Night of the Great Thirst

Nacht van de Grote Dorst or Night of the Great Thirst is a biannual beer festival held to promote and celebrate one of the most unique Belgian beer traditions: Lambic. The 2014 edition of this festival, held on Friday April 25th, marked its ten year anniversary and was the biggest to date.

Saint Ursula church in Eizeringen with some festival tents

Some background
The first Nacht van de Grote Dorst was held in 2004 as a protest against the Federal Food Agency (FAVV) in Belgium who wanted to close down a number of lambic breweries because they thought that fermenting beer in open coolships were unsanitary. The main problem was that the FAVV food inspectors were unfamiliar with the age old brewing process of spontaneous fermentation.

Fortunately, since then the FAVV has backed down and the relationship is now good between the lambic brewing community and the food inspectors. But the original festival turned out so successful that the organizers decided to hold it every second year from then on, in order to celebrate and promote the lambic way of life.

The festival is arranged by HORAL (the High Council of Artisanal Lambic Beers) together with the famous lambic café In de Verzekering tegen de Grote Dorst in the village of Eizeringen, just off Ninoofsesteenweeg (N8) - the long straight road that heads west out of Brussels to Ninove:

Eizeringen is located about 15 km west of central Brussels

Café In de Verzekering tegen de Grote Dorst, Flemish for "In insurance against the great thirst", is located opposite the Saint Ursula church and has the look and feel of a 1940s era Flemish café, there is no modern technology visible inside - even the bills are tabulated on a piece of paper. As mentioned in an earlier post, the café is only open on Sundays and church holidays when the owners - the brothers Kurt and Yves Panneels - have time off from their regular day jobs. For them, the café is a labor of love, a way to keep an old tradition alive.

The festival is usually held at the café, but this year the organizers had acquired the use of the entire church square as well as the church lawn, for erecting big party tents and movable toilets, as it was expected that some 3,000 visitors, from all around the globe, would show up. Apparently, the café had been turned into a gallery for famous Belgian cartoonist Erwin Vanmol, displaying his drawings of beer related topics.

Getting there
In the late afternoon on Friday April 25th, a friend of mine and I got on the bus (line 128) at De Brouckère, a few blocks from Grand Place in Brussels, and enjoyed a scenic 30 minutes bus ride west, passing along the way the red brick stone buildings of the old Eylenbosch lambic brewery in Schepdaal, before getting off the bus at Eizeringen Kruispunt. From there it was just a five minutes walk to the church square.

The festival
I arrived about an hour before the 7 pm opening, so I got the chance to look around the festival area to find a suitable table but also speak with some of the volunteer helpers before things got hectic. It seems that most of the inhabitants of Eizeringen had been called upon to help organize this event, helping with the selling of tokens, the pouring of beer, carrying stuff around, cleaning up etc.

All the beer stands were in the big tent on the church square

In order to get beer you had to purchase a small 15 cl tasting glass, with the Nacht van de Grote Dorst logo printed on it, as well as some tokens to pay with at the different stands. Beer prices varied from 1 token for lambic from cask to 8-10 tokens for a bottle. Some of the rarer bottles could cost as much as 20-30 tokens. Because you had to buy a full bottle to taste a beer it made sense to join a group of people to share with, so my friend and I invited a couple of American visitors, sitting on the neighboring table, to share the bottles we bought. And they did vice versa for us, so that we managed to taste more beers than if we had been on our own.

This year the festival had outgrown the small café so guests either had to find seating outside or stand around the tall tables inside the big beer tent. The latter becoming very packed a few hours into the festival, making it difficult to get more beer. Another novelty this year, one I'm not particular fond of, was the stage next to the big beer tent where live music was played from 8 o'clock. For me, such a festival is all about meeting like minded people and enjoying good beer, so loud music really is a nuisance. I hope the organizers will skip that part of the program for the next festival, just let us talk - that will be noisy enough.

The food was catered for by a butcher that has been at several of the previous events at De Grote Dorst, he had a big food stall on the church lawn where burgers, meat and that traditional dark blood sausage of Flanders were grilled and served. It was really tasty beer food!

... and the beers
At the 2014 festival lambic based sour ales from all the traditional lambic producers in Belgium were available, mostly in bottle but a few also offered lambic or kriek from small casks or bag-in-box systems. With 14 different brands, each with multiple beers, I certainly didn't stand a chance to get through the entire selection in one night. Here follows a summary of lambic breweries and blenders that had beers at the festival.

Brouwerij Boon
Brouwerij Boon is a lambic brewery and blending business in Lembeek, founded in the 1970s by Frank Boon who still runs the company. Frank Boon is one of the reasons we still have traditional lambics; together with Jean-Pierre Van Roy of Cantillon and Armand Debelder of 3 Fonteinen, Frank Boon worked hard to promote traditional lambic in an era when some of the biggest names sold out and started making sweet fruit based ales. Boon brought along the famous Geuze Mariage Parfait and Kriek Mariage Parfait to the festival, and I swear I also saw a few bottles of Oude Geuze Boon VAT 44, released for the Tour de Geuze 2013, though it wasn't listed in the official program.

Geuzestekerij De Cam
Founded in Gooik in 1997, this is a small lambic blending business run by Karel Goddeau on his sparetime (his real occupation is as a brewer at Slaghmuylder!). Gouddeau learned the art of blending lambic from Armand Debelder (while he tought Armand how to brew), and today makes some of the best oude geuze available. For Nacht van de Grote Dorst, he sent along De Cam Kriek Lambiek and Oude Lambiek, but unfortunately none of the excellent Oude Geuze.

Cantillon
Founded in 1900, when gueuze was all the rage in Brussels, Cantillon is a small, family owned and operated brewing and blending business in the Anderlecht area of Brussels. It is also a working museum in the sense that visitors can go on tours to see all parts of the brewery, from the mechanical mash tun on the ground floor to the shiny copper coolship just underneath the ceiling. Since 2009, the brewery has been in the hands of the 4th generation of the Van Roy-Cantillon family, the dynamic Jean Van Roy. Cantillon sent along a number of exciting beers to the festival, such as the Vigneronne made with white wine grapes and Saint Lamvinus made with red (Merlot), Fou'Foune made with apricot and the rare Lou Pepe Gueuze - a geuze made with 2 year old lambic only. To complete the line-up, there were also bottles of the regular Gueuze, Rosé de Gambrinus and Grand Cru Bruocsella.

