The Lambic Producers of the Past

The history of Lambic, the spontaneously fermented beers of the Pajottenland, is one of the most debated topics in the beer world. As has happened with many other Belgian styles, due to a lack of accredited literature, we immediately trusted the stories from the producers: until a few years ago, we were all convinced of the ancestral origin of Lambic and its derivatives, and that glasses with those aromas – and those smells, “une vraie Gueuze doit puer,” they said in Brussels, “a real Gueuze must stink” – could only come from there. The mystery has a precise recipe, summed up in machinery that speaks of very distant times compared to modern brewing equipment, cobwebs, and a special microflora that doesn’t exist elsewhere. Over the years, many studies have been conducted and even more hypotheses proposed regarding the birth of Kuaska’s nectar (and many others, including us at Maltese), but what is certain is that, compared to a couple of centuries ago, the number of producers and blenders has dropped dramatically. In this article, we get to know some realities of which, unfortunately, we can no longer taste Gueuze and Lambic.