The Cantillon brewery is home to some of the most famous lambic style beers.   They are holding a public brewing session at the Brussels Gueuze Museum this Saturday 8th November, where they will show the public how they make their gueuze & lambic beers.

Lambic beers are spontaneously fermented - the wild yeasts & bacteria in the brewhouse work on the natural sugars in the wort rather than an innoculation of a carefully bred brewers yeast.   This produces a sour tasting beer, but also an unpredictable element too.   Often the wild yeast & bacteria are deliberately isolated, stored & added to the wort to reduce this random element to the flavour.   All beers were made this way until micro-organisms were studied & understood.

Gueuze beers are made from a blend of lambics to produce the taste the head brewer is looking for.   Younger beers with some natural sugars still unfermented will be blended with older beers up to 3 years old.   The remaining beer is bottled & the residual sugars generate carbon dioxide to give a natural sparkle to the beer.   This beer is compared to Champagne due to its high levels of sparkle & the exclusiveness of its drinkers.

Some of my friends are going there this weekend to see this marvelous beer being made - regrettably I am in the middle of moving from the south coast to Manchesterⁱ so my time & money are to be spent elsewhere.