The Beersel edition of Nieuwsblad reports that Armand Debelder has decided to start brewing again. After the exploding bottle disaster in 2009, Debelder found himself forced to sell his brewing equipment and confine himself to blending only. There was no shortage of moral and financial support for the struggling 3 Fonteinen, however, and his wife, Lydie Hulpiau, was instrumental to getting 3 Fonteinen back on its feet by launching a line of exclusive products such as the exclusive, and beautifully designed, seasonal Armand’4 geuze series. The paper reports that Armand has partnered up with Michaël Blanckaert and will be acquiring a new brewing system soon to resume 3 Fonteinen’s brewing activities.
Tag Archives: 3 Fonteinen
Het Land van de Geuze
In 1996, Jos Cels, author of Het Mysterie van de Geuze (1992), published a 128 page tourism guide to the Pajottenland and the area between Zenne and Zoniën titled Het Land van de Geuze. Unlike Het Mysterie van de Geuze (review forthcoming), this guide is not an in-depth treatment of lambic brewing but uses geuze beer as a unifying theme for eight car day trips in the area. As such, its audience is primarily Dutch speaking tourists to the area and perhaps a handful of lambic fanatics who would like to know as much as possible about the history and traditions of the area where lambic beers originated and are still brewed. The book does contain some interesting facts and anecdotes associated with lambic brewing and has a geuze-based recipe in each chapter.
In the book, we read about the writer/poet and classical liberal politician Herman Teirlinck, who presented bottles of geuze with political labels to police officers to induce them to vote for him. It was the same Herman Teirlinck who founded the literary Mijolclub, who convened at the 3 Fonteinen tavern and persuaded Gaston Debelder (father of Armand Debelder) to continue the geuze blending activities when he acquired the tavern in 1953, and thus played a formative role in the formation of the 3 Fonteinen brewery in Beersel. On special occasions the Mijolclub, who only recognized one beer, geuze, met at the De Neve brewery in Schepdaal (now closed), where reportedly a very old Geuze ‘caveau’ was made available to the guests. We also learn about the old Beersel tavern In de Oude Pruim (which still exists). The owner of the tavern, Petrus Derauw, also grew fruit and one time got stuck with a large amount of old prunes after repeated attempts to sell them at the market – hence the name of the tavern. It was in Beersel that lambic brewer Henri Vandervelden (Oud Beersel) erected a, still existing, memorial from old brewery equipment and tools to honor the lambic brewers that fell victim to the declining popularity of traditional lambic.
In the second day trip chapter, the author notes that the farm of lambic brewers Lindemans is also called Hof te Kwadewegen because of a cruel politically-motivated murder that took place at the site in the year 1388. On a similar sinister note, he mentions the fact that the café A la Mort Subite (“instant death” – which refers to the practice of ending the local pub game by one deciding throw) used to be located next to Pompes Funebres Melchior, a funeral director!
Pieter Breughel the Elder is famous for his farmer festivities paintings that feature the free-flowing consumption of lambic beer. Jos Cels wonders whether the painter himself consumed too many lambics when he painted his Boerenbruiloft (or Bruiloftsmaal) because the character with the red cardigan and black hat, who carries the fruit pies, has three legs. Undoubtedly a heavy lambic consumer was the former owner of De Rare Vos pub, Louis Moles le Bailly, who attributes his old age to the healthy properties of geuze (‘Geuze, dat is gezond!’, was his motto), sometimes drinking up to 30 glasses a day! Later in the book, the author mentions Rene Troch, a heavy-drinking lambic brewer, who failed to note that in his absence many barrels of lambic “accidentally” rolled out of his door, supplying the population of Lembeek with free lambic.
Of particular interest is the brief discussion of lambic brewery Sinte-Gertude (1767) because it mentions that the brewery had a so called smoke-room in which the grain was smoked to give the beer a distinct color and flavor. This is not the first time I have read about the use of smoked malt in early lambic brewing and it would be quite interesting to research this topic in more depth.
The book also mentions ‘Duivelsbier,’ a sour-sweet dark beer that was refermented in the cask through the addition of candi sugar. When the weather was cold, the barrels were warmed. This Jesuit-brewed concoction continued to be brewed according to the old recipe by the Vander Linden brewery in Halle. The beer is still brewed by Frank Boon but has lost its original character (dark, sour and spontaneously fermented).
In the final chapter of the book, Jos Cell mentions the lambic blender Philemon vanden Stock as the originator of commercial Geuze when he blended various lambics and bottled this product with addition of young lambic to induce a second fermentation in the bottle. Philemon vanden Stock was transported to a German concentration camp and died there just before the Allied forces liberated Belgium. His son Constant vanden Stock played an important role in the formation of the Belle-Vue brewery (through a number of acquisitions of other lambic brewers), and, unfortunately, the post-war rise of sweetened lambics in conventional beer bottles.