Brouwerij de Troch
This old lambic brewery, founded and based in Wambeek since 1795, was the first to add fruit to geuze and is mainly known for their Chapeau series of fruit beers which is largely exported to the US. For this festival, Brouwerij de Troch sent their Oude Geuze and Kriek.

Brouwerij 3 Fonteinen
Beersel based Brouwerij 3 Fonteinen, headed by HORAL co-founder Armand Debelder, is one of the most traditional lambic producers in Belgium, refusing to offer geuze on draught since that is historically incorrect (as Armand likes to say, "You won't find good Champagne on tap, so Geuze shouldn't be either"). For the festival, 3 Fonteinen sent along several fairly new creations, such as Intense Red, a kriek relased for Tour de Geuze 2013 and made with 400 gram cherries per liter beer and the brand new Golden Doesjel, made by blending 75% of Doesjel and 25% of Golden Blend. 3 Fonteinen Oude Geuze Vintage 2007 and Schaerbeekse Kriek 2005 were also available at the festival.

A bottle of 3 Fonteinen Golden Doesjel
- at Nacht van de Grote Dorst 2014

Hanssens Artisanaal
Located on a farm in Dworp, this small lambic blending businesses is run by a husband and wife couple on their sparetime. When lambic brewer Jean Hanssens retired in 1997, his daughter Sidy and her husband, John Matthys, decided to keep the old business alive and established Hanssens Artisanaal. They stopped brewing but has kept up the blending business, purchasing their lambic from other brewers. Hanssens was the first blender to start using the Oude Geuze and Oude Kriek denomination for its beers. Both of these were brought along to the festival, along with the weird strawberry lambic - Oudbetje

Brouwerij Girardin
Located in Sint-Ulriks-Kapelle, Brouwerij Girardin is a small family business but still one of the most important lambic breweries in Belgium, not mainly because of its own beers but because they sell lambic wort, for aging and blending to others; both 3 Fonteinen, De Cam, Hanssens and Tilquin buy their lambic from Girardin! Of their own beers, Girardin sent along the Oude Lambiek, Kriekenlambiek, Gueuze Black Label, Faro and Framboise to the festival.

Brouwerij Lindemans
This old family brewery in Vlezenbeek stopped making traditional geuze when the market folded in the midt 20th century, but the new EU designation of traditional lambic and the awakening interest in old style geuze caused Brouwerij Lindemans to start up production again in 2005. Lindemans may be best known for the sweet Lindemans Kriek, the first sweet kriek to become popular in the early 1970s. But Lindemans now also make some decent sour ales - two of which were available at the festival: Oude Lambiek and the Oude Geuze Cuvée René.

Brouwerij Moriau
There was a stand for Brouwerij Moriau at the festival, a lambic brewery in Sint-Pieters-Leeuw that was known for their Moriau Geuze but which closed in 1992. Recently, the beer has been revived by the Boon brewery which blends and release the Moriau Geuze.

Mort Subite
Named after the famous bar À la Mort Subite in Brussels, the De Keersmaeker brewery in Kobbegem was famous for brewing the Mort Subite sour ales until acquired by brewery giant Alken-Maes in 2000. Though the old Keersmaeker name is largely forgotten, the brewery still exists and do make sour ales in addition to sweetened beers (such as the terrible Mort Subite Xtreme series). For the festival, visitors were offered bottles of Oude Geuze and Oude Kriek - decent, unsweetened sour ales.

Oud Beersel
As the name implies, Oud Beersel is the oldest lambic producer in Beersel, founded in 1882 and in regular operations until 2003 when the aging brewer retired without a heir. Fortunately, two fans took it upon themselves to revive Oud Beersel and in 2005 the business re-opened but only as a lambic blender, the brewery equipment having been sold. Today, Oud Beersel is run by Gert Christiaens who travels to Boon for brewing the lambic which is then aged on oak in the cellar at Oud Beersel. For this festival Oud Beersel Oude Lambiek, Oude Geuze and Oude Kriek was on offer.

Gueuzerie Tilquin
The newest lambic blending business in Belgium, Gueuzerie Tilquin, was founded in 2009 by Pierre Tilquin, a young brewer from Wallonia who had studied under Armand Debelder at 3 Fonteinen and Jean-Pierre van Roy at Cantillon to learn how to brew, age and blend lambic. Located in from Bierghes, just south of the Flanders Walloon border, Gueuzerie Tilquin has grown quickly in fame and production volume with lambic bought from Lindemans, Girardin, Boon and even Cantillon (Cantillon usually never sell their lambic but made an exception for Tilquin). Tilquin Oude Lambiek, Oude Geuze and Oude Quetsche 2013-2014 were on sale at the festival.

Brouwerij Timmermans
Founded in 1702, Brouwerij Timmermans is the oldest lambic brewery in Belgium and one of the most spectacular, located in the heart of Itterbeek in a white painted brick building with what must surely be the biggest coolship in the world. The brewery was sold to the John Martin Group in 1993 and stopped making traditional geuze for a few years, until re-introducing the Oude Geuze in 2009 and the Oude Kriek in 2010 - both bart of the Timmermans Tradition series. For the festival, Timmermans offered several Tradition beers, such as Oude Gueuze, Oude Kriek and Blanche Lambicus - the last one a wheat lambic.

In addition to the above Belgian producers, the festival had an exclusive guest from America. What, you may think, an American brewery at a Belgian sour ale festival?! Yes, really - Allagash was present!

Allagash Brewing Company
Portland, Maine, based Allagash Brewing Co has been inspired by Belgian beer styles ever since its founding by Rob Tod in 1994. A few years ago the brewery acquired its own coolship, one of those shallow, open metal tanks where wort is cooled over night and inoculated by yeast from the ambient air - to undergo what is known as spontaneous fermentation. Which is exactly what traditional lambic brewing is all about! Allagash sent along three of their Coolship beers to the festival and they turned out so popular that Allagash was the first beer stand to run out of beer! Fortunately, I had been sensible enough to get a bottle of each, shortly after the festival opened, so I got to try all three of them.

