Yes We Cantillon

Today I went to the Cantillon Brewery, one of the few breweries still in Brussels (maybe someday I'll get to Brasserie de la Senne...) and one of the only breweries in the world that makes lambic, the mother of all things wonderful and the topic of this here blog. Cantillon is in the Anderlecht neighborhood of Brussels, which is a little ... sketchy. Like when you arrive you don't think you're in the right place and when you leave you're glad you've had a couple of drinks. I'm sorry I don't have a picture, but just imagine a place you don't want to be. Cantillon is there.

Once you've found it, though, you enter a different century. Everything is wooden, there are barrels and bottles and spider webs and spills everywhere (if Snowy were here he'd have some fun...) Some of the barrels are moldy, others look like they've wet themselves.

(sorry, mom)

And no one there cares if you poke around - I don't think anyone would see if you took the stopper out of a barrel, stuck your finger in, tasted the beer, and closed it back up. Maybe it would actually help the yeast along, who knows. I hear it's verboten to kill a spider in the place - spiders kill fruit flies in the summer, and when they lay their eggs around the brewery it gives the beer its certain je ne sais quoi.

I took a tour with a guy who looked like Bilbo Baggins after a bit too much Ent-draught - jolly and red-faced, small and Flemish.

(not so jolly here, but an atypical moment)

It was an actual brewing day, which is pretty rare, so I got to see the process, including the impressive cool ship, the attic room in which the hot wort cools and the natural yeasts from the air can settle (don't forget your Geuze 101) on the beer. Lambic can only be made in the winter for this reason - in the summer the proto-beer can't cool enough for the wild yeasts to be happy and everything would go a little haywire, so wintertime it is. Lucky me!

(steam pours off the hot beer, creating the best-smelling sauna in the world)

Also lucky, I got to taste a couple-three beers while on the tour. The normal Gueuze (different spelling, same deliciousness) is wonderful - tangy, sharp, citrus, hay, tart, and juicy. Mmm. The Lou Pepe Gueuze - not blended, but aged - was more complex but less sour. More in the sides of the tongue (you know that place that salivates a bit when you think of chocolate, or aged gouda, or spider-lambic?) than the other, and a bit woodier, from the barrel. A newer lambic I tried on tap was even less sour, more grassy, less complex, a bit more bitter - actually pretty similar to a beer I once made, my gruit ale (my biggest brewing failure...) - it was a bit bizarre to taste those flavors again - wormwood, mugwort, sweet gale, eye of newt. Not my favorite. But the gueuzes? My favorite.
And the value! A glass of beer there is €2! I bought a few bottles to take away, so in the end for about $30 I got a tour, three glasses of the greatest thing that comes from Brussels (not counting Jean-Claude van Damme), three 750ml bottles of take-away heaven, and some pretty good pictures. Not bad for another Saturday in Brussels.

Oh, and I got to meet Rob Tod and Jason Perkins from Allagash. They had been to Nacht van de Grote Dorst (Night of the Great Thirst) to pour their new spontaneously fermented beer, and were continuing their own tour of Brussels at Cantillon. They generously shared stories, knowledge, and some of that delicious Lou Pepe Gueuze. I can't wait to get to Maine and see their new cool ship. And taste their new beer - what's it called again, Cool Shit?

So, Cantillon, another reason to visit Brussels. Just bring a map - you don't want to be wandering lost around Anderlecht high on the aethers of Ent-draught...

(the house cat, attacking all entrants)