Cantillon Brewery Tour, Brussels

Location: Brussels, Belgium | Find them: Cantillon

Cantillon produces Lambics and Gueuzes – some of the oldest beer styles in the world. Back when brewers didn’t understand yeast, they had no idea how to manipulate it. That meant that beer was left to ferment spontaneously. Yeasts and bacteria from the air around and inside the breweries would get in the beer and give it all kinds of funky flavours. As it became easier to control the brewing process, most brewers moved away from producing spontaneously fermented ales (aka wild ales). Cantillon decided to stick to the styles they knew. However, lambics and gueuzes (wild ales) were falling out of favour so the brewery started to struggle. In order to promote the style and make some extra cash, they turned the brewery into a museum and it has been operating as a museum since 1978. What’s interesting about Cantillon is that, because it is a museum, the beer it brews is brewed using the same equipment it was using 100 years ago. Beers, tools and brewing process are still the same as they were in 1900 when it was founded.

The bar and shop

I would absolutely recommend doing the brewery tour. It’s not like other brewery tours as everything is done on old, traditional brewing equipment. However, if you do want to skip the tour and just try some fantastic beers, they do have a shop at the entrance and a small bar upstairs.

You can buy a handful of their lambic and gueuzes by the glass or in small bottles. Or they have a bigger range or 750ml bottles. The menu will change depending on what they have. This is due to the style of beer they produce – every batch is different.

If you’re not familiar with spontaneous fermented beers, here’s a quick rundown.

Lambic: Lambics are made using wild yeasts and bacteria. After the fermentation process starts, the lambic is transferred into barrels (port, sherry, wine etc) and is left to ferment and mature for one or several years. Lambic is flat, sour and funky and can be blended (different lambics blended together) or unblended.

Gueuze: A gueuze is mixture of young (one-year-old) and old (two- and three-year-old) lambics. The young lambics are not fully fermented, so they undergo secondary fermentation in the bottle and produce carbon dioxide. A gueuze can be kept for up to 20 years.

Kriek: A kriek is a lambic that is re-fermented using sour cherries. Kriek refers to the type of cherries used, but some brewers use other fruits in their wild ales.

About the tour

The tour took around 90 minutes and at the end, we got tasters of a lambic straight from the barrel, a gueuze, and a kriek.

The brewery is pretty small – it has been operational since 1900 and all the same equipment is used today.

Many producers of lambics are blenders, not brewers, but Cantillon does both. However, they only brew the beer between November and March as the warm weather will kill the yeast too quickly – they use traditional processes so don’t have the same temperature controls as modern breweries.

Because the brewery is limited, the demand for their products far outstrips supply. Despite that, they export 60% of their beers.

The brewery is still family-owned and the owners are still heavily involved in the brewing and blending process. It’s a small operation and you can tell it’s a close-knit team. The guide explained the manual work that’s involved in the brewing.

Because the brewery is a museum, it has had no modernisation. This means there’s a lot of watching your step and minding your head.

What we drank

Chouke

We arrived 30 minutes early for our tour so we decided to check out the bar. We’re glad we did as we managed to get the last bottle of Chouke and it was excellent – it even made it into our top five for the month.

Tour tasters

At the end of the tour, we headed to the tasting area where we were given a lambic that was poured straight from the barrel. You could drink at your own pace, then when ready, you headed up for the next taster – a gueuze – followed by the final taster – a kriek. All three were delicious.

We also treated ourselves to a 750ml bottle of gueuze to take home – we’d have bought more, but we’d probably have gone over our luggage allowance.

Visiting

If you don’t know much about lambics or gueuzes, this brewery tour is well worth doing. It’s really reasonably priced – we paid €12 each for a 90-minute tour and three tasters. Book in advance though as they have limited availability.

Book a tour: Cantillon