A bottle of Allagash Coolship Cerise
- at Nacht van de Grote Dorst 2014

- Allagash Coolship Red (5.7%): This is their version of a framboise, made by steeping raspberries for four months in a two year old, spontaneously fermented sour ale. It poured a reddish amber color and smelled and tasted strongly of raspberry, but with some funky notes and a good acidity.

- Allagash Coolship Cerise (8.1%): This is their version of an oude kriek, made by steeping sour cherries for four months in a two year old, spontaneously fermented sour ale. It really tasted of sour cherries with notes of cherry pits.

- Allagash Coolship Resurgam (6.6%): This is their version of a traditional geuze, made by blending a two year old spontanesouly fermented beer with an 18 months old and a 6 months old ("jonge lambik") before refermentation in bottle. The one I tried had been bottled in May 2011, making it almost three years old, it tasted of sour fruits, lemon peel and had some funky barnyard notes in the aftertaste - very tasty and refreshing.

Concluding remarks
A little before 10 pm, the beer tent was so crowded that I found it hard to get through to the beer stands to get more beer, and there were queues for the toilets, the food stall and to buy more tokens, so I decided it was time to call it a day and catch the next bus back to Brussels.

My overall impressions of Nacht van de Grote Dorst 2014 is that this is an excellent addition to the much older Weekend of Spontaneous Fermentation festival in Buggenhout, the two festivals differ both in style and popularity so they complement each other really well. I will probably return for Nacht van de Grote Dorst 2016, but intend to do like this year - be there at the opening and call it a day as soon as things get too crowded for comfort.

Visitors queuing for tokens at Nacht van de Grote Dorst

More photos can be found at Flickr in this album.

Report from Tour de Geuze 2013

As mentioned in a previous post, I had signed up for one of the HORAL buses at the recent Tour de Geuze on April 21, 2013. This is a recount of a long day spent touring back and forth across the river Zenne in the heart of Flemish Brabant, with a brief detour into Wallonia for a visit to the newest geuze blender in Belgium. So buckle up.

Halle
Most of the HORAL buses departed from the south side of the train station in Halle, a city some 15 km south of Brussels, so when staying in Brussels the easiest way of getting there was by train, just a short 15 minutes train ride from Bruxelles-Central at the price of €3,50. I decided on an early train to make sure I made it for the 10 am departure of the tour buses, this gave me a chance to take hike around in the vicinity of the train station, discovering a former malt factory (Malteries Beeckmans) and enjoying the fine view of the Brussels-Charleroi canal.

Banner for Tour de Geuze 2013 at Gueuzerie Tilquin

Gueuzerie Tilquin
My bus left Halle more or less on time and headed south west, out of lambic heartland and across the border into the French speaking federal region of Wallonia. Historically, the Wallon region of Belgium is known for its Saison beers, not for lambic or geuze, but that changed in March 2009 when Pierre Tilquin founded Gueuzerie Tilquin in Bierghes, near Rebecq-Rognon in the north of Wallonia - just 1 km from the border with Flanders. His enterprise is the most recent geuze blending business to open up anywhere in Belgium.

Located in what looks like a large warehouse, Pierre Tilquin established his gueuzerie in Wallonia partly because he felt more comfortable there, as a native French speaker, but probably just as much because of the public funding and tax reductions available for those wanting to establish a business in this poor region. You may be surprised to learn that during the early phases of the industrial revolution Wallonia was second only to England and it remained the industrial and economical powerhouse of Belgium until World War II, when the industry went into decline. Today the Dutch speaking Flanders is the "economical engine" of Belgium.

Only in his late 30s, Pierre Tilquin has built up a very impressive résumé; in addition to a PhD in statistics and genetics he learned the art of brewing at Brouwerij Huyghe, famous for Delirium Tremens, before spending six months apprenticing at 3 Fonteinen, to learn the art of aging and blending geuze from Armand Debelder, and then six months at Cantillon, to learn about lambic brewing from Jean-Pierre van Roy. The latter is the reason why Tilquin, as the only Geuzestekerij ("geuze blender") in Belgium, has been allowed to purchase lambic wort from Cantillon to use in his oude geuze!

After releasing his first oude geuze in May 2011, just in time for the previous Tour de Geuze, Gueuzerie Tilquin has quickly gained popularity and market share, exporting draft geuze to many countries (including my own, Norway) and producing a very good old geuze called Oude Gueuze Tilquin à l’Ancienne. His production has rapidly increased too, after one year he surpassed De Cam and he is now looking at producing 500 hl of geuze and lambics annually, taking him past Hanssens too. And it may not stop there, with his background from brewing there is no reason why Pierre Tilquin shouldn't start his own brewery someday and brew his own lambics.

Like several of the other participating breweries and blenders at this year's Tour de Geuze, Tilquin presented a brand new beer for his visitors, a 6.4% sour ale made with plums: Oude Quetsche Tilquin à l’Ancienne. I picked up a couple of bottles to bring home after tasting the deliciously tart beer in the beer tent. Then it was time to move on to the next stop, as we only had five hours to spend.

Some of the foudres for aging lambic at the Boon Brewery

Brouwerij Boon
The next stop on the tour was just up the road from Tilquin, in the town of Lembeek on the historically "correct" side of the Flanders / Walloon border. If passengers on the highspeed Thalys trains from Brussels to Paris look out on the right side, as the train shoots past Lembeek, they might catch a glimpse of the new brewery building inaugurated just two days before this Tour de Geuze.

Back in the early 1970s the young Frank Boon fell in love with lambic and geuze. He became a good friend of René de Vits who had a small lambic brewery in Lembeek, the last one still in operation. Boon would buy lambic from de Vits and blend his own geuze, first while running a youth club but from 1975 commercially with his own blending business. When René de Vits retired in 1978, without a successor, Frank Boon decided to buy the brewery and found the Boon Brewery. In the 25 years since, Frank Boon has honed his skills as a lambic brewer and blender, making some of the most classic sour ales you'll find in Belgium - in particular the Boon Mariage Parfait series of Oude Geuze, Kriek and Framboise.

