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Côte d'Opale

The craft breweries of the Opal Coast

A beer region before it was ever a wine region, and it’s open to visit

The brewing hall of a craft brewery
Photo: Bernt Rostad, source, CC BY 2.0

The essentials

Where
Côte d'Opale
How long
One to two hours
Price
Tour with tasting, often around €5–€10
  • Tour and tasting
  • Year-round
  • Indoors
  • Booking required

Here, no one says "a beer", they say its name. The north of France has been a brewing region since the Middle Ages, and the craft-brewery wave of the last twenty years landed on already fertile ground.

The result: a density of small breweries you won't find anywhere else in France, several of which open their tanks to the public.

What a tour looks like

About an hour. You follow the journey of the grain: milling, mashing, hopping, fermenting, conditioning. The brewer explains why their beer tastes the way it does, and the tour always ends at the bar.

These are small operations: tours run by booking only, on fixed days, often Saturdays. Turning up on a Friday evening on a whim doesn't work.

The local vocabulary

  • Bière de garde The regional speciality: a top-fermented beer, brewed in winter and aged for several weeks. Round, malty, between 6 and 8 degrees.
  • La blanche A cloudy wheat beer, served very cold. The one you drink on a sea wall in August.
  • The estaminet The traditional Flemish café-restaurant, where you drink beer with a carbonade or a potjevleesch. It's not a brewery, but it's where you drink what it makes.

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