One of my last Army Tours was in Belgium working for NATO. I had been trying to get to NATO for 20 years and out of the blue the SOCOM Admin called and asked if I would like to go to Belgium to work with NATO. I couldn't believe my ears. You don't need to say that twice I think I told him, put me down for that! It wasn't actually NATO Brussels it was for NATO Special Operations Headquarters "NSHQ" on the base with SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe) down in in MONS by the French border. That's even better. You could drive to France in 15 minutes. I had to do that when I needed to find a French Beir. I drove all the way to France just to get a Beir. Why did I do that? To make military NATO History.
I made NATO NSHQ military history. My goal was to get one Beir from every NATO member country. Nobody had ever done that before. It took me months. As far as I know I am the first person to ever do this. I asked around and they all thought it was a kinda crazy idea. At the time there were only 29 member countries. It was Christmas time so everybody was so helpful in my mission to get a Beir from their country. Each country has an office, some countries had a refrigerator right in their office with beer in it. Euro spelling is BEIR for us gringos it's beer. I was claiming that Beer is the one thing that we cold all agree on. I called it the NATO BEIR SUMMIT.
This photo is the duplicate Beir drawer. These are extras, I just left them in the drawer. I couldn't take them I couldn't drink them, all. I only needed one beer but sometimes I was forced to buy many beers, to get the one I needed. In my office we had a big file cabinet drawer, I put the beer duplicates in there. It was a potpourri drawer of exotic beer.
Europe has Pubs that were serving beer when America was covered with Buffalo herds 900 hundred years ago. We're talking the middle ages. The Pub Zum Riesen in Germany dates back to at least 1150. Other notable mentions are the Brazen Head Pub in Ireland, believed to be from the 12th century, and the Hofbräuhaus in Munich, established in 1589. The two big beers in Stuttgart in 1980 were Hofbrau and Dinkel Acker.
I wanted to be the first ever to gather up one beer from all 29 NATO Member countries. This had never been done before that anybody knew of. It took me months I went hunting all over Brussels. Since we were right near the French border I assumed a French beer would be easy to locate. I couldn’t find one anywhere! So I drove to France. It was a wonderful mission to have.
In the Kitchen slash meeting room I setup a gauntlet. In front of each beer was a shot glass. You had to go down the row and do one shot from each country. If you made it you are officially certified. A typical Belgium Beer starts at 6% alcohol some of those beers were over 10 percent so you were feeling it after 29 shots. Do it twice and you can speak Dutch, and French too.
Mons Belgium
The Dubuisson Brewery, founded in 1769 in Pipaix, Belgium, initially sold beer only to local workers and residents. In 1933, the brewery created the Bush beer to compete with strong English beers, and it has since become known for producing some of the strongest beers in Belgium, including the Amber Bush with an alcohol content of up to 16%
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