Brussels Beer City Podcast

This is the Brussels Beer City Podcast Diaspora Season: Chapter 3 - Ciao, Belga!

For almost 150 years, Italians who’ve travelled north to Brussels in search of work and better life, have been feeding the appetites and slaking the thirsts of the city’s residents.

Brussels’ Italian quarter - in the tangle of str...

This is the Brussels Beer City Podcast Diaspora Season: Chapter 2 - Big Trouble in Little Kortrijk?

For almost 40 years a small corner of central Brussels - comprising the Antoine Dansaertstraat, the Vlaamsesteenweg (the “Flemish Carriageway”) and the perpendicular streets that criss-cross them - with its bars and shops and cultural lodestones, has b...

This is the Brussels Beer City Podcast Diaspora Season: Chapter 1 - Ireland’s Unofficial Embassies.

The centrality of the pub to Irish social life - and by extension, the pint too - may be clichéd, but it’s not any less true. In fact, it might even be more true for Ireland’s emigrants.

In Brussels, though it ...

The Brussels Beer City Podcast: Diaspora Season is about Brussels’ immigrant communities and the places they love to drink. 

From ice cold Sagres with piglet sandwiches and pintjes in bruine kroegen, to creamy pints, fried plantains, and more, the podcast will explore the drinking cultures of just a small slice of Brussels’ diaspora communities.

HOLD ON A SECOND, this isn’t the podcast you’re used to listening to, you’re probably thinking. And it’s not - it’s a wee trailer for our sister podcast, Cabin Fever, which has cooked up something special to celebrate a very peculiar Christmas.

Have a listen…

Didn’t Eoghan say the podcast was done when lockdow...

Hannelore Goeman is a Brussels-based Belgian politician and the leader of parliamentary delegation of the sp.a, the Flemish social democratic party, in the Flemish parliament.

Over Zoom, Hannelore talks about Her early student adventures after moving from Leuven in Brussels, whether or not she would qualify as a stereotypical Dansaertvlaming, why Brussels is never boring but why its untapped potential led her...

My guest on this, the penultimate episode of this season is Jean Van Roy. Van Roy is the owner of Brussels brewery Brasserie Cantillon.

Brewery doesn’t quite cover it though, because Cantillon is also a museum and a living piece of a part of the city’s heritage that almost disappeared - the funky, tart, confrontational spontaneously-fermented wheat beers called Lambic (here’s a beginner’s guide to what Lambic...

Eagled eared listeners will have noticed that this week’s episode is arriving on a Friday and not the customary Wednesday. That’s because on on Wednesday I was busy with the launch of my new book!

Brussels Beer City: Stories from Brussels brewing past is now available. If you’re in Brussels you can get a copy at Waterstones, Malt Attacks, Fermenthings, and Dekkera. If you’re not you can order print and ebook ...

Before I introduce today’s guest, a quick bit of housekeeping.

I’m delighted to say I’ve written a book. Or more specifically, published a collection of stories written for Brussels Beer City and Belgian Beer and Food Magazine, brought together for the first time under the title Brussels Beer City: Stories from Brussels Brewing Past.

It’s a collection that, for the first time in english, charts the...

Elisabeth Debourse, journalist, writer of the weekly Mordant newsletter, and host of several podcasts - one of which, Salade Tout, is currently in production for its second season - is my guest on today's episode of the Brussels Beer City Podcast.

Over a lunchtime beer at a central Brussels cheese bar, we talk about how she is very much not a food journalist but a writer engaged in societal questions of which...

My guest on today’s episode is Nacim Menu, co-founder of Brussels brewery Nanobrasserie L’Ermitage.

Nacim takes my to his favourite wine bar in St Gilles, where we talk escaping the Wallonian countryside for Brussels, being a young dad in Brussels, his journey from win to beer via his first Cantillon lambic, how a transformative visit to Canada changed his life and set him on the path to opening a brewery - a...

My guest on today’s episode is Rachael Moore. Rachael is the Coordinator of RainbowHouse Brussels, the city’s umbrella organization of the LGBTQI associations.

In the bar downstairs from her office, we talk about her journey from Liverpool to Brussels (and, crucially, which of the city’s football teams she supports), celebrating Pride during a pandemic, and the hate-love relationship with Brussels, which desp...

My guest on today’s episode is Michiel Van Meervenne, a journalist and entrepreneur, and co-founder of the Brussels food company Kriket, making confectionary using protein sourced from crickets grown locally in Brussels,

At a central Brussels haunt from his old school days, over a Taras Boulba from local brewery Brasserie de la Senne, Michiel talks about how it took him some time to really feel like a Brussel...

My guest on today’s episode is Souria Cheurfi. Souria is the editor in chief of VICE Belgium and the founder of Psst madamoiselle, pluridisciplinary events organiser promoting female artists. She specialises in culture, women's and LGBTQ rights, and music.

At a Japanese izakaya on the Brussels canal, we talk about carving out a space for female performers in the Brussels music scene and the thrill of seeing t...

My name is Eoghan Walsh, and this is the Brussels Beer City Podcast.

My guest on today’s episode is My guest on today’s episode is Joost Vandecasteele. Joost is a hard man to pin down, as you’ll hear. A comedian, writer, playwright, activist and now video game developer, Joost takes me to his safe space in Anderlecht.

Over a coffee and a kriek, we have a freewheeling conversation that touches on be...

My name is Eoghan Walsh, and this is the Brussels Beer City Podcast.

Each week, a fascinating Brussels resident invites me, your host, to their favourite Brussels bar. Where, over a drink or two, we talk about the importance of the bar to them, and their relationship to Brussels - what they love, what they hate, and why they couldn’t live anywhere else.

My guest on today’s episode is Reine Nkiambot...

My name is Eoghan Walsh, and this is the Brussels Beer City Podcast.

Each week, a fascinating Brussels resident invites me, your host, to their favourite Brussels bar. Where, over a drink or two, we talk about the importance of the bar to them, and their relationship to Brussels - what they love, what they hate, and why they couldn’t live anywhere else.

My guest on today’s episode is brewer Dimitri...

Each week, a fascinating Brussels resident invites me, your host, to their favourite Brussels bar. Where, over a drink or two, we talk about the importance of the bar to them, and their relationship to Brussels - what they love, what they hate, and why they couldn’t live anywhere else.

And who am I? I’m an award-winning beer and travel writer, a Brussels resident of 10 years, and founder of Brussels Beer City...