Cantillon Brewery, Brussels

by Tim Hurrell

	In 1900, Paul Cantillon established a brewery in the Anderlecht district of Brussels; at the time, it was one of the hundreds of breweries in the capital.  After the Second World War, his sons Marcel and Robert took over production which by 1958, the year of the Brussels World Fair, reached its maximum, an impressive 2500 hectolitres.  In 1968, Marcel's son-in-law Jean-Pierre van Roy entered the brewing business and continued the family tradition.  Today, the Cantillon Brewery is the last traditional brewery in Brussels.
The Mashing House:  Wheat and barley are put in the crushing machine (below, right of picture); crushed cereals fall into a hopper above the mashing tun (right, being cleaned). In the tun, 1300kg of  crushed cereals are mixed with 10000 litres of warm water to extract the wort.  The raw materials left in the tun, the draff, are removed to be sold as fodder.
	The crushing machine crushes wheat and malted barley. Brewers attach great importance to the process: if crushed to finely, they hamper filtering; if not, production decreases.  The hop boiler to the left of the crushing machine is made of red copper and is equipped with a propellor to mix hops and wort, and coils to circulate steam.  Three year old hops are added to the wort before cooking, at a ratio of 20kg of hop flowers to every 10000 litres of wort.
In this airy granary (right and below), wheat, malted barley and hops are stored during the brewing season which lasts from September to March.
	The wheat is non-germinated and comes from Brabant.  The brewery uses two or three different types of barley which are made into malt in a malt-house.  From the 12thC, hops have been used for their flavour and bitter taste; lambic brewers use three times as much as ordinary brewers so use aged hops which have lost part of their bitter taste.
In the middle of the cooling tun room (right) stands a large vessel in red copper; it is a coppersmith's masterpiece: every part is riveted, there is no welding at all.  The wort will be pumped into this once the hops have been cooked and removed, and will be allowed to cool naturally  overnight - which explains why the brewing season is a winter one.  The cold season also advances the inoculation of the wort by a variety of airborne yeasts that are specific to this room.
	The brewery's resident mouser affected an air of casual indifference until I got my camera out.
From the cooling tun, the wort is pumped into oak or chestnut pipes (650 litres) or hogsheads (250 litres); in this way, 11 pipes or 26 hogsheads will be filled.  Once, all brewers used the same methods but nowadays many of them use stainless steel vessels and cooling systems to control the fermentation process.  At first, fermentation is violent and visible; production of C02 is so extreme that the barrels cannot be closed for fear of explosion.  Three to four weeks later, slow fermentation starts and the barrel is sealed hermetically - this complicated operation will continue for three years...and LAMBIC is born.
	Lambic is natural beer with an extraordinary taste; some kinds are more acid, more bitter, or softer than others.  To make gueuze, the brewer blends one, two and three-year old lambic; young beer supplies natural sugars, old beer contributes to bouquet and fine taste.  For years, brewers have added regional fruit such as cherries, raspberries or grapes to their lambic: 150kg of fruits are mixed with 500 litres of two-year old lambic and allowed to macerate for three months. The beer extracts taste, colour and sugar from the fruit. An additional one third of young lambis is added and the beer is lightly filtered and bottled.
How to clean your barrels...  1. Manually: the barrels are cleaned using a kind of witches' broomstick. The broom is put through the bunghole and the sediment is swept out; the staves and barrelhead are cleaned with a flat brush and a scraper.  2. Steam: each barrel is filled with steam for at least twenty minutes to destroy every form of micro-organism in the wood.  3. Mechanically: the barrel is fixed to the machine (right). Its filled with sharp-edged chains and 20 to 30 litres of hot water then subjected to double rotation before being rinsed with cold water.  All barrels are then sulphured to prevent fungi developing in the wood.
	The bottling machine (left, old style; below, current) can fill up to 1200 champagne-type bottles, either 37.5cl or 75cl, an hour. They are closed with a cork and a crown cork to avoid the corks popping out during summer when the heat may cause strong fermentation.  A conveyor belt transports the bottles to the cellars.
After they have been filled, the bottles are stored horizontally in the cellars, where they will remain for several months. The sugars of young lambic cause a second fermentation; C02 produced by the yeasts saturates the beer in a natural way. From a flat beer, lambic turns into a foaming beer: GUEUZE
	A full cellar contains 11000 bottles; on average, the brewer permanently stores 60000 bottles.  On average, 900 hectolitres of beer a year are produced by equipment dating back to the 19thC.  The Brussels Gueuze Museum was founded in 1978 to preserve both the unique brewing process and the timeless beers, produced only rarely nowadays in its original fashion.

Cantillon Brewery products

Gueuze: blend of 1-, 2- and 3-year old lambic, fermented in the bottle. Can be kept for a long time.
Kriek: Schaerbeek cherries macerate in 2-year old lambic.
Rose de Gambrinus: same as kriek but with raspberries instead of cherries.
Vigneronne: same as kriek but this time with white grapes.
Faro: lambic with added caramel and candy sugar. A sweet beer (unsurprisingly) that can be kept for 3 to 4 weeks only.
Marmalade: gueuze, kriek and rose de Gambrinus marmalades are traditional products which combine the natural acidity of their beers and sugar.
The Cantillon Brewery is situated at: 56 rue Gheude, 1070, tel: 00 32 520 28 91.
The nearest train station is the Gare du Midi (very handy for Eurostar); the Metro Gare du Midi or Metro Clemenceau are within easy walking distance.
Trams 18, 52, 55, 56, 81 and 82 will get you close as will Buses 20 and 47.
The brewery/museum is open:
June-September 8.30am to 5pm Monday to Friday; 10am to 1pm Saturday
October-May 8.30am to 4.30pm Monday to Friday; 10am to 5pm Saturday