When I arrived at Boon, the brewery buildings and surrounding grounds were teaming with visitors, many aiming for the degustation or tasting tent where they could sample most of the Boon beers, both sour and non-sour (Boon also brew the Duivel, an 8% Belgian strong ale). I headed straight for the new brewery, to take the tour, which started with a look at the old coolship, the only piece of equipment still in use after the new brewery opened. A coolship, known as koelschip in Dutch, is a shallow, open metal vessel, the size of a small swimming pool, which is used to cool the lambic wort over night and allow the wild yeast in the ambient air to inoculate the wort to spark the spontaneous fermentation.

When the President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, who is a good friend of Frank Boon, cut the ribbon on April 19 he marked the opening of a hightech marvel of a brewery, designed to be highly automated and environmentally friendly. As an example we were told that the hot vapors from the boiling of the wort is collected back in a large 65,000 liter hot water tank and reused for the next mashing. Clever! For the brewing, Boon uses malt from Dingemanns and they hop their lambics with 1 year old whole cone hops, not pellets or extract.

Frank Boon at his brewery in Lembeek

According to our guide, the first batch was brewed at the new brewery in mid March 2013 and with the new brewhouse in operation, Boon can brew three times more lambic than at the old brewery. But their goal for 2013 is a more modest increase - from 20,000 hl in 2012 to about 30,000 hl or 3 million liter this year. The tour ended in the cool storage cellar, where we got to see the impressive array of foudres - large oak barrels of 8,000 liter - in which Boon ages their lambics for up to three years. In all, Boon has 117 large oak foudres, in which about 1 million liter of lambic is aged at any time. In addition to aging their own lambics, Boon also sell lambic wort to geuze blenders such as Tilquin, De Cam, Oud Beersel, Hanssens and 3 Fonteinen who age it for their own oude geuze and oude kriek.

At the end of the brewery tour I caught sight of Frank Boon, beaming with pride as he gave a group of visitors a tour of the brewery. Frank Boon, who will turn 59 years in September, cuts a strapping figure with his graying hair and pair of glasses hanging in a string around his neck, looking more like a distinguished professor than the man who helped preserve traditional geuze, together with Jean-Pierre van Roy of Cantillon and Armand Debelder of 3 Fonteinen. His new brewery will place Boon at the forefront of the ongoing geuze revival in Belgium and the future of the brewery seems to be in good hands after his son, Jos Boon, recently joined his father upon completing a Master degree in Brewing and Malting.

For the inauguration of the new brewery, a special oude geuze had been made. Brewed to a very high gravity on 3-4 December 2008, it was aged in a single foudre (Vat 44) before being bottled in August 2010. These bottles were then aged for almost three more years before release in April 2013 as Oude Geuze Boon VAT 44. Only 20,520 bottles of 375 ml were made, so this is a rare treat indeed.

I would have loved to check out some of the many beers sold at the tasting stand, but the huge crowd and my own restricted time schedule forced me back on the tour bus.

Geuzestekerij De Cam
Next the bus headed north to the small town of Gooik, about 20 km south west of Brussels. Historically, Gooik has had many lambic brewers and geuze blenders but they were all gone by the time Gooik local and Palm Brewery production manager Willem van Herreweghen got the idea to start up a geuze blending business. When it opened in June 1997, Geuzestekerij De Cam became the first new geuze blender to open in Belgium in several decades.

Karel Goddeau with a glass of kriek at De cam

Because of the workload at Palm, in 1998 van Herreweghen enlisted the help of another local, the 25 year old brewer Karel Goddeau. Llike Pierre Tilquin, Goddeau spent some time with Armand Debelder at 3 Fonteinen to learn the art of aging lambic and blending geuze, and he has since become a well respected and experienced lambic blender. Since the year 2000 Goddeau has been in full charge of De Cam, but this is actually a part time business for him - his regular job is as a brewer at the Slaghmuylder brewery. Thus, Goddeau basically works nightshifts and weekends to keep De Cam running!

Geuzestekerij De Cam is located in an impressive, old brick building right next to Volkscafé De Cam on Dorpstraat in Gooik, so naturally the café oftens serves De Cam lambics on draft and the bottled geuze as well. When I arrived, the café and the small geuzestekerij were crowded with visitors so I barely managed to get inside for a peek of the barrel storage. Together with 3 Fonteinen, Goddeau has bought his oak barrels from the famous Pilsner Urquell brewery in the Czech Republic. With a total of 45 barrels of 1,000 liter capacity, he can age up to 450 hl lambic, resulting in an annual production of just 150 hl - 15,000 liter - sour ales, which makes De Cam the smallest geuze blender in Belgium. Goddeau currently buys his lambic wort from Boon, Lindemans and Girardin, but I would think that once 3 Fonteinen get started he'll also buy lambic wort from them.

While checking out the barrel storage I spotted the master himself, right next to a stainless steel maceration tank, in the midst of a photo session with the American beer blogger Chuck Cook. I fired up my own camera before moving on, the small place was filling up quickly so I made my escape to In De Groene Poort, just up the street, for a quiet lunch and a glass of fresh Boon Kriek on draft. And then it was time to move on, now to one of the biggest lambic breweries.

Entrance to the 230 year old Timmermans brewery in Itterbeek

Brouwerij Timmermans
Located in the village of Itterbeek, on the western outskirts of Brussels, Brouwerij Timmermans is the oldest and one of the largest lambic breweries in Belgium. The brewery has been part of the John Martin Group since 1993 and is probably best known for its sweet fruit beers though they have recently re-introduced some traditional sour ales. Anyhow, my expectations were not that high when the bus arrived in Kirkstraat in the heart of Itterbeek, but boy was I in for a surprise!

The first thing that impressed me was how well they've kept the old brewery buildings, where Timmermans, or Brasserie de la Taupe as it was known until 1961, has been brewing since 1781. It's a white painted brick building with beautiful murals on the front, showing typical lambic inspired scenes. Once inside, the impression of an old, traditional brewery was strengthened by the fact that Timmermans have kept much of their old brewing equipment and, like Cantillon and Oud Beersel, have turned parts of the brewery into a museum, showing old brewing equipment, mechanical stirring vats, simple bottling machines and an old grain mill with a massive and well worn mill stone.

