Lambic, What's That?

In social situations, my best train spotter voice can often be heard saying things like “Isn’t it fascinating to observe the clear differences in style between Lembeek and Beersel, could that be terroir, or is it simply Frank Boon’s ability to harness local yeasts?...” Amongst the usual sea of blank expressions the odd charitable soul will indulge me and ask “So, what is Lambic beer?” Big mistake! You’re in for the long haul matey!

So rather than continue boring innocent bystanders with the intricacies of Tilquin’s blending methods and why the Zenne Valley is my version of Voltair’s Eldorado, I thought I would get it all out of my system here. I’ll then be able to refer people to the blog, they will pretend to have read the post and everybody will be happy. Enjoy!

On the 13^th of May 2009, a successful young man by the name of Armand Debelder got down on one knee in front of his girlfriend, Lydie, and asked her to marry him. Lydie was in love with Armand and immediately said “yes”. Most people consider their marriage proposal to be one of the best days of their lives. Little did Armand know that a mere three days later, he would be experiencing the worst day of his life…

At some point in the early sixteenth century King Charles V got smashed on what he was said to have called Lambic beer and then kissed a waitress’s bum. Thus the term ‘Lambic’ was born. There are other more credible stories such as Michael Jackson’s theory that the word comes from a Lambic-producing village called Lembeek. But the Charles bum kiss one’s more fun!

South west of Brussels in Belgium is the district of Pajottenland in the Flemish Brabant province. Pajottenland is the area in which Lambic beer is brewed. But what is Labic?

In the simplest terms possible: to make beer, one produces an unfermented base beer called wort from malted barley, wheat or other grain. One then adds yeast to ferment the wort. When you drink your super trendy dank tropical DDH DIPA juice bomb which you got after four hours queuing in the rain (or any other Lager, IPA, Pale Ale… etc. for that matter), you’re consuming a beer fermented by specifically selected lab’ cultivated yeast strains, known as brewer’s yeast or Saccharomyces. For Lambic beer, and increasingly more wild beers around the world, one uses wild yeasts or natural yeast, the most famous of which is Brettanomyces or Brett to its closest friends. Here’s a fun fact about Brett: Niels Kjelte Claussen (the Danish chap who discovered it) was originally going to call it ‘Brittanomyces’ but in Harry Tuttle style, there was an issue with the type casting and the ‘I’ was printed as an ‘E’.

Wild yeasts are, as the name suggests, wild. These are yeast strains that whimsically float about in the air and hide in walls and rafters calmly awaiting a nice batch of wort to dig their booze rendering teeth into. Whilst most breweries disinfect all their equipment on a near hourly basis to avoid such yeasts interfering with their carefully composed beers, Lambic producers encourage wild yeasts to thrive in and around their breweries creating century old eco systems that ferment the beers and help curate their unique flavours. The wort is poured out into Koelships, wide shallow open tanks, offering a vaster surface area for these wild yeasts to drop into and inoculate the wort. These wild yeasts are what makes Lambic beer Lambic. As Jean Van Roy of Brasserie Cantillon says “Lambic is easy to make, we have no secrets, but if you minutely copied every step of the process even 200 meters down the road you wouldn’t be able to make Cantillon because our secret ingredient is the building. The floor, the walls, the ceiling is where our yeast lives and it’s unique to us.” And this is the case at any brewery that relies on natural yeasts. In 2014, Jean Van Roy acquired a new maturation building in order to increase production. To help the wild yeast develop in his new space, he sprayed Cantillon wort and Lambic over the walls.

Three days after the proposal on the 16th of May 2009, Armand Debelder; head brewer and owner of Drie Fonteinen had just opened the brewery shop and tasting room for a busy spring Saturday and headed back to his warehouse to fetch a few bottles to stock up the shelves. He unlocked the front doors and let them swing open, as they did so, a blast of warm air hit Armand, “it was like a sauna”, he could hear smashing. As the light flickered on, Armand was faced with an apocalyptic scene from his very worst nightmares. Smashed glass everywhere, corks lying on the ground, soggy labels flopping off shelves and worst of all, precious Lambic beer frothing on the floor. He later found out that a thermostat malfunction had caused his entire brewery stock to explode overnight. 13,000 bottles shattered and 67,000 irreversibly damaged by heat. For the second time that week, Armand fell to his knees.

There are a multitude of Lambic styles and methods. There are fruited beers, sweetened beers, aged beers, blended beers… etc. Geuze is probably the most famous style. Once the wort has spent time in the Koelship, it is popped in oak barrels to age. Geuze (Gueuze in French) is a blend of young one year old beer and old two to four year old beer which undergoes a secondary fermentation in bottle. My personal favourite style is Kriek. Kriek is made by adding whole sour cherries (Schaarbeek Krieken Cherries to be precise) to the beer after its primary fermentation, the sugar present in the cherries causes the beer to undergo a secondary fermentation. A traditional Kriek brewer will let this go on until there is no sugar left leaving a wonderfully complex beer with all the characteristics of the fruit but no sweetness to mask the depth of the flavour. This method is also used with other fruits. Certain Lambic producers don’t actually brew their own beer but simply buy un-aged and un-blended beer to then age, blend and bottle whichever way they like. De Cam and Tilquin are probably the most famous of these blenders, they argue that the space saved by not having brewing facilities can be used to store more barrels for ageing, blending and putting beers through secondary fermentation.

