Jean-Pierra Van Roy at the Cantillon Brewery

Continental quality

Roger Protz visits some of Europe's finest breweries

Belgium · France · French Flanders · Bavaria

In downtown Brussels, Jean-Pierre Van Roy is the flag bearer for lambic and its blended form, gueuze, beers made by spontaneous fermentation. Lambic is considered to be the quintessential rural style of brewing from a pre-industrial age. Itâs somewhat ironic, therefore, to find Van Royâs Cantillon Brewery in the side streets of Anderlecht, a suburb dubbed the "Liverpool of Brussels" for its passion for soccer.

Van Roy runs what he calls "a living, working museum-the only artisanal brewery in Brussels." He is a descendant of the Cantillon family that blended lambic in Lembeek (the village that bequeathed the name to the style) and moved to Brussels in 1900. He brews only 30 times during the brewing season between November and April, producing around 60,000 bottles a year. Temperatures are too high in the summer and warm air carries the wrong type of wild yeasts.

He mashes at 6 oâclock in the morning, blending malted barley and unmalted wheat in the mash tun in the ratio of 65 per cent malt to 35 per cent wheat. The mash lasts for two hours, with the barley enzymes turning starch in both malt and wheat into sugar. Sweet wort is pumped up one floor to the kettles and Brewers Gold hops from Poperinge are blended in. The hops have been aged for three years and are used for their antiseptic quality rather than for aroma and bitterness.

The copper boil lasts for a long three hours. The hopped wort is cooled to 66 degrees F and then pumped to what Van Roy calls "the tabernacle." This is the tiny, cramped space under the eaves of the brewery which houses the copper "cool ship," an open fermenter. The louvered windows are left open and a few tiles are removed from the roof to allow yeast in the air easy access.

Scientists in the brewing school at the University of Leuven have studied the yeasts and listed them as Brettanomyces bruxellensis and lambicus. But many more strains of wild yeast exist in the brewery to aid fermentation in cask.

Once primary fermentation has started in the cool ship, the fermenting wort is pumped to the vats, great unlined oak vats known as "pipes," bought from port wine makers in Portugal. Microflora in the wood start a further fermentation and create a blanket on top of the wort that prevents oxidation. The beer will stay in cask for a year or more.

To make gueuze, Van Roy blends one-year-old and three-year-old lambics. The corked bottles are stored horizontally like champagne and the sugars in the young lambic start a third fermentation. It takes at least two years to make gueuze.

Van Roy occasionally sells a straight, unblended lambic as a "Grand Cru." For kriek or frambozen fruit beers, he adds 180 kilos of either cherries or raspberries to young lambic in cask. The sugars in the fruit start a further fermentation. The yeasts attack the fruit with such fervor that even the pips in the cherries are eaten away, adding a delicious hint of almond to kriek. Fermentation complete, the beer is bottled and laid down to mature.

In the tiny reception area at Cantillon, I was able to taste a stunning gueuze (5 percent alcohol by volume) that was a blend of three different lambics: it was shockingly dry, mouth-puckering, acidic, cidery and tartly fruity with a suggestion of damsons. A lambic that had been in cask for three years and a further year in bottle had a vinous aroma, with a dry fruit and Fino sherry character in the mouth and a finish that was gentle, lingering and not over-sour.

Van Royâs Kriek (5 percent) is dry, aromatic and heavy with sour cherry aromas and flavors. His classic RosŽ de Gambrinus, a rare blend of cherry and raspberry beers, has a delicate fruity, quenching character and foams and gushes like pink champagne. These are remarkable beers brewed by a man who has revived a fascinating segment of brewingâs past.

Brewers in Wallonia, the French-speaking region of Belgium, feel their beers are overlooked and underrated. They have made strenuous efforts in recent years to breathe life back into the style called "saison," seasonal beers, as the name suggests, once brewed by farmers in winter months and stored for drinking during the summer. Today, they are made all the year round using methods that have close links with the bires de garde across the border in northern France. Saisons are top fermenting, often made with dark malts; they have generous hop rates and a big, fruity character.

The classic brewer of saison is Dupont at Tourpes, founded in 1850 and run by the Duponts since the 1920s. Marc Rosier, grandson of the original family, is now in charge of brewing. The small brew house produces 5 to 6,000 hectoliters a year, using pale and caramalts with East Kent Goldings and Styrian hops. The 6.5 percent by volume saison is called Vieille Provision (Old Provision), a term that dates from the time when these stored seasonal ales were an important part of farm workersâ diet.

The ale has an intense peppery hoppiness from the use of Goldings, a hazy gold color and a dense head when poured. It has a big, malty palate with citric fruit from the hops, and a long finish packed with more citric fruit balanced by sweet malt.

Go to: France · French Flanders · Bavaria

This story originally appeared in All About Beer Magazine in May 1997.