Notes on Toer de Geuze 2011
For the second time in a row I attended the biennial Toer de Geuze event in Belgium. During one day, all lambic brewers and geuze blenders that are part of HORAL (with the exception of Girardin) open their doors to the public. If you decide to do the tour by tour bus you cannot visit all locations and must make a selection. In 2009 I opted for the most traditional brewers and blenders with the exception of geuze blender De Cam. This year I skipped Hanssens (which is among my favorites) and visited De Cam. I also substituted De Troch for Mort Subite. A selection of photos that I took prior to and during the event can be seen here.
Like 2009, all buses were completely booked in advance — although there were some empty seats due to some people not being able to attend or arriving late. The major advantage of doing the tour by bus is that it permits one to sample the products of all the brewers and blenders without having to be concerned about drinking and driving. Since I had attended the Toer de Geuze before, I wondered how much there was to gain from attending two of them in a row. Having seen most of the breweries and blenders now, I am inclined to say that one gets most of the benefits from the first visit. But there were three things that stood out for me during the most recent edition.
First, it seemed quite a bit busier than the previous tour. This was later corroborated when I saw a news item on Belgian television noting this was the best attended Toer de Geuze to date (they estimated more than 10,000 visitors). As a matter of fact, the crowd at 3 Fonteinen was a little excessive in my opinion. Admittedly, in most cases there is not a whole lot the organizers and breweries can do about this and it simply reflects the growing popularity of traditional geuze — which is an exciting development. Since the event seems to confer meaningful benefits to the brewers and blenders involved, making this an annual event might provide some relief.
I have always been aware that many of the sweetened and faux fruit lambics still involve traditional techniques and equipment during the initial stages in order to conform with rules concerning use of the word lambic. But seeing the beautiful brewery, equipment and barrels at De Troch it really struck me how strange it is to see these breweries jumping through many of the same time-consuming hoops as the traditional breweries and then to manipulate (some might say ruin) the final product to make it confirm to contemporary taste. In their defense, many of these brewers would like to make a traditional product and the tour guide at De Troch indicated that the pendulum may be swinging in favor of tradition again.
The biggest surprise awaited me at Boon. Boon had scheduled to brew (or continue to brew) during the event and at one point I found myself staring into the boiling wort with a sublime view of an adjacent coolship. Regular readers of this blog know that I am not the biggest fan of Boon and I have been quite disappointed with most of their products. There is a lack of tartness plus a substantial bitterness (not to mention the often excessive carbonation) in most of their beers, including their two traditional geuzes, that does not resonate with me. I was therefore not prepared for the excellent old (unblended) lambic that was served for free to the visitors. Some writers have alluded to the oxidized / sherry / Vin Jaune-like qualities of old lambic, but I do not recall having tasted a sample that captured those qualities so well as Boon’s. As far as I am concerned, Boon should just leave their lambic as-is and bottle it after 3, 4, or 5 years! More realistically, they could at least consider bottling some of their aged lambic for the consumer.
Not much later, I found myself again admiring a Boon product when I (reluctantly) ordered a glass of their Mariage Parfait Kriek 2008. True to form, Boon’s attempt to make a state of the art Kriek did not depart from their low-tartness approach, but in this case it worked for me. After sampling a lot of different krieks during the previous weeks, I noticed a fascinating deep vinous quality to this kriek, more reminiscent of some of the wines I drink than beer. After these truly unexpected surprises, I made the revolutionary decision to purchase two 375 ml bottles of this Boon release, which I hope to review in conjunction with 3 Fonteinen’s Schaerbeekse Kriek.
Later that day I was tempted to purchase the 5 (!) liter bag-in-a-box Oud Beersel young lambic but restrained myself from doing so by considering the logistical challenges of taking it with me back to the United States. One nice feature of this year’s event is that I had more time to visit the Pajottenland area. Highlights included seeing the old, now inactive, Eylenbosch brewery in Schepdaal (where I spotted a big Toer de Geuze sign) and having dinner at De Heeren van Liedekercke. This restaurant completely deserves its reputation as offering the best beer-based cooking in the Brussels region and they have, by far, the most impressive vintage lambic / geuze / kriek list that I have ever seen in my life (not too mention a breathtaking number of Orval vintages).
Geuze en kriek: de champagne onder de bieren
One of the reasons for starting this blog was that, as a native Dutch speaker, I would be able to review and consult (historical) Dutch documents about traditional lambic brewing and share this information with English readers. In the coming months I will be reviewing a number of Dutch (Flemish) books about lambic brewing. The first review concerns the book Geuze en kriek: de champagne onder de bieren by Jef van der Steen. Geuze and Kriek was published in 2006 by Uitgeverij Davidsfonds in Leuven (with support of the province of Vlaams Brabant) as a large format “coffee table” book and covers the history and production of lambic beers and their producers and concludes with a chapter on cooking with lambic. The book is lavishly illustrated and includes some of the most beautiful color photography ever collected in a book about beer.
