“La bière de Louvain,” is to be found in every hotel and estaminet in Belgium. We went over one of the largest breweries, that of Messrs. Renier, Hambrouk and Co., the Barclay and Perkins of Belgium. It is but recently built, and being an entirely new building from the foundation, its arrangements are the most commodious and compact imaginable; it is calculated to brew two hundred barrels a-day, and is now in full work; its usual stock is 14,000 barrels. The machinery had been constructed by Sir John Rennie, of London, but has since been increased. I found here the same preference for high pressure steam engines which seems so universal in Belgium, the one erected was a low pressure one, very much to the regret of one of the proprietors, M. Behr, who conducted us over the establishment. The apparatus exhibited all the recent English improvements, but what is, I think, considered dangerous in England, they had a large copper cooler in use. Their boilers were constructed with one cylinder within another, to avoid burning in the process, a precaution which is rendered necessary from the quantity of wheat flour used for their favourite and peculiar “white beer.” The malt which was on the floors had been allowed to germinate much longer than in England, in fact, till a shoot of half an inch to an inch long had issued from each grain. By this means, the saccharine matter is intentionally so exhausted, that the beer has but little or no flavour of it. The name of their ordinary beer is Peetermans, (from an ancient military corps of Louvain, which had existed since the thirteenth century), and the finer is the _bière blanche_, which is consumed at a distance in large quantities. An Englishman would not let either enter his lips, they are both as thin as water and as sour as verjuice, and yet the quantities consumed everywhere in Belgium is quite surprising. The annual consumption, calculated upon the excise duty paid upon beer, which is upwards of seven millions of francs per annum, and is collected in the proportion of one franc and a half for every hectolitre, or twenty-six gallons, amounts to 5,400,000 hectolitres, or something above four millions of barrels, _being about thirty-five gallons per annum for every individual of the population_! A small quantity only, not exceeding 40,000 gallons, is for foreign export. The usual price is about twelve francs a hectolitre, from which some idea may be formed of the “thin potations” in which the Belgian peasant delights.