Beer history researcher Rowel Mulder, in his blog Lost Beers, talks about the many pubs in Antwerp in the 16th century and the variety of beers and wines you could try there.

Peasants having fun at the Swan Tavern

Painting by Peter Brueghel the Younger, “The Peasants Having Fun at the Swan Tavern” (c. 1630). Source: Wikimedia Commons

There are many cities in Belgium where you can spend the whole night moving from one pub to another. There is everything here: dark places hidden behind narrow medieval portals, and brightly lit eateries for simple hard workers. But the best place to walk around the pubs is Antwerp: here you will find sailors, students, the elderly hippies, workers and drunken Dutch. In the sixteenth century, the situation was not much different from the modern one, according to someone who knows a lot about booze: Bacchus himself, the god of winemaking. Continue reading →