What impressed me most of all though was that Timmermans were actually brewing a batch of lambic that day, which gave me the opportunity to finally see a coolship in action, with the hot vapors drifting across the surface like banks of sea mist. If I read the thermometer correct, the wort was about 90 degrees Celsius hot so it had a lot of cooling to do before it could get inoculated by wild yeast from the air. The coolship at Timmermans was huge, almost like an Olympic swimming pool, with a capacity of 220 hl (22,000 liter). I could barely see across it through the hot vapors, and the smell of wort was just mesmerizing - I had to force myself to move on to see the rest of the brewery.

Hot lambic wort in the 220 hl coolship at Timmermans

Like Boon, Timmermans have a big, cool cellar for aging lambic in oak barrels. Some of them had obviously just been filled with lambic wort and were still undergoing primary fermentation, because foam was covering the bunghole at the top of the barrel and could often be seen running in streams down the sides. During this phase, the fermentation is so violent that the brewer can't close the barrel or else it might explode from the pressure! However, there is no need to worry about infections since the thick foam turns fairly solid and acts like a cap, stopping particles and infections from entering the barrel. Only when the violent primary fermentation ends is the barrel capped with a plastic or wooden bung (a type of cork), to seal the barrel and allow the lambic to go through the slower secondary fermentation, during which lactic bacteria takes center stage and adds sourness to the beer.

Though Timmermans is part of a large company and is best known for sweet fruit beers, they have realized that traditional lambic is making a comeback, so in 2009 they re-introduced an Oude Geuze and the year after an Oude Kriek. Both were well received by lambic fans. The brewery also make a very decent sour ale called Bourgogne des Flandres, I spotted some oak barrels in the cellar where this beer was aging. Though sour, it is not a pure lambic but a mix of 50% lambic and 50% Scotch ale. Bourgogne des Flandres is not an original Timmermans beer but was taken over when Brouwerij De Os in Bruges closed in 1985. A couple of days after Tour de Geuze, while visiting Bruges, I learned that a new brewery is being built in Bruges to allow Bourgogne des Flandres to "return home" in September this year.

After the tour of the brewery and cellar, I made a quick stop at the pub located inside the brewery, which looked very cozy except that it was so full of visitors I could forget about ordering a beer. Besides, my tour bus had a tight schedule to follow, there was still one more lambic brewery to visit. My favorite. So I left.

Brouwerij 3 Fonteinen
The last stop on my tour was the one I had looked most forward to visit, Brouwerij 3 Fonteinen on Hoogstraat in Beersel, about 10 km south of Brussels. And I was not alone with this sentiment, as the small brewery and its brewery shop was thronging with visitors, eager to see the shiny, new coolships and purchase some bottles of the exclusive, new beer: Intense Red Oude Kriek.

This was not my first visit to 3 Fonteinen (see this post) so I focused mainly on the changes that they had made over the last year, ripping out the old brewery shop, closing the wonderful Lambikodroom tasting room and installing the brand new brewery. The old tasting room has now been turned into the brewery shop, while the old brewery shop houses brewing kettles and the coolships.

In the sea of people, while stubbornly holding on to my bottles of Intense Red, I caught a brief glimpse of Armand Debelder, smiling from ear to ear, as he waded through the brewery shop. On that day of Tour de Geuze, his brewery shop must have sold more 3 Fonteinen beer than during a regular month, it was wild! And the tour of the brewery was equally chaotic with people speaking a multitude of languages waiting for the appropriate guide.

Michaël Blanckaert as tour guide at 3 Fonteinen

I joined an English speaking tour, headed by none other than Michaël Blanckaert, the future master of 3 Fonteinen but still learning the trade of brewing lambic and blending geuze from his mentor, Armand Debelder. Michaël showed us the new 4,000 liter boiling kettle and the new stainless steel coolships of which there are four, all of 1,000 liter capacity to match the batch size of 4,000 liter. Built in Germany, the four coolships are assembled in a rack, because of floor space limitations, with two coolships at the bottom and two at the top. A large fan is used to blow away the hot vapor from the lower coolships, so as to avoid heating the upper ones.

With the new coolships in place, 3 Fonteinen can now brew four times more beer than at the old brewery so the limiting factor is not the brewery anymore but the number of oak barrels and storage space available for aging lambic. The latter is a serious problem because the lambic must age for 1-3 years before use, so in order to follow up the expanded brewing capacity 3 Fonteinen will need four times as many barrels as they currently have and a lot more storage space. According to Armand Debelder, this is an issue for the future, in the next couple of years they will just brew what they need to fill up their current generation of 1,000 liter oak barrels.

After almost a year of constructions the new brewery went into operation in March 2013, almost to the day four years after the last batch was brewed at the old brewery. To celebrate the opening of the new brewery, 3 Fonteinen released a brand new beer - a 5% oude kriek named Intense Red that was made with 40% sour cherries (i.e. 400 g cherries per liter lambic).

Two of the four German built 1,000 liter coolships at 3 Fonteinen

Despite having celebrated his 60th birthday, Armand Debelder can feel more confident about the future of 3 Fonteinen than in many years. Not only has he managed to construct a new lambic brewery but a successor has been appointed, Michaël Blanckaert, who is still in his 20s but well under way in his apprenticeship to become a traditional lambic brewer and blender, ready to take over 3 Fonteinen the day Armand Debelder retires.

Tour de Geuze after-party
Tour de Geuze officially ended at 5 pm and the HORAL buses returned to the starting point by Halle railway station. However, the fun was not over yet, because I had signed up for an after-party BBQ event held at the famous lambic café In de Verzekering tegen de Grote Dorst in the small village of Eizeringen, about 15 km west of Brussels.

Together with three fellow Tour de Geuze participants I took a taxi the almost 20 km from the railway station in Halle to the church square in Eizeringen, both to save time and to get there before it became too crowded. The café is located on the church square and is usually only open on Sundays, from 10 am to 1:30 pm, or during funerals. The reason for this is that the current owners, the brothers Yves and Kurt Panneels, have regular daytime jobs and only run the café in their sparetime.

In 1999 the previous owner, a remarkable woman named Marguerite, decided to retire, at the ripe old age of 85. To preserve her lambic café, the two Panneels brothers, both longtime fans of lambic, decided to take over the business from Marguerite. They renovated the place keeping it in the style of a 1940s Flemish café and moved their amazing sour ales collection, gathered over many years, to the cool cellar underneath.

