The booze culture of Britain is (still) unknown, tho' you could be misled by their behaviour at beer fests. But the international reputation and awareness of Belgian beer is a phenomenon of the last 20 years, even within Belgium. So, the general availability of their 9 & 10% beers used to be severely restricted. Now you can generally buy trappist beer in any major city on the planet. Yet they aren't really that typical. Most belgian beer, I'd guess, falls between 5 - 6.5%, still stronger than British but srunk in small quantities.
Please note, Stella Artois is not a "traditional" belgian beer; it is a pilsner, ie a copy of a czech beer and dates from 1926. Pilsners form 75% of the Belgian brewing market, but few of them are genuinely quality products. Indeed, when Stella was first sold in Britain, Belgians were telling us that it was generally considered one of the more crap beers in their country. Of such things, global dominance is made. keep to the Fen Causeway
I really miss American micro-brews, though. The last time I was in LA, the beer selection at a mid-range supermarket nearly made me cry - at least 50 different beers of all types, at quite reasonable prices. None of them make them over to Japan, though.
Only 7 monasteries produce Trappist beer, 6 in Belgium (Orval, Chimay, Westvleteren, Rochefort, Westmalle and Achel) and one in the Netherlands (Koningshoeven). All the rest are Abbaye.
For the beers, the criteria that make them what they are comprise the following:
The beer must be brewed within the walls of a Trappist abbey, by or under control of Trappist monks.
The brewery, the choices of brewing, and the commercial orientations must obviously depend on the monastic community.
The economic purpose of the brewery must be directed toward assistance and not toward financial profit. keep to the Fen Causeway
I've had good Japanese microbrews before, but they are incredibly hard to find. A couple times, I had some really solid beers from Hokkaido at a traveling "Foods of Hokkaido" fair in Tokyo, and when I was in Nagano I had a quality ale and a good dark beer, both brewed locally.
Chichibu has a local soba (buckwheat) beer, but it's pretty foul.
I've been to a lot of drinking establishments in my little town, and in Tokyo, and I've yet to see any smaller Japanese brews on sale, ever. I don't really know what it is. Maybe the big guys have the distributor chains completely locked down or something. It wouldn't surprise me.
I had one night in Seoul and found a microbrewery. keep to the Fen Causeway