Geuze en kriek starts with a long and engaging historical treatment of the history of beer brewing in the Brussels area and the development of lambic brewing in particular. The author mentions that even in the original Reinheitsgebot there is no mention of the addition of yeast. Also of interest is the large role that rye played in medieval brewing in West-Brabant. These chapters gave me a better understanding of the fact that the history of brewing in Belgium was not a straightforward change from spontaneous fermentation to the domination of bottom-fermented beers, but a complex interplay of natural forces (such as the Little Ice Age), particular circumstances, and regulatory and trade policies.
Contrary to popular opinion, traditional lambic brewing did not exclusively rely on aged hops but utilized fresh hops as well, preferably in a 50%/50% proportion. The addition of fresh hops was possible because some local hop varieties, such as Coigneau, contained low alpha-acids and thus added little to the bitterness of the resulting brew. With the growing popularity of hop-driven bottom-fermented beers, the demand for such low bitterness hop varieties declined and traditional lambic breweries were forced to utilize 100% aged hops to prevent the beer from becoming too bitter – an undesirable characteristic in lambic brewing (for a notable exception, see Cantillon’s Iris). The author also mentions that the spontaneously fermented low gravity beer meerts excludes the presence of brettanomyces – a claim that I had not read before. The meerts wort was cooked much longer (twelve to fifteen hours) than that destined to become lambic, after which it was transferred to barrels for spontaneous fermentation and storage. Meerts was the cheapest beer of the lambic family, followed by faro and lambic, and consumed as a session beer, or as a beer for children (!) and ladies, and was also served in hospitals and homes for the elderly. Today’s readers of these facts should keep in mind that in those days beer was greatly preferred to water, due to the the lack of clean and healthy water. As mentioned by other writers on the history of lambic brewing, the immensely popular sweetened lambic called faro was often abused as the vehicle to produce beers of dubious composition, including beers with no or little contribution from spontaneous fermentation.
Baudelaire was not the only writer who composed poetry about faro. As a response to the distinct aversion of Baudelaire to faro, the Parisian journalist Vaughan composed a tribute to faro in 1875 that was even sung by children in Mechelen when it rained:
‘t Gaat regenen, ‘t gaat regenen
‘t Gaat regenen dat het giet,
En als we gene faro hebben
Dan drinken wij lambik!
Which can be loosely translated as:
It’s going to rain, it’s going to rain
It will be raining cats and dogs
And if there is no faro
Then we will drink lambic
Promotion of geuze as a health drink is a common theme in the lambic literature. Jef van der Steen describes the mayor of Brussels writing in 1941 “…I am recovering from a serious illness and to get me back on my feet again my doctor advises me to drink a glass of geuze every day, or even better, a glass of kriek.” He adds that the mayor was by no means the only one in those days of great scarcity who procured his geuze through a doctor’s recommendation. The chapter on geuze also has a useful list of geuze blenders that still existed after 1975 with their date of closing:
1986: Van Malder in Anderlecht;
1981: Moriau in Sint-Pieters-Leeuw (produced until 1992 by De Neve in Schepdaal and by Boon in Lembeek until the present day);
1980: Wets in Sint-Genesius-Rode (produced until 1993 by Girardin in Sint-Ulriks-Kapelle);
1978: De Koninck & Proost in Dworp and Arthur Troch in Schepdaal (produced for some years at Lindemans);
1997: De Koninck in Dworp, De Vidts in Lembeek (succeeded by Boon), de Vidts in Asse en Van den Houtte in Groot Bijgaarden;
1976: Mosselmans in Dworp.
The chapter on fruit lambics contains a lot of information on the history of fruit and kriek production in the Brussels region and the challenges traditional lambic brewers faced to obtain adequate amounts of suitable fruit for their beer production. The kriek and raspberry lambics are by far the most popular fruits for traditional fruit lambic production but grapes (Cantillon and one 3 Fonteinen experiment) and strawberries (Hanssens) have been used as well. Over time the use of fruit in lambics became a mixed blessing because the growing popularity of (sweetened) fruit beers often altered the production methods and products of traditional lambic brewers, in some cases making their product almost unrecognizable as traditional lambic products. The popularity of faro, and the use of the “lambikstoemper’ to crush added sugar in lambic, indicates that there was always a demand for sweetened lambics and today’s fruit lambics have replaced faro as the preferred product to depart from traditional lambic brewing.
