Paul Cantillon's Great Grandson: Lambic 101

While on (working) vacation in Brussels, we had the privilege of speaking with Jean Van Roy, the head brewer and progeny of the Cantillon Brewery. Jean's family has been blending and brewing lambic beer for many generations. His beer is considered by many to be THE authentic lambic.

A boy and his gueuze.

And what is this "lambic" beer? Most who have tried it -- at least the more well known version of it called gueuze -- know it as a very sour, acidic, lively carbonated, somewhat sulfery concoction that one either loves or hates. (We LOVE it!!!)

Try to steal the Cantillon recipe -- get scratched!

Jean gave us a brilliantly simple explanation of the mysterious, ancient, spontaneously fermented beverage called lambic. Even if you think that you know a thing or two about this rare style of beer, I'm pretty sure that you will learn something new from Jean's brief but informative interview. 

A business meeting, with the (operational) potbelly stove in the foreground.

Romantic Saturday morning at the Cantillon Brewery!

Cantillon Amphoras

Our 8 day trip to northern France and Brussels began auspiciously with a visit to the Cantillon Brewery, where brewer Jean Van Roy showed us an exciting brewing experiment that he's undertaken. He's fermenting and conditioning about 2,400 liters of lambic in custom made amphoras.

Amphora of lambic.

Jean got the idea from a wine maker friend of his in Sicily. He said that the wine he experienced which had been aged in the ceramic vessels was dramatically different from wine aged in wood barrels, and that he instantly wondered what his beer would be like if aged the same way.

While beer used to be fermented and stored in such vessels a few thousand years ago, we've not heard of any brewery using such ancient vessels in modern times. For Jean, it's a pure experiment, with no idea about what the end result will be. Hear the whole story of Cantillon's bold exBEERiment in this week's podcast. There are lots more great photos of the amphoras on Cantillon's Facebook page.

B.R. and Jean Van Roy.

Gueuze.

Sour Beers At Jimmy's No. 43

WFMU's Beer Hear! with Bob W. and B.R. from 8/18/2011

Every Tuesday at about 7:30pm JIMMY'S NO. 43 hosts a beer tasting with a different theme or angle each week. It's only $10 and usually includes roughly 5 to 7 different beers. The tastings are organized and lead by Mike of UNION BEER, a local distributor of craft beer.

This past Tuesday, the theme was SOUR BEERS. While B.R. was busy judging a homebrew contest at the Heartland Brewery, I dropped by to find some regular non-beer-industry folks to talk to and see what they thought of sour beer.

Now, in general "sour" is not how beer is supposed to taste, and when most beers become sour, it's considered one of the worst possible flaws. It typically means that the beer has been contaminated by bacteria. But there are a handful of styles that, in fact, are supposed to be sour, and they achieve sourness by intentionally allowing certain bacteria strains to interact with the beer.

The beers featured were:

Jolly Pumpkin Weizen Bam (on draft)

The Bruery Saison De Lente

Orval

Jolly Pumpkin La Roja

Jolly Pumpkin Oro de Calabaza

Cantillon Pure Kriek

 Instead of talking to some expert about the beers, we thought that it would be cool to talk to some non-industry, non-beer judge people. One such person whom I had arranged in advance to talk to was WFMU's Liz Berg. Unfortunately, the the event sold out before Liz arrived, so she didn't make it in. But I recognized two people at the tasting from the street hockey league that B.R. and I play in -- Mike and Heather. So, after a little persuading, they became our guests!

 They were great to talk to, because they definitely were outside of the local inner beer scene, BUT they were not total novices when it came to craft brew. They're just getting started in homebrewing, they hit the occasional craft beer event here and there, and, most importantly, they love trying new and different styles of beer.

Our conversation about the sour beers that we sampled is part two of this week's two-part podcast. Part one, and interview with Kelly of Heartland and Kelso, is HERE.