But back to fruit Lambics for a minute. One of the best beers I have tried is the Lambic D’Aunis by Brasserie Cantillon. This beer is made with the same method as a Kriek but with Pineau D’Aunis grapes instead of Cherries! You’ll all of course know of my love affair with Pineau D’Aunis as a wine, so you can imagine my delight when I found out about Jean Van Roy’s admiration for natural wine and more obscure grapes such as Pineau D’Aunis. Jean has close friends dotted all about the wine trade so it was easy for him to buy some of the very best quality grapes from Olivier Lemasson at Les Vins Contes. Lambic D’Aunis starts puckeringly sour but the tartness fades away quickly to give way to a troublingly deep vinous and tannic experience. Layers of subtle grape, pepper, liquorice and hay flavour all delicately mingle about the palate gently and jovially socialising around a generous banquet of sourness.

There are two beers that blew my mind and kick started my obsession with this style and region. One was the Oude Geuze Cuvee Armand & Gaston Blend No. 18 by Drie Fonteinen. Assembled and released in 2016 from four different barrels in turn assembled from seven different worts, the oldest of which is from 2012. Never had I tasted such complexity in a beer. The depth here was simply amazing and breath taking. So much so that I instantly vowed to only drink Geuze for the rest of my life… I obviously didn’t stick to that, but I definitely thought about it for a moment or two.

The second beer was Oude Geuze Boon à L’Ancienne, Vat 109 Monoblend by Brouwerij Boon. Boon is headed up by the legendary Frank Boon who is famous for having the biggest collection of Geuze barrels in the world. Always active in the Lambic community, Frank is currently the chairman of a group called HORAL (which stands for some Flemish words I shan’t try to spell but more or less mean “the Lambic top dons”). HORAL campaign for the authenticity and global recognition of Lambic and Geuze beers mainly in Belgium but also the world. Every Lambic brewery is represented in HORAL except for Belle Vue and Cantillon. Jean Van Roy has been very vocal in his reasons for not being part of HORAL “Cantillon is not part of the association because there are breweries in the association who make non-traditional beers, sweetened beers etc. and their traditional Lambic only represents 1% of their production. We can not sit at a table with these brewers.” He does however go on to add “HORAL is a very good idea with a very good mission, and some of the breweries are very good breweries!” But back to my exciting Geuze experience! Vat 109 is legendary because it is Frank’s oldest barrel, a nine thousand litre Foudre of over 100 years old. It started its life in Germany, stored various beers, then Cognacs until 2009 when it ended up at Boon. The reason the beer is called Monoblend it that it just uses beer from the aforementioned barrel mixed with 10% young beer. Vat 109 Monoblend is also notable as it is the first beer released by Boon to be brewed entirely at Boon. It is common practice in Lambic to buy young beer from other breweries. Vat 109 was a wonderful drink with huge intensity and character, it sucked me in and to be honest, I’m not sure I’ve fully left yet. A fantastic expression of the body a Geuze can have with slight bitterness giving it great structure.

Armand Debelder got up dusted himself off and began clearing up. Most people in his situation, in the face of such huge loss, would have closed the brewery and given up on their life long project. But not Armand, he kept his head on, called Lydie and together, they gradually began coming up with ideas to make some of the money back to offset this catastrophe. Not to say that Armand didn’t struggle; with a wedding in the books, he was on the brink a few times. But friends from across the brewing community in Belgium and around the world offered both moral and material support. First, he sold most of the bottles he’d set aside to age in another cellar as well as a few special blends he made, he then sold his brew kit. Finally, aided by his distillation teacher, he collected all the ruined bottles that hadn’t smashed and, distilled them into an eau de vie called Armand’Spirit at Distillerie de Biercée. As a quick side note, Armand’Spirit is one of the best beer distillates I’ve tried! Armand was at the time chairman of HORAL as Frank Boon’s predecessor. His fellow members, Frank Boon and Dirk Lindemans (of Brouwerij Lindemans), helped Armand by offering young un-blended beer for him to play around with and sell. Frank Boon was also there to support Armand morally from day one. “Without Frank, I would simply not be doing what I love now. He saved my life.” Little by little, the light at the end of Armand’s tunnel grew bigger until, in 2012, he had made enough money to install a forty-hectolitre brewery and start brewing his own beers again.

Armand’s story is an excellent example of how the Lambic community sticks together and despite the odd petty feud and fall out, when push comes to shove, the Lambic brewers are there for each other. It is also an excellent example of Flemish brewer resilience and determination. He stuck to his passion and didn’t give up working his way back up to being one of the most highly regarded breweries in the world. Lambic beers have fallen in and out of fashion over the past few decades but they are driven not by popularity but by passion and love for their product. Lambic is one of the best kinds of beer in the world, but it is also for many, a way of life.