Lambic brewery in Brussels

So, I went back to my favorite authentic Belgium Brewery. I also sent Natalie and her friend here when she was visiting. I now realize and agree to what she was saying when she said it was in kind of a 'sketchy' area. But back to the brewery.

Basically it is one of the last pure lambic breweries. 100% biological they call it. We would call it organic. Only the four ingredients are added to make beer. Wheat, Barley, Hops and Water.
Here is the place where they actually brew the beer, cook the wort. They cook this type of beer at 72 C, about 192 degrees Fahrenheit. This is a lot hotter than your traditional pilsner or lager.


This room is just below the cooking room. They custom crush the wheat here and drop in straight down and into the cooking vessel.


This is one of the cooler parts of the brewery. This is upstairs in the attic. When the batch is done, they pump it into this 30x30 foot copper vessel. They need to naturally cool the wort from the aforementioned 192 until 64-66 degrees. This is done overnight in this low shallow tin. The room has shutters that can be opened and closed to speed or slow down the cooling process. At this time one batch of beer is down to 7,500 litres. This is also where the wort is inoculated with the wild yeasts. They yeasts are apparently in the air and will cause spontaneous fermentation. Up until our friend Louis Pasteur, in 1860, did some research into yeast, cultures and such all beer was made this way. Today only the traditional lambic houses now do it this way. An off shoot is they can only make one batch per day and only from November to early April when it is cool enough outside to effectively cool the beer overnight.


Now this lambic production is more like a winery than a brewery as the after the beer is inoculated it is then pumped into these barrels. It takes 3-4 weeks for the fermentation to start and the beer is stored in the barrels from 1-3 years depending on the residual sugar the brewer is looking for. They also make the Kriek, cherry beer, out of this. 500 liters of lambic will be mixed with 150 kg of cherries or the desired fruit to make the fruit beers.


After bottling, the beer is then stored for an additional 6 months in the bottle in this room:


That is all for my lambic brewery tour. I bought a three pack of 750 ml bottles. I like the stuff, but it is definitely a different taste altogether. The three pack cost me 12 Euros. About $15. I found this beer at Bottleworks in the states for between $20 and $30 PER BOTTLE depending on the type it was. Crazy.
Here is the website if you want to learn more:
www.cantillon.be