I will be heading over to Belgium for a one-week beer-bike tour, armed with some very good advice from readers of this digest. But before I go, here is an abridged report of a one-day bike tour of the Payottenland I emailed to friends last July 1994. (Some of the facts will be quite familiar to readers of this digest.)
Just like I read in MJ's book: there is a large shallow open vat in the attic for the boiled wort to cool in during the night. The roof is ventilated so that wild yeasts can have their way with it. There are huge furchy dust blobs under the vat-- nothing is disturbed for fear of upsetting the resident yeasts. In the storage rooms are large ancient wooden casks filled with ageing lambic, draped with spiders webs, the ones with kriek oozing a red goo.
At the end of my tour I was offered a glass of gueuze. I asked if they ever drank the straight, unblended lambic. My host went and got Mr. van Roy, who took me upstairs, loosened the cork on a cask of nearly two-year old lambic, and filled my glass with a flat, brown liquid. It was quite sour.
Among the lambic-iana hanging on the walls was a letter from George Schultz, U.S. Secretary of State, eloquently praising the Cantillons for their hospitality and excellent beer. George Schultz.
I chatted with Mrs. van Roy as well. Since I am American, she had something interesting to show me. The label on the bottle of the Rose de Gambrinus has a painting of a naked, big-chested woman holding a glass of beer, obviously enjoying herself in the lap of a black, hairy, man-like creature, who is giving her a feel. Cantillon exports this beer to the U.S. They were compelled to change the label. On the American label the woman is wearing a dress. How can Europeans take us seriously?
My cycling trip then took me out of Brussels along the industrialized and refreshingly unquaint Canal de Charleroi. At the village of Halle I drank a bottle of the city's Vander Linden gueuze at the Cafe In de Fazant, then at the Cafe de Sleutal it was gueuze and kriek from the De Koninck lambic blender (of the nearby town of Dworp). The De Koninck kriek billowed cherry, and had an acid finish. It was a fabulous, intense drink. The warm and motherly waitress gave me a De Koninck glass as a souvenir. [Since then I have read in Tim Webb's 2nd edition of the CAMRA guide that the blending of De Koninck was taken over by Girardin in 1990 and was last made in 1992. It may now be extinct; I'll look out for it.]
Then I downshifted to my lowest gears to ascend hills, and with a good bit of beer in me. Via Dworp, I made for another lambic holy place: the town of Beersel. I met my wife and baby at the lambic brew-pub/restaurant 3 Fonteinen. Both the gueuze and kriek were intensely acid, start to finish. For the faint-hearted, sugar cubes are served with the beer. I rejected them and slogged my way through.
The final stop was the Cafe In 'T Bierhuis Oud Beersel, which serves beer from the tiny one-man lambic producer next door. They served a straight draft lambic. It was a murky, flat, and bitter liquid.
Ed Harstead
Last Updated: 10 October, 1995
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