La Brasserie Cantillon is one of those places you should visit at least once in your life. Actually, better more than once. Let's say every time you happen to pass through Brussels.
It is a brewery steeped in history, where the machinery used is over a hundred years old. And where even the beers produced take our palate back in time, when the sour taste was a fundamental component of foods and drinks just as much as sweet, salty, and bitter flavors.
In this article, we want to tell you the story of Brasserie Cantillon, which is more than just a craft brewery.
Introduction: Lambic and Gueuze
You can't talk about Cantillon without first understanding what a Lambic and a Gueuze are. What do these two terms mean? When we talk about Lambic, we refer to a spontaneously fermented beer, whose wort is made with a mixture of water, barley malt, and raw wheat, and where the hops, unlike all other commonly produced and known styles today, appear in a “suranné” version, meaning after at least 3 years from harvest, thus completely oxidized and no longer able to provide bitterness to the beer.
The phase described as the most important in the production of Cantillon Lambic is the cooling of the wort, which takes place in a copper vessel called a coolship (koelschip in Flemish). The vessel is wide and shallow to ensure faster heat dispersion, also encouraged by the cold temperatures of the room, which is located in the attic and has windows always open: at Cantillon, in fact, Lambic is produced only in winter and the cooling process happens during the night hours.
In the final phase of cooling, the wort reaches a temperature that allows the natural inoculation of the typical yeasts and bacteria responsible for the first fermentation stages of Lambic. After that, the wort is transferred into wooden barrels, also rich in an incredible bacterial microflora, where it ferments and matures for at least one year and, more often, two, three, or more years.
After this period, however, the lambic is flat or almost flat. For this reason, the main product of Brasserie Cantillon and other producers and blenders is the Gueuze: a blend of multiple vintages of Lambic, where the older vintages add complexity, while the younger ones provide the sugars necessary for bottle refermentation and, therefore, are responsible for the fizz.
Moreover, Lambic, blended or not, is also suitable for fruit additions: the most used varieties are cherries (Schaerbeek griotte by tradition) for Kriek and raspberries for Framboise. But today we know Cantillon and other producers for the use of grapes, other berries, and even other more unexpected products of the earth, such as flowers, rhubarb, and beetroot.
The history of Brasserie Cantillon
It was Paul Cantillon who in 1900 decided to open a brewery in Anderlecht, a district located southwest of Brussels. At that time, the city already counted about a hundred breweries and related Lambic and Gueuze brands, divided between producers and assemblers.
After World War II, the business passed into the hands of the two sons Marcel and Robert, who increased production to reach the maximum ceiling of 2,500 hectoliters in one year in 1958, when Brussels hosted the Expo.
Ten years later, when, due to the two wars and the worldwide spread of Pilsner beers, Lambic producers were disappearing one after another, Jean-Pierre Van Roy, Marcel’s son-in-law, took over the brewery production, armed with passion and supported by his wife Claude Cantillon.
Those were tough times; people's tastes had changed radically, and what until a few decades earlier was the most consumed beer in the Belgian capital was on the verge of disappearing. One of the ways Jean-Pierre devised to allow Lambic to make a comeback was transforming the historic building at Rue Gheude 56 from a simple brewery into the “Brasserie Cantillon et Musée Bruxellois de la Gueuze.” This is still the name you see on the sign indicating the street at the intersection with Rue Brogniez.
And it’s true, Cantillon’s brewery is a museum. A functioning one, moreover. All the machinery dates back to the 19th century, and everything inside those walls has remained intact, thanks to the strength of the Van Roy - Cantillon family, who have maintained independence to this day.
The rebirth of Lambic
The museum idea immediately helped rediscover a brewing tradition that would otherwise have been forgotten, but in the early 1980s Lambic was still hard to sell, and Claude and Jean-Pierre felt they almost needed a miracle.
Soon after, through the door of Brasserie Cantillon came an Italian eager to taste the house’s “Wild beers”: this was Lorenzo Dabove, whom many of you know as Kuaska. In that first meeting, you could say the spark was lit that led Kuaska to collaborate steadily with the Cantillon family and bring its name to the world, establishing it as the most renowned Gueuzerie on the planet.
Meanwhile, Jean Van Roy (Jean-Pierre’s son) stepped in as brewmaster and helped expand the range of Cantillon products, distinguishing himself particularly for great skill in producing Druiven Lambic - Lambic with added grapes - which led him to collaborate with some of the best Italian and French winemakers. Today, even his son Florian is employed full-time at the brewery.
