Located in the Anderlecht neighborhood of the Belgian capital of Brussels is one of the world’s most well-renowned and unique breweries.
Cantillon Brewery is a small, family-owned brewery that produces relatively small quantities of beer per year. So, why is it so well known?
Cantillon’s brewers are the masters of the lambic beer style, which is the only type of beer that they produce at the brewery.
Lambics began to be brewed in the late 18th century in the Pajottenland region of Belgium, just to the southwest of Brussels. It’s a unique type of beer that relies on spontaneous fermentation in order to produce the beverage.
This means that once the liquid is ready to be brewed, it is left in an open container, in which bacteria and other endemic microorganisms enter, causing spontaneous fermentation to happen.
Many people describe these beers as tasting wild, fruity, sour, and/or tart.
The folks at Cantillon have mastered the process of using this process in order to create lambics. They produce around 400,000 bottles of the stuff per year, making it a product in high demand.
Cantillon makes several varieties of lambic beers, ranging from kriek lambics, which incoporated mashed fruits into the brewing process, to lambics which have been aged in oak barrels for up to three years.
Have you tried one of Cantillon’s lambics? Let us know what you think about them!
