The Best Craft Beer Bars in Brussels

The best beer bar in Brussels, and probably one of the ten best in the world. Fifty taps, every one of them carefully selected, with a particular emphasis on Belgian lambic, gueuze, and farmhouse styles. The staff here know their subject and will guide you through the list without condescension. The original Saint-Gilles location is our preference over the Ixelles branch — smaller, more local, and less likely to fill with tourists on a Friday night.

Order: A glass of gueuze on tap — rare outside lambic country and essential when you can get it.

Brasserie de la Senne is the city brewery that Brussels deserved — local, independent, and producing beers rooted in Belgian tradition without being reverent about it. Their Molenbeek taproom opens on weekend afternoons and keeps short hours, which means the crowd skews local. The Taras Boulba, their flagship pale ale, is the most refreshing beer in the city at 4.5% ABV. The Bruxellensis saison is sharper and more complex, and worth every centime.

Order: Taras Boulba — sessionable, bitter, and made specifically for this city's summer weather.

Cantillon is not just a bar — it is a working lambic brewery open to visitors, and the only place to drink freshly poured Cantillon in the building where it was made. The tasting room is small and the queues can be long on weekend mornings, but the experience of drinking Rosé de Gambrinus directly from the barrel in a brewery dating to 1900 justifies every minute of the wait. Book a tour if you want to understand how lambic actually works.

Order: Rosé de Gambrinus straight from the barrel — tart, complex, and impossible to find like this anywhere else.

The Brussels offshoot of Ghent's legendary beer institution, Hopduvel brings the same seriousness to the tap list without the Ghent-specific attitude. Twenty rotating taps cover Belgian, Dutch, and international craft with a noticeable preference for hop-forward styles. The bottle fridge is the draw for serious collectors — they stock limited releases from Drie Fonteinen, Weyerbacher, and The Kernel that are hard to find anywhere else in the city.

Order: A bottle from the Drie Fonteinen section — limited, excellent, and worth the premium.

A Surrealist café-bar that has been serving beer since 1846 and has the walls to prove it. La Fleur en Papier Doré is covered floor to ceiling in historical ephemera — René Magritte used to drink here — and the beer list focuses on well-chosen Belgian classics rather than rotating craft. What it lacks in novelty it compensates for in atmosphere: this is one of the few genuinely old bars in Brussels that has not been hollowed out by renovation or tourism.

Order: Orval — the Trappist pale ale from Wallonia, poured correctly and at proper cellar temperature.

Over 200 Belgian beers on the menu, served in their correct glassware, by staff who have clearly read every label. Bier Circus is the encyclopaedic option: less about rotating craft taps and more about the depth of the Belgian catalogue. The food menu is serious and the kitchen is worth ordering from if you are settling in. Arrive with a specific style in mind — the menu size can be paralysing without a direction.

Order: Saison Dupont — the ur-text of the Belgian farmhouse style, poured in the correct tall glass.

Goupil le Fol operates like a private living room that happens to serve 150 Belgian fruit beers. Floors and ceilings are covered in ornaments, kitsch, and decades of accumulated curiosities. The house speciality is kriek and framboise — the cherry and raspberry lambics that Brussels invented — and the late-night crowd tends toward artists, intellectuals, and people who appreciate a beer served with genuine conviction at 2am.

Order: Kriek on draught — the tart cherry version from a small lambic producer rather than a sweetened commercial one.

A reliable anchor for craft beer drinkers who need something straightforward after a long day of Belgian complexity. The Brussels Brewdog carries a better tap selection than most of their European locations, with several Belgian collab beers that do not appear elsewhere. The European Quarter location puts it within walking distance of most business hotels in the area — it functions well as a post-conference decompression point for the Eurocrat crowd.

Order: Whatever Belgian collaboration they have on tap — these rotate frequently and are usually the most interesting thing available.

A Brussels institution since 1928, named after a card game the regulars played here. À La Mort Subite is a grand café in the traditional Belgian sense — high ceilings, marble tables, white-aproned staff, and a beer list anchored in the Mort Subite lambic range brewed specifically for the establishment. The gueuze they serve here is distinctive and lighter than most; the whole experience is one of the most purely Brussels things you can do with an afternoon.

Order: Mort Subite Gueuze — made for this bar, served cold, with the correct glass.

A bar that should, by rights, be terrible — it sits opposite the Manneken Pis and is named after a puppet theatre — but the beer list is genuinely excellent and the staff take their Belgian ales seriously regardless of the tourist foot traffic outside. Over 300 beers in the bottle list, strong on Trappist and abbey ales, with a few lambic options that reward the patient drinker. Best visited on a weekday morning before the tour groups arrive.

Order: Westvleteren 12 if they have it in — one of the best Trappist ales in Belgium, and served here with more care than most places.