Inside lambic café In de Verzekering tegen de Grote Dorst

Today, it feels like traveling back in time when you walk in through the front door; the walls are plastered with old lambic and geuze signs, there are no TV-screens or loudspeakers tucked away in the corners and there is no electronic cash register or computer at the bar, all tabs are calculated by hand on a piece of paper! The beer menu is the most impressive I've seen when it comes to lambic, ranging from 30 year old bottles of geuze to rare lambics from long gone breweries, such as Eylenbosch or Belle Vue (the old one!). For special events the café may also serve lambic on cask, at the Tour de Geuze after-party the lambic on cask was a blend of 12 and 18 months old lambic from Oud Beersel.

The BBQ focused on local specialities, such as Flemish blood sausages, pork ribs and chicken, served with hot mustard, mayo and various sauces. The food was hearty and tasty and went surprisingly well with geuze. Despite two busloads arriving, the small café managed to handle the crowd and I had a great evening, talking with locals as well as people from far away countries, while enjoying some amazing sour ales. To clinch the evening, when I failed to get a cab (none were available in the area!), the butcher responsible for the meat at the BBQ offered to drive my friends and me back to Brussels!

All in all, Tour de Geuze 2013 was a great experience for me and I must thank HORAL, the Hoge raad voor Ambachtelijke Lambikbieren, for arranging this wonderful event every two years. I must also thank the breweries and blenders for opening their businesses to outsiders, curious to see how each ply their trade and tasting their sour ales, and café In de Verzekering tegen de Grote Dorst for hosting the great BBQ at the end of the day.

Though at times very crowded, I would love to return for the next Tour de Geuze, in 2015, but I will probably rent my own car in order to be more flexible with regards to the time schedule and not be limited by that of a tour bus.

Yves Panneels opening a bottle of geuze

More photos from Tour de Geuze 2013 can be found at this Flickr set.

Counting down to Tour de Geuze 2013

For those hooked on sour beer not much comes up to the high standards of the Belgian lambics, those spontaneously fermented beers that have been brewed in Pajottenland and the Zenne river valley, just outside modern Brussels, for centuries. Lambics can be enjoyed young but they really prove their worth when blended across several vintages to create geuze or when steeped with berries, such as cherries and raspberries, to create kriek and framboise. Bottles of geuze can be cellared for decades and will often still come out sparkling and fresh.

3 Fonteinen / De Cam Millennium Geuze from 1998
- still sparkling and fresh after 15 years!

A visit to a lambic brewery is like walking back in time (the Cantillon brewery in Brussels even doubles as a museum!), with brewing equipment and traditions unchanged for generations. In most cases, it's next to impossible to get inside a working lambic brewery, the aforementioned Cantillon brewery being a notable exception, because the brewers fear anything that can possibly upset their local flora of wild yeast strains. But on one Sunday, every second year, the members of HORAL open their doors to visitors: It's time for Tour de Geuze!

HORAL and Tour de Geuze
HORAL or Hoge Raad voor Ambachtelijke Lambiekbieren is the "High Council for Artisanal Lambic beer" and consists of members from Pajottenland and the Zenne valley in Belgium. This organization was the brain child of Armand Debelder, the owner of 3 Fonteinen, who initiated HORAL with five other lambic breweries, including Boon, De Troch and Timmermans, on January 10, 1997.

Armand Debelder of Brouwerij 3 Fonteinen
- founder and leader of HORAL.

A member of HORAL must either be a traditional lambic brewer or a "geuzestekerij", a geuze blender - using real lambics to produce geuze. There are currently 11 members of HORAL: Brouwerij Boon in Lembeek, Geuzestekerij De Cam in Gooik, Brouwerij De Troch in Wambeek, Brouwerij 3 Fonteinen and Brouwerij Oud Beersel in Beersel, Brouwerij Girardin in Sint-Ulriks-Kapelle, Geuzestekerij Hanssens Artisanaal in Dworp, Brouwerij Lindemans in Vlezenbeek, Brouwerij Mort Subite in Kobbegem, Gueuzerie Tilquin in Rebecq-Rognon and Brouwerij Timmermans in Itterbeek

Three of these, prefixed Geuzestekerij or Gueuzerie, only blends geuze, using lambics bought from the other members or from Cantillon, which is not a member of HORAL.

As mentioned in the introduction, every second year HORAL arranges a special tour to allow ordinary people to visit its member breweries and blenders. The first Tour de Geuze was held back in 1997, the next one - the 9th so far - will be held this year, on Sunday April 21st, 2013.

Tour de Geuze 2013: April 21st
On the Tour de Geuze visitors are free to come by car, scooter, bike or any other means of transportation to visit those breweries that are open for the tour. The following 8 HORAL members are open this year and can be visited between 10 am and 5 pm on April 21st:

- Brouwerij Boon, Fonteinstraat 65, 1502 Lembeek
- Geuzestekerij De Cam, Dorpstraat 67A, 1755 Gooik
- Brouwerij De Troch, Langestraat 20, 1741 Wambeek
- Brouwerij 3 Fonteinen, Hoogstraat 2A, 1650 Beersel
- Geuzestekerij Hanssens Artisanaal, Vroenenbosstraat 15/1, 1653 Dworp
- Brouwerij Oud Beersel, Laarheidestraat 230, 1650 Beersel
- Gueuzerie Tilquin, Chaussée Maieur Habils 110, Rebecq-Rognon
- Brouwerij Timmermans, Kerkstraat 11, 1701 Itterbeek

Giradin, Lindemans and Mort Subite will not be open to visitors on this Tour de Geuze.

The route this year, connecting all breweries and blenders, is 62 km long - so you really need transport to get around. If you don't have your own wheels, you can sign up for one of the HORAL buses. Tickets for the HORAL buses will be made available for orders on the Tour de Geuze website, on February 21st.

Here's a Google map showing the route of Tour de Geuze 2013, with each of the stops clearly marked with a letter:

Map of the stops at Tour de Geuze 2013

The stops marked on the map are A) Tilquin, B) Boon, C) De Cam, D) De Troch, E) Timmermans, F) 3 Fonteinen, G) Oud Beersel and H) Hanssens.

