Rulles, Val-Dieu, Maastrict! Beertrip Day 9

Day 9 of our trip began with a short motorcoach ride from our hotel in the Ardennes to the small town brewery of La Rulles.  At around 10:30 AM our tour group met with Olivier at the brewery and he gave us an extensive tour.  We started with the new expanded brewery, a more modern brewhouse and packaging facility that has only been open for a short time.  This looked pretty much like any modern stainless steel brewhouse, and several employees were working on bottling up a batch while we were there.  Interestingly, the brewery only uses American hops, and we saw boxes upon boxes of them in the cold room. 

After our tour of the new brewhouse we entered the old brewery building (and I do mean old!) where we all settled down at a rough picnic table for some tasting.  It was a bit damp and chilly there and also fairly early in the morning to be drinking strong Belgian ales, but hey we were troopers!

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