Kulminator is the best beer bar on earth. If I try do describe it to you, you won't believe me. In the running for best bar in history??
So imagine a tiny old house that belongs to two senior citizens. She's about 75, he's clearly at least 80 and has a bum left knee. She looks like a champion cookie baker; he looks like a Disney cartoon version of a Swiss cuckoo clock maker. There is an actual working cuckoo clock on the wall. There are about 4 tables inside, one of which he sits at, working on some inexplicable philosophical work that requires a table's worth of library books, printouts, journals, and tracts. There are 3 tables on an outdoor smoking patio. The patio has a big log across the top with a sign that says "Cat Crossing." At one point while you're drinking, the cat does indeed cross it.
The place is floor to ceiling covered in beer paraphernalia. There are crates of old Westvleteren bottles stacked up 8+ feet tall in the entryway and in random places along the walls. There are beer ads from the 1950s and seemingly earlier. 1800s newspaper cartoons of people drinking. A window into another private room, in which you can see more beer than you've possibly ever seen before except at a brewery. It's the beginning of the cellar, which takes up about half the floor plan.
Classical music plays the whole time. Nothing from after 1830. All baroque, chamber music, and Schubert.
The patrons speak in respectfully low voices, as if they are in some kind of church or, you know, a crazy old person's house.
There are 12 beers on tap. One of them is a barrel-aged reserve gueuze from 2014. Several are Trappists. If you order Chimay Grand Reserve on tap, it comes with a free bowl of Chimay cheese.
The old man does seemingly nothing, but the old lady is really, REALLY good at pouring beer.
The beer bottle list is an Excel spreadsheet, printed out and stuffed into a spiral 1.5" binder. It comes in at around 100 pages. The bottle list includes verticals of many of the great Trappist beers. Want an Orval? Well, you can have a new one ... or one from any year dating back to 2000. 1990s beers are frequent. The oldest beer on the list is from 1977. All come with tiny handwritten stickers above the label, noting the vintage.
They are all drinking temperature.
That is Kulminator.
