Building in the success of de Ranke’s excellent XX Bitter and Kerkom’s increasingly accomplished Bink Blond, Gregory Verhulst at Rulles has produced the singing-from-birth Estivale while Kris Bauweraerts at Achouffe produced a one-off 8% hop beer to test the market. Sint Pieters has made Taras Boulba, an unfashionably lowish strength pale ale with a distinctive hop punch and threatens more hoppy offerings later in the year.

I don’t think it was my imagination but on my latest trip to Belgium I could swear that Van Eecke’s Poperings Hommelbier had upped its hopping. Now all we need is Orval, Duvel and just about every other beer in Belgium to follow suit and we might have a real counterblast against the dull emperors of global production.

Incidentally, I am hearing increasingly convincing stories about European brewers turning more and more to "hop" oils and extracts that rely more on artificial flavourings than on anything that derives from a hop plant.

So if smaller producers wish to but clear blue water between themselves and the big boys, reintroducing good hop recipes may well be the way to go.

Meanwhile...

Am I alone in thinking that the current epidemic of grungy "fruit beers" is a syphilitic sore on the face of Belgian brewing, indicating something unpleasant gnawing away inside?

At the last count there were 78 of these lazy, unintelligent inventions clogging up the shelves of otherwise useful beer sellers.

Most seem to be constructed by taking the dullest beer in the brewery (or making a new one) and adding a chemically enhanced cordial to it shortly before bottling. This is the same ghastly principle as British "lager ‘n lime" or "lager ‘n black" for the generation that does not know how to mash potatoes.

It is appalling to see supposed serious brewers selling these disgusting aberrations as "special beers". This practice will do nothing but harm to "Brand Belgium" in the beer world. And in a global drinks market that is seeing growth in grand cru wines, single malts whiskies and fine old cognacs and armagnacs, they mark out beer once more as the drink for buffoons.

With InBev managing to cast off its Belgian roots and degenerating into just another global pisspot filler, Belgium’s reputation as the world’s best country for proper beer will not be assisted by the promotion of alcoholic cherryade.