2013-02-21 update:
Tickets for ten different bus tours have now been posted on the HORAL website, at €15 per ticket. No single tour covers all 8 breweries and the De Lambiek museum in Beersel, so you will have to decide which places you prefer to visit and then choose the relevant tour. But be quick, some of the buses are almost booked full (#2, #3 and #6 have just a couple of tickets left) only a few hours after the tour alternatives were posted!

After some reflections I booked a seat for myself on bus tour #3 because two of my favorite lambic breweries - Boon and 3 Fonteinen - will be visited on this tour. And it skips the lambic museum, which I plan to visit on a different trip anyway. Bus tour #3 will depart from Halle railway station at 10:15 am on April 21st and visit Tilquin, Boon, De Oude Cam, Timmermans and 3 Fonteinen before returning to Halle railway station at 5 pm.

Sunday at de Grote Dorst

Back in March 2012 I made my first visit to the lambic café In de Verzekering tegen de Grote Dorst in Eizeringen in Pajottenland, Belgium. It was a special BBQ event on a cold Friday evening. At the end of May I again found myself in the Belgian capital, now on a warm and sunny Sunday, so I decided to make another visit to see what the café was like on a church Sunday.

Café In de Verzekering tegen de Grote Dorst in Eizeringen.

In de Verzekering tegen de Grote Dorst or just de Grote Dorst is located on the town square in Eizeringen, opposite the Saint Ursula church. It's only open from 10 am to 1:30 pm on Sundays and church holidays, because it is run in their sparetime by the brothers Kurt and Yves Panneels.

Because it was a Sunday, with few buses going from Brussels to Eizeringen, and I was accompanied by three friends, we opted for a taxi as our means of transportation (making sure it would pick us up again later). Eizeringen is about 15 km west of Brussels, but traffic and small roads means you should set aside at least half an hour in getting there.

Kurt Panneels behind the bar at de Grote Dorst.

We arrived a little after 10 am to find one of the brothers, Yves, busy bringing scooters out of the garage. It turned out he was renting out scooters, for 50 Euro per day, and was taking a group of visitors to the open day at geuze blender Tilquin. I politely declined the offer to join the group as I already had plans for the afternoon and also wanted to spend some time at de Grote Dorst before leaving the Brussels area.

Inside the café I found the other brother, Kurt, manning the bar, and plenty of vacant tables. So my friends and I sat down at a smaller one, and started ordering rare bottles from the cellar of de Grote Dorst.

A rare beer we got to try was a geuze the brothers had blended themselves, just like lambic café owners did a hundred years ago: Geuze tegen de Grote Dorst. This 5% abv geuze, a blend of 11 different lambics, had been bottled in December 2008, so it was three and a half years old when we got to taste it. It was a well made blend, not very complex, but with a nice lemon sourness, hints of oak and with a mild bitter finish. Refreshing and drinkable.

Eylenbosch Guzuze 1990 - still so fresh.

A more exciting entry on their beer menu was the twenty-two year old Eylenbosch Gueuze 1990, one of the last vintages made by this old brewery in Schepdaal. Eylenbosch, which had been making geuze since 1851, was acquired by the Keermaeker brewery (known for the Mort Subite brand) in 1989 and closed down in 1991. Since then Keermaeker has ended up in the Alken-Maes group who now owns the Eylenbosch name but without actively using it. Anyhow, the 1990 Eylenbosch Gueuze was the real deal. It poured a clear golden color, it smelled of ripe apples and sherry cask and the flavor was harmonic and sour, with notes of dry leaves, lemon, apples and sherry. A delicious and surprisingly fresh sour ale.

When church service ended at Noon, a number of the faithful crossed the small square and entered de Grote Dorst for a glass or two of kriek, gueze or lambic. It was interesting to watch this mixture of locals, often in their 70s or 80s, and the young, foreign beer geeks who had already been at the café for a couple of hours. It's no doubt the Panneels brothers have struck a chord in the local community with their old style Flemish lambic café, just as they have in the global beer community - the users of RateBeer ranked de Grote Dorst one of the best beer bars in the world both in 2011 and 2012. So, the future of de Grote Dorst is looking good.

Speaking of beer geeks. A couple of tables away from ours sat three German sour ale fans, including Ulrich "Uli" Kremer, a well know geuze blender from Duisburg who blends geuze under his own h.ertie label. I keep running into him at breweries, bars and beer festivals all over Belgium. It's a small world and at de Grote Dorst you will meet them all.

At 1 pm the taxi was back to pick us up and I said my heartfelt farewells to Kurt Panneels, promising to come back to this peaceful and great lambic café in the heart of Pajottenland very soon.

Geuze blender Uli, left, and Yves Panneels on the scooter.

Photos from my two visits to de Grote Dorst: March and May 2012.

21st Weekend of Spontaneous Fermentation

Belgium is well known for a wide variety of beer styles and for its many beer festivals, one of the more special and longest running festivals is the Weekend of Spontaneous Fermentation which was held for the 21st time on May 26-27, 2012.  This is an account of my second visit to this unique sour ale festival.

Kerk Sint-Gerardus Majella in Opstal, Buggenhout

How to get there?

Opstal is a small village on the outskirts of Buggenhout in East Flanders, about 25 km or 40 minutes drive north west of Brussels. It is not necessarily easy to get to Opstal, I don't know about the buses but you can either share a cab or take a train to the nearest train station and walk from there. Taxis are rare to find in the countryside, so don't count on finding one if you get off at a small railway station.

Feestzaal Beukenhof on Broekstraat 18

The nearest train station to the Feestzaal Beukenhof on Broekstraat 18, where the festival is held, is the one in Heizijde - a little over 2 km or 20 minutes walk away. If you're in Brussels, go to the Bruxelles-Nord train station where you can catch several trains an hour to Heizijde. From Heizijde start by walking north along the Klein-Antwerpenstraat which changes into Kakemanstraat, follow this road until it ends and then turn left onto Varentstraat. Follow this road into Opstal and finally turn right on Broekstraat where the festival area is located just past the church, on the other side of the road. The train ride should take a little over half an hour, so all in all it will take you close to an hour to get from Brussels to the festival.

