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FOOD & DRINK
APRIL 6, 2009, 8:02 P.M. ET
Tracking an Ancient Belgian Beer
Lambic, a rare, sour brew, uses techniques dating back to man's first beer. Reporter Charles Forelle visits one of the few remaining breweries
BRUSSELS -- Beer is usually not a morning pursuit.
But it was still dark one day last month when I lumbered out of bed and over to the tiny Cantillon brewery, located in a scruffy neighborhood not far from the main train station here.
Industrial brewers can be as secretive as defense contractors -- good luck getting inside the mashing room of Diageo PLC's Guinness brewery in Dublin -- but a couple of times a year Cantillon opens its doors to the public.
I had risen early because I wanted to see how to brew lambic, a Belgian specialty so retro its origins go back thousands of years. The early-morning start was necessary because there are no refrigerated tanks or cryogenic chillers at Cantillon; the boiled liquid that will become beer cools in the open air, and it needs a whole, cold night to do so. Thus all the mixing, cooking, filtering and boiling must be completed well before sunset.
Lambic brewing is "a process that has become so rare around the world, but that was once the universal method of making beer," says Jean-Pierre Van Roy, the patriarch of the family that has owned and run Cantillon for a century. "As with everything rare, we need to be watchful, we need to be able to show this type of industry to our generation and future generations."
Take sips of two dozen different beers and the lambic will be the one you remember. A traditional lambic is startlingly sour, like plain yogurt, and full of musty and meaty flavors.
Lambic is brewed only in Brussels and a few towns on the city's western edge -- and only a dozen breweries make it. Cantillon makes around 32,000 gallons a year; Anheuser-Busch InBev pumps out more than 1.3 billion gallons of Bud Light annually. Bottles are easy to find in Brussels, but it's likely to take a committed search anywhere else.
All beer starts out roughly the same: Some sort of grain is cooked in water to turn its starches to sugar. The brewer then adds yeast to turn the sugars to alcohol.
Brewers of lambic skip that last step. At Cantillon, the cooked grain-broth -- wort, it's called -- is pumped up to the attic, then dumped into a giant, copper tub beneath the eaves that looks like a children's splashing pool. It cools there overnight, picking up the wild yeasts and bacteria floating in the Brussels air.
This is the same method the first human to concoct beer most likely used thousands of years ago. Like true sourdough bread and natural yogurt, lambic is resolutely pre-industrial and is fermented with whatever bugs happen to be nearby.
Belgian scientists have deconstructed lambic and found scores of different species of micro-flora. Two important types are lactic-acid bacteria, which make lambic sour, and yeasts of the genus Brettanomyces, among them B. bruxellensis, which give lambic its characteristic aroma. "Horse blanket" is the term favored by beer cognoscenti. This is not a terribly useful olfactory cue for those of us who dwell in cities, but the scent is of hay and must -- and also of something very much alive. It is
a weird concept for beer, no doubt, but strangely compelling and astoundingly complex. Needless to say, sour mustiness is a tough sell -- don't look for commercials of sweaty young things dancing to reggaeton and taking swigs from bottles of lambic.
"People have a taste for anything, but their palates have been deformed," Mr. Van Roy says. "Industrial producers get people used to eating and drinking in a certain way. And when you explain to people what the product is, when you let them taste it, they come to realize that this sourness we have in our products is really a popular taste."
To at least a small slice of beer fans, it is.
Despite the early hour, professional brewers on a pilgrimage, home brewers with a sense of curiosity and a throng of committed drinkers mingled over croissants and coffee at the Cantillon brewery. The coffee was weak, and by 9 a.m. or so most everyone switched over to beer.
A group of bleary-eyed Californian brewers conquered the early morning simply: by staying up the whole night before. They marveled as Jean Van Roy -- Jean-Pierre's son, now head brewer -- scurried between tanks, hooking up copper pipes to control the flow between chambers, tweaking spigots and levers.
There is nothing modern about Cantillon -- no blinking lights or beeping electronic temperature monitors. Barrels are steamed clean by hand in a low-ceilinged, Dickensian basement. A system of flywheels, belts and gears powers what needs powering and turns what needs turning.
The mash-tun -- the heart of the brewery, where wheat and barley are mixed and cooked -- is a 19th-century model in heavy iron. To fill it, a worker one floor up shovels grain down a chute.
Lambic brewing as done at Cantillon would drive the bean-counters of a big brewery mad. Cantillon can brew only in the colder months, when the weather is right; the brewery gets in about 20 working days a year -- if the weather turns suddenly warm, a batch can be spoiled. Most of the product sits in inventory for years before being sold, and the long aging in wooden casks means about a third of what's brewed is lost to evaporation -- the "angel's share," as it's known.
"The angels of Brussels are great gourmands," the elder Mr. Van Roy says, standing in the attic amid sacks of grain, an orange scarf knotted at his throat.
"The big brewers can't work like us," he says. "It's impossible. They have staff and other expenses." At Cantillon, "there are no directors or administrators. There's a father, a mother, children and now grandchildren."
Around mid-day, Jean Van Roy starts drawing tumblers of wort from the mash-tun, passing around samples in plastic cups. It is warm and sweet. Eventually he is satisfied, and he pulls more levers to begin pumping the liquid upstairs into vats for boiling.
A few hours later, he deems the boiling complete. Visitors crowd up to the attic, clambering on creaky wood stairs for a glimpse of the cooling pool. The wort gushes in, and they give a cheer. Soon the whole, chilly room fills with a warm, beery haze.
Only a few more years, and you could drink it.
And to think the reporter and I almost took the exact same picture! Here's his, then my two:
I'm thirsty for some stinky lambic now. And a Cantillon Kriek 100% Lambic might do just nicely tonight...