The profiles of individual producers are rich with information on the traditional and not so traditional lambic brewers and geuze blenders. The history of Belle-Vue is an almost uninterrupted, and unfortunately, quite successful, mission to sweeten, filter and pasteurize the traditional product. As of spring 2011, Belle-Vue and Cantillon are the only lambic producers that are not part of the High Council of Lambic Beers, Horal, but for completely opposite reasons. Whereas Cantillon pursues a uncompromising approach to lambic production, Belle-Vue seems to have lost all touch with tradition. The section on Boon is surprisingly short, with an emphasis on the history of the producer without much discussion of its beers and relationships with other traditional lambic brewers in the region.
Some lambic writers mention the harsher character of the older Cantillon products and van der Steen attributes this to the prior practice of using an open tank (geilkuip), closing of the barrels at the end of the brewing season (as opposed to 14 days after transfer now), and the use of a wooden blending tank. The chapter on De Keersmaeker (now known for its Mort Surbite beers) mentions the development of the ‘methode-DKZ’, conceived by Jacques de Keersmaecker, in which the wort is not transferred to a traditional coolship but, after cooling it with a heat exchanger, transferred to stainless steel tanks that do not contain CO2 but ambient air, further aerated with ambient air, to produce spontaneous fermentation. One advantage of this method is that it allows for year-round brewing of lambic.
The Mort Subite family of beers is not known for its traditional qualities but the brewery has now added a more authentic oude geuze and an oude kriek to its line-up as well. The profile of 3 Fonteinen that outlines the transition from cafe / restaurant / geuze blender to cafe / restaurant / geuze blender / brewer was written before the costly 2009 exploding bottles accident, the brief termination of its brewing activities and the recent resuscitation of its brewing activities. The section on Girardin is particularly helpful as the operations of this family brewer are mostly closed to the general public.
The story of Hanssens remains one of the finest examples of the continuation of traditional lambic blending; until this day Hanssens (which is a part-time endeavor) uses traditional methods and archaic equipment (such as the manual cleaning and drying of bottles and the use of a wooden stick to blend the lambics). This has not prevented them from agreeing to a number of interesting experiments such as the production of strawberry lambic and even a blend of lambic and mead. The section about spontaneously fermented beers from West Flanders contains some interesting information on the differences between lambic and the Flemish browns and reds. For connoisseurs of traditional lambic, there is not much of interest going on here, I think.
The final chapter has a number of recipes and profiles of the 3 Fonteinen, De Heeren van Liederkercke and De Witte Roos restaurants. The last two pages of the book feature a stunning full color impressionistic photo of lambic in a coolship.
Geuze and Kriek is a fascinating book about the history and practice of lambic brewing that has enough detail to double as a reference work. The beautiful photography might even tempt English speakers to purchase it. For a fuller technical description of the lambic brewing process the reader should consult Jeff Sparrow’s Wild Brews. Tim Webb’s LambicLand includes a very comprehensive run-down of all the contemporary lambic products from individual producers.
LambicLand
Just published is the second edition of LambicLand, a labor of love and extremely useful guide to the world of lambic. The new (English only) edition has three important elements rolled into one 128 page-long book: an introduction to the spontaneously fermented beers of the Payottenland, a complete overview of all the lambic brewers / geuze blenders and their beers, and a section on lambic tourism. The authors (Tim Webb, Chris Pollard and Siobhan McGinn) strike a thoughtful balance between understanding the commercial incentives to produce fake sweet lambics and the importance of preserving tradition and using the renewed (international) interest in lambic brewing to return to tradition. With the exception of the awful Belle-Vue brewery, I get the impression that many of the quasi-traditional lambic brewers are interested in returning to the more authentic styles and adding more “oude” and unsweetened lambics to their year-round bottled beers. Also encouraging is the rise of new gueuze blenders like Gueuzerie Tilquin. The only sad information in the book is 3 Fonteinen’s retrograde movement from brewer back to blender as a result of a number of unfortunate events. Surely, something can be done about this!
Even a rabid lambic fanatic as myself found some interesting tidbits of information that I was not aware of such as the origin of the word Brettanomyces, the story behind Boon’s Oude Geuze Mariage Parfait, and Hanssens’s memorable but exploding Mead the Geuze bottles. For friends of lambic beer, the most useful part is the tourism section with a comprehensive list of lambic-friendly pubs, museums, shops and hotels.
As the United States is drawing closer to producing real spontaneously fermented beers, a discussion about what should be called a lambic beer will be inevitable at some point. As I read it, the authors seem to agree that the survival of traditional lambic brewing may depend on the freedom to use the lambic label for all beers that are made in the traditional way employing spontaneous fermentation. Considering what is at stake, I do not see any reason to disagree, and hopefully some non-Belgian traditional lambics will be featured in a future edition of the book.
If you are interested in lambic beer, or unique beer history in general, purchase a copy of this information-rich, color illustrated book and use it during your next trip to Belgium.