I ended up sharing a taxi with three friends, to cut the travel time and expenses. It still took us a good 40 minutes to get there, because of outdated GPS data and a confused driver who failed to read the road signs (taxi drivers in Brussels seem lost as soon as the leave the city, so always be alert). We arrived a little later than planned, almost half an hour after the opening, for a grand total 60 Euro. 

So, even though taxi is the fastest and easiest way to get to the festival, always make sure to have plenty of time to get there for the 3 pm opening.

The Weekend of Spontaneous Fermentation

Weekend der Spontane Gisting, as it's known in the local Flemish dialect, or The Weekend of Spontaneous Fermentation is an annual beer festival arranged by an organization called De Opstalse Bierpallieters - "the beer tasters of Opstal" - in Opstal, Buggenhout. This 2-day festival is always held on the last weekend of May, 2012 being the 21st time it was held.

Casks of young lambic and kriek lining the wall.

What makes this festival so special is that it focuses exclusively on one of the most remarkable beer styles that exists in the world today, a type of beer that has died out in most other countries, that of spontaneous or wild yeast fermentation. 

Spontaneous fermentation is actually a pretty wide category and not really a beer style. The common theme is that you don't use a regular "tamed" yeast culture, such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae (for top fermented ales) or Saccharomyces carlsbergensis (for bottom fermented lagers). Instead, the brewer relies on the ambient air of the brewery to provide the untamed, wild yeast to start the fermentation. This is a much less controlled way of fermenting beer, with many potential problems such as infection due to the open cooling vats (coolships), but it also produces some of the most amazing beer styles you can immagine:

• Fruit lambic: Usually dry, fruity and colorful beers.
• Most often made with cherries (kriek) or raspberries (framboise / framboos).
• Other fruits used may be peaches, currants or strawberries.
• Some brewers sweeten their fruit lambics to make them easier to sell.
• Faro: This is a type of geuze with brown sugar added for sweetening.
• Faro was very popular in late 19th century Brussels but is now almost gone.
• Geuze / gueuze: A blend of several years, refermented in the bottle.
• Many geuze blenders use a blend of 1, 2 and 3 year old lambics, where the young lambic provides sugar for the bottle refermentation and the older character.

The geuze, in particular, has made a revival thanks to its dry, fruity and often sparkling - Champagne like - character. Thanks to its production and long maturation, the geuze is known to cellar well for up to 20-30 years!

The Weekend of Spontaneous Fermentation 2012.

The atmosphere and the beers

In 2012 the festival was held on May 26-27 at the Tapperij Beukenhof in Opstal. Like the year before, the entrance was free, so you only had to pay for what you tasted - and the prices are really reasonable, with twenty year old bottles of geuze going for only 15-20 Euro!

This has to be one of the most relaxing festivals in the world, every visitor is seated by one of the many tables and all orders are placed by holding up the hand, just like in school, so that one of the staff notices and comes over to your table. The beer menu is numbered so you just have to point to the items of interest and indicate if you want more than one glass, in case you want to share a bottle. It works really well, as it removes the concept of queues and gives plenty of space on the floor, allowing guests to pass freely to the restrooms or in and out of the festival.

Parallel tasting cask lambics from four different breweries.

The visitors to the 21st Weekend of Spontaneous Fermentation were treated to a great mixture of young and and old sour ales. Like last year most of the lambic brewers of Belgium and some of the blenders had sent in casks with lambic and kriek.

In all there were 12 different lambics served on cask, including very nice ones from 3 Fonteinen, De Troch, Hanssens, De Cam and Cantillon, as well as 8 kriekenlambieks.

It's smart to start out with the young lambics as they tend to be simpler and less acidic than some of the aged oude geuze bottles. As for the amount of alcohol, don't worry - most lambics are just 5% abv and the tasting glasses are 15 cl - so take your time and do parallel tastings to see how the lambics differ in fruitiness, sourness, bitterness, woodiness and other characteristics. It's both fun and educational to compare notes with table neighbors.

When through with the cask ales it's smart to gang up with some of your table mates to share bottles, many of them are 75 cl and best shared with 3-4 others. There are some 37.5 cl bottles too, but that is still a lot to drink if you want to get through a large number of beers in one sitting. So, sharing bottles is a great way to get through more beers and to make new friends.

One of the older bottles I tried was the 1993 Sélection Lambic Gueuze from Belle-Vue, a beer that hasn't been made since 1999 (probably because Belle-Vue was bought up by InBev). Unfortuanetly, this 19 year old geuze was way over the top, oxidized and with a strong lemon acidity making it almost undrinkable. 

Cantillon Zwanze 2010 - still a winner.

A far better choice was the 2004 vintage of Boon Oude Geuze Mariage Parfait, still fruity and fresh and really well balanced sour ale for just 10 Euro. 

Among the younger sour ales, the Cantillon Zwanze 2010 is always a winner with its wonderful floral (elderflowers) sourness - a refreshing beer I can drink bottles of alone. 

Another bottled highlight was the Girardin Fond Gueuze Bierpallieters 2009, the official Jubileumbier for the 2011 festival. It combined lemon sourness and a mild brettanomyces character with mild oak and dry leaves in a wonderful way. Too bad we were not allowed to buy any bottles to bring home this year.

For those who can't drink sour ales for an entire day, the festival has made an exception to the rule of only having spontaneously fermented beers on their menu: The two local Buggenhout breweries, De Landtsheer and Bosteels, are both represented with their world class beers. De Landtsheer with their Malheur series - including the 10, 12 and Malheur Bière Brut - while Bosteels come with Kwak and Tripel Karmeliet. 

Finally a few words on the food. The festival doesn't serve warm food or any large dishes of cold food, so it's common to bring snacks and food on your own, but they do have a very nice cheese and salami platter and also some sort of sandwiches (which I haven't tried).

Conclusion

After my second year at The Weekend of Spontaneous Fermentation I feel stronger than ever that this is one of the best beer festivals on the planet, it's small, it's quiet and it has the best selection of young and old sour ales you could ever dream of trying. Thus, I have already reserved the last weekend of May 2013 for another visit to Opstal. 

Photos from the festival can be found at Flickr: 2011 and 2012.