate even prior to this but he made no effort to import any. Bad move. The Aztecs were smart enough to keep the recipe/process to themselves for quite a long period before finally giving up the goods. Later, after the recipe was brought to Europe, both sugar and milk (sometimes together) were added for new varieties.
Ok, I guess we should've taken notes but that was what we could remember.
After the chocolate, we walked around a bit in search of De Halve Maan Brewery. Along the way we found some baguette sandwiches.
We located the Brewery and signed up for the next brewery tour. De Halve Maan Brewery is located near the Church of our Lady. The tour was given by a dry-humored, witty Belgian lady who knew her stuff. She gave us a few gems along the way. Her description of why Belgian beer has so much foam/head was priceless (see Nates comments from a previous blog if interested although not sure about the cannabis part!). She also said her doctor wanted her to drink more water and since her beer was more than 80% water she decided to drink more beer. She led us to several different levels of the brewery, mostly on these tiny steep stairs. When going down we had to step down backwards, and watch our heads.
The brewery was opened in the 1920s I believe so it was missing a few of the modern tools. Steam power or good old fashioned gravity was used to move the liquid. To cool the wort, it was brewed only on windy days. A wide copper reservoir in a room near the top with open windows was used to chill the wort from boiling to fermenting temperatures. We took a bunch of pictures of other contraptions used to make the beer, to bottle it, to cap the bottles, etc.
Lastly, we were able to sample one of their brews afterward. We both tried the Brugse Zot, a blonde that was one of our favorites.
After the tour, we strolled the streets of Bruges around sunset. We ended up finding a pasta/pizza place near our hotel for a nice meal back at the hotel. We hit the hay early because tomorrow we would be cycling again. We expect wind again on the way to the coast so we gotta be fresh for